My general feeling is that companies are always trying to put each other out of business, but that is a gradual process. Take technology for example. When have you ever seen a Tablet go down in price 40% over 6 months? And if you have seen that happen, all of a sudden you start wondering about the health of the company. Generally a whole sector doesn't try to commit suicide like the oil sector is doing right now. You might put yourself out of business in the process.
So, at the beginning of this month I'd read that gas consumption in California had increased 1% from 2012 to 2013. Yeah, government data is always at least a year behind. And I've been trying to figure this out every since I'd read it. If demand is down, why is the demand in California up? It also came from a fairly douche source, and I wasn't sure I should believe it. Eventually I was able to find an article from the Sacbee that had the article. Here.
"California’s gasoline consumption, which has been trending slowly downward, increased nearly 1 percent in fiscal 2013-14, according to the state Board of Equalization.
It was the first increase in eight years."
It was the first increase in eight years."
Turns out this particular riddle was solved accidentally by talking to my property manager. The neighbors at the rental house are having a conflict with my renters. So I had to mend some fences everywhere. I generally try to not talk to my property manager too much because she's also a real estate agent. I'd like to believe the things she says, but I usually have to try and unwind her (and all agents) reality distortion fields.
She told me the demo of our town was changing because a lot of new people are moving back in. After this I thought it was somewhat reasonable that population growth was the culprit. And after doing some googlefu, it turns out that seems it's likely that is the reason why. The Bay Area has been growing slightly faster than the aggregate in the rest of the State, but overall it's about a 1% increase. Here. This is also likely why traffic is so bad right now.
I wonder how many more people will move back now that oil is ummmm "busty". A lot of our people moved to Texas for all those great jobs that might not be as plentiful now. This spring I heard that Texas was in a building boom.
It kinda sucks the oil trade is collapsing. It's one of the few sectors in the US that was actually expanding. Well, except for the pot shops. Now what have we got?
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