Latest / The Bill Handel Show / L.A. Population is Falling | Small Private College Dying
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
- 0:04Speaker 1: six forty bill Handle.
- 0:06Speaker 2: Here. It is a Monday morning, April thirteenth. The blockade,
- 0:12Speaker 2: the US blockade of the Iranian ports in the Gulf
- 0:18Speaker 2: and through the Strait of Horror moves. Well. The Irani
- 0:21Speaker 2: imports have been blocked. There's no oil leaving Iran at all.
- 0:26Speaker 2: And it started this morning about an hour ago. So
- 0:30Speaker 2: no deal has been cut and sort no one knows
- 0:34Speaker 2: what's going to happen when it comes to the ceasefires
- 0:37Speaker 2: up in what another five day? Six days? All right?
- 0:42Speaker 2: A story I want to share with you about southern California,
- 0:46Speaker 2: and this has to do with an aging population baby boomers,
- 0:51Speaker 2: of which I am one is part of the problem.
- 0:54Speaker 2: From twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five, La La County.
- 0:58Speaker 2: Now it's also Orange County this part of this story,
- 1:01Speaker 2: but the sheer numbers here in La because the La
- 1:04Speaker 2: Times covering this well, LA County lost fifty four thousand residents.
- 1:09Speaker 2: That is no small deal because southern California has been
- 1:14Speaker 2: on a growth spurt. Matter of fact, Southern California is
- 1:17Speaker 2: and was or was the fastest growing area in all
- 1:22Speaker 2: of the United States for decades and decades. Well, what
- 1:27Speaker 2: do you have here? Declining birth rates, a declining home
- 1:32Speaker 2: buyer pool, No kidding, and that's raising all kinds of concerns.
- 1:36Speaker 2: Strong housing demand, but no one can afford it. Our
- 1:41Speaker 2: unique amenities suggests that the decline may not be as bad.
- 1:47Speaker 2: Can you imagine this? With the amenities, It may not
- 1:50Speaker 2: be as bad as the rust belt states. But the
- 1:53Speaker 2: rust Belt, man, there was just those towns were just
- 1:56Speaker 2: wiped out. Why because the car industry and the steel
- 1:59Speaker 2: into tree We're in Detroit area and the car industry
- 2:05Speaker 2: and the steel industry, while the steel industry disappeared because
- 2:09Speaker 2: foreign steel was brought in, primarily Chinese, and foreign cars
- 2:15Speaker 2: versus American cars are a huge percentage of the number
- 2:19Speaker 2: of cars being sold in America. I mean, you know,
- 2:22Speaker 2: the US car industry just didn't keep up. So we
- 2:26Speaker 2: were the epicenter of population growth in the US, and
- 2:29Speaker 2: now we're slowly losing our people. Demographic shifts the number
- 2:34Speaker 2: one reason high housing prices. Very difficult to afford a house.
- 2:38Speaker 2: How many people can buy a house anymore, and so
- 2:41Speaker 2: you have a growing number of folks are leaving the
- 2:44Speaker 2: region for more affordable parts of the country. So you
- 2:47Speaker 2: buy a house for million dollars here, which is not
- 2:50Speaker 2: very much. So a moderate sort of maybe a twenty
- 2:54Speaker 2: five hundred square foot home in a nice area, is
- 2:57Speaker 2: going to cost you a million and a half dollars.
- 3:01Speaker 2: You can buy half of Kansas for a million and
- 3:03Speaker 2: a half dollars, I mean huge acreage and the greatest
- 3:07Speaker 2: part of town. You know, grab a city in Kansas
- 3:12Speaker 2: or Illinois, Peoria. So what's been happening is the job
- 3:20Speaker 2: market has decreased, a number of immigrants which were a
- 3:23Speaker 2: huge part of our economy, and the population. Well you
- 3:29Speaker 2: can imagine what the Trump administration has done with immigration.
- 3:34Speaker 2: Whether you believe it or not, this is not a
- 3:36Speaker 2: political statement. This is just a fact that the immigration
- 3:40Speaker 2: population has not only decreased, has just disappeared. So we
- 3:47Speaker 2: Southern California, which led the nation in American numeric population
- 3:52Speaker 2: loss for all but one of the last eight years.
- 3:56Speaker 2: Seven out of the last eight years we've had the most.
- 4:00Speaker 2: And why has California been so strong? Well, if you
- 4:05Speaker 2: look at our economy and why it grew for over
- 4:10Speaker 2: a century, LA's population grew like crazy, start with the
- 4:14Speaker 2: eighteen forty eight Gold Rush, and how many people came
- 4:18Speaker 2: in into the state. The population exploded. Then you had
- 4:23Speaker 2: the early nineteen hundreds oil boom. You know that southern
- 4:25Speaker 2: California was one of the biggest oil producers in the
- 4:32Speaker 2: country for a very long time. Then he had Hollywood,
- 4:35Speaker 2: which has always been there, much less now than it
- 4:38Speaker 2: used to be. There was no such thing as filming
- 4:41Speaker 2: out of state, except once in a while they would
- 4:44Speaker 2: film a location shoot, but everything was in sound stages.
- 4:48Speaker 2: Not so much anymore. You had aerospace manufacturing World War two,
- 4:55Speaker 2: and for the most part that's all gone. Aerospace still
- 4:59Speaker 2: is is a big part of California. Good wages. Agriculture
- 5:05Speaker 2: the number one economy in California, the number one center
- 5:11Speaker 2: of commerce. No one makes any money in agriculture, that's
- 5:15Speaker 2: for sure. Healthcare is growing, shortage of doctors, a lot
- 5:20Speaker 2: of healthcare, very low paid healthcare. Those of us who
- 5:24Speaker 2: are getting old and decrepit as crap are going to
- 5:29Speaker 2: need health care. And people that live well caretakers make
- 5:34Speaker 2: absolutely no money. And then the housing. The housing has
- 5:40Speaker 2: is the number one issue. So population is heading south.
- 5:44Speaker 2: The people that are staying are people that own homes
- 5:47Speaker 2: and no one's moving, so the population is growing like crazy,
- 5:53Speaker 2: and as I've said many times, the bottom line is
- 5:56Speaker 2: that it's almost impossible to live. I have told my
- 6:00Speaker 2: kids for years and years, I will I will come
- 6:03Speaker 2: up with a down payment on your house. That's gonna
- 6:06Speaker 2: be my gift to you. And here's the good news.
- 6:11Speaker 2: I offer to come down with down payment my pleasure. So, gee,
- 6:16Speaker 2: you're a great dad, you know that's that's terrific, what
- 6:20Speaker 2: great parents we have. You're never going to qualify for
- 6:24Speaker 2: a loan ever, so I get the credit, I save
- 6:29Speaker 2: a down payment. I'm a good guy and my life
- 6:33Speaker 2: is wonderful. Well not so much, but at least in
- 6:37Speaker 2: that regard. Okay, let's do a fun story. Tapatio Sauce
- 6:42Speaker 2: hot sauce, which is southern California, but it is becoming
- 6:46Speaker 2: a national, even an international sauce. It's a family that
- 6:50Speaker 2: created and sells to Patio and it's about fifty years
- 6:56Speaker 2: in the making and the recipe is a closely held secret.
- 7:01Speaker 2: Let me tell you how secret the recipe is. We
- 7:04Speaker 2: know that Coca Cola has a secret recipe that's locked
- 7:08Speaker 2: up in a safe deposit box in Atlanta, Georgia, and
- 7:12Speaker 2: I think three or four people have access to it.
- 7:15Speaker 2: Top of Tia sauce. The recipe isn't even written down.
- 7:21Speaker 2: It's just the family members that have the recipe and
- 7:24Speaker 2: they keep it in their heads and they make the
- 7:27Speaker 2: basis of it secretly. The worker. No one knows except
- 7:31Speaker 2: the family. They die in a plane crash, it's over.
- 7:35Speaker 2: So for fifty five years, the family behind top Patio
- 7:40Speaker 2: has kept in an altar a ultra safe secret, the
- 7:44Speaker 2: Savedra family. I didn't know, Neil, that you had anything
- 7:47Speaker 2: to do with Topatio.
- 7:49Speaker 1: My understanding is we're not related. I guess if you
- 7:52Speaker 1: go back farther enough far enough, but nobody directly that
- 7:56Speaker 1: I'm aware.
- 7:57Speaker 2: Do you like to Patio sauce? I do very much,
- 8:01Speaker 2: so there is a connection.
- 8:02Speaker 1: Yes, okay, they are a double a just like we are.
- 8:05Speaker 2: But hey, uh so there is one reason why to
- 8:09Speaker 2: Patio and other hot sauces have just exploded on the market.
- 8:12Speaker 2: Any idea, do do do do do do do do
- 8:16Speaker 2: do do do yummy? And well they're yummy, but g
- 8:20Speaker 2: LP one drugs because people who are on GLP one drugs,
- 8:25Speaker 2: which is virtually everybody I know. Uh, you want spice
- 8:30Speaker 2: your food. One of the side effects is that there
- 8:35Speaker 2: is a taste for spice your foods and topico is Yeah,
- 8:38Speaker 2: I didn't.
- 8:39Speaker 1: Even know that. I know a lot of people lose
- 8:41Speaker 1: their desire for alcohol other things.
- 8:44Speaker 2: You know, vio o, zembic, other weight loss drugs. You
- 8:48Speaker 2: have a craving for more flavor. So uh, these sauce
- 8:52Speaker 2: companies of value has exploded. And the reason I'm bringing
- 8:56Speaker 2: this story up is to Patio, which has just sold itself.
- 9:00Speaker 2: The family is no longer a family event. It's a
- 9:04Speaker 2: major conglomerate.
- 9:06Speaker 1: Yeah, the adventure capitalist. What product do you know that
- 9:09Speaker 1: got better after sold to venture capitalists?
- 9:12Speaker 2: Well, there are some that have not changed. Coca Cola's
- 9:16Speaker 2: changed hands a bunch of times, are you Yeah? Well,
- 9:22Speaker 2: I heeart is better after it was bought from Cox.
- 9:27Speaker 2: It was such a better company. You're smiling, Okay, okay. Savedra,
- 9:35Speaker 2: the owner, originally from Mexico City, came to Chicago in
- 9:39Speaker 2: the late nineteen twenties, worked as a Spanish translator, met
- 9:43Speaker 2: his wife, moved to southern California. He was an aerospace
- 9:46Speaker 2: parts manufacturer in la and he made homemade hot sauce
- 9:51Speaker 2: and not unusually, he brought it for lunch. Was a
- 9:53Speaker 2: hit with coworkers, they asked for more. He was laid
- 9:57Speaker 2: off in the late sixties during an oil recession, and
- 9:59Speaker 2: he started selling these bottles. So he rented a small
- 10:03Speaker 2: and he was doing it at home by the way,
- 10:05Speaker 2: and then as this thing grew there, he rented a
- 10:08Speaker 2: small space in Maywood and then they would actually the
- 10:15Speaker 2: whole family pitched in. They would drive a van up
- 10:18Speaker 2: and down la manually packing and unloading the product product
- 10:22Speaker 2: to local corner stores. And then about five years in
- 10:28Speaker 2: they expanded to a seven thousand square foot building in Vernon,
- 10:32Speaker 2: and in nineteen ninety six they went into a thirty
- 10:35Speaker 2: thousand square foot building which they have today and it
- 10:40Speaker 2: is well Topatio sauce is pretty popular people put popped to.
- 10:46Speaker 2: I don't understand people putting to patio sauce on everything. Oh,
- 10:49Speaker 2: I just don't get it. Everything.
- 10:51Speaker 1: I have little leather hulsters that you could put on
- 10:54Speaker 1: the side of your belt and carry that around with you.
- 10:57Speaker 1: Those are the real ones, man, and they you put
- 10:59Speaker 1: it on pizza and everything.
- 11:02Speaker 2: Do they really have leather holsters? Ye?
- 11:04Speaker 1: Leather really that the real ones. They'll put them right
- 11:08Speaker 1: on their hip all right.
- 11:11Speaker 2: Well, in any case, it is a big, big deal.
- 11:15Speaker 2: There was big fights in the family. Just a fun factoid.
- 11:20Speaker 2: The son who runs it and sold it with his
- 11:25Speaker 2: how to fight with his dad in the late nineties
- 11:27Speaker 2: about changing the brand's label to stand out on all
- 11:30Speaker 2: this crowded shelves and father said no, the old bottles
- 11:34Speaker 2: were fine, mainly black and white, a little outdated. So
- 11:39Speaker 2: the senior Sephaedra gives in sales rocketed just by changing
- 11:45Speaker 2: the label. So anyways, major group just bought it. We
- 11:49Speaker 2: don't know how much because it was a private sale.
- 11:52Speaker 2: But does to give you an idea, there is a
- 11:57Speaker 2: company called Bakuans Japanese barbecue sauce brand, which I've never
- 12:03Speaker 2: heard of, and Neil, if you have never heard of it,
- 12:06Speaker 2: it's pretty obscure. Buck Ends does.
- 12:09Speaker 1: That's not necessarily true, but it doesn't trigger anything in
- 12:13Speaker 1: my mind right now.
- 12:14Speaker 2: Okay. It was acquired in February for four hundred million
- 12:18Speaker 2: dollars by a major conglomerate. So you're going to see tapatia.
- 12:23Speaker 2: They're going to expand their flavors, they're going to expand
- 12:26Speaker 2: marketing because they figure a lot of companies are bought
- 12:29Speaker 2: for way more money than you would see because these
- 12:32Speaker 2: venture capitalists and major conglomerates walk in and say, we
- 12:36Speaker 2: see growth. It's all about growth, not about profit. It's
- 12:40Speaker 2: not about how well they're run. It's all about growth
- 12:43Speaker 2: and topatio. Because it's becoming more and more popular southern California,
- 12:50Speaker 2: it's regional, it's going across the United States, and the
- 12:52Speaker 2: people that bought it think that there will be an
- 12:54Speaker 2: international market for it, which you know makes sense to me. Okay, Now,
- 13:00Speaker 2: the annoyance economy, what is that? Well, the time we
- 13:05Speaker 2: spend on the phone on hold going through menus, and
- 13:11Speaker 2: it has gotten completely crazy. Now, I'm going to give
- 13:13Speaker 2: myself a little kudos here, and that is right up
- 13:17Speaker 2: until I sold the Center for Surrogate Parenting about five
- 13:20Speaker 2: years ago, I had a receptionist. There was going to
- 13:23Speaker 2: be no menu for me. I wanted a real person
- 13:27Speaker 2: answering the phone. That it cost me money yet did?
- 13:30Speaker 2: Was it a bad financial move? Probably? But the thought
- 13:34Speaker 2: of going through a menu drives me completely crazy. That's
- 13:37Speaker 2: annoyance big time. And it's not just the annoyance menu stuff.
- 13:44Speaker 2: We're talking about canceling subscriptions, which is almost impossible to do,
- 13:49Speaker 2: screening spam calls, trying to change a flight, trying to
- 13:53Speaker 2: call anybody. It's impossible, it's time sucking, it's tedious, and
- 14:00Speaker 2: it does have a meaningful economic impact that has not
- 14:03Speaker 2: been looked at before. There is a study that's just
- 14:07Speaker 2: been done by Neil Mahoney as Stanford economists about this
- 14:12Speaker 2: and this annoyance economy adds up to about one hundred
- 14:15Speaker 2: and sixty five billion dollars a year and lost time
- 14:17Speaker 2: and wasted money for American families. And these are everyday
- 14:23Speaker 2: interactions that should be fairly easy and they're not. When's
- 14:28Speaker 2: the last time you went on a menu you called
- 14:30Speaker 2: I don't care any kind of service. If you want
- 14:33Speaker 2: to do it in English, press one. Here are your choices.
- 14:38Speaker 2: If you want this, you press two, and then you
- 14:41Speaker 2: go to two saying, well, if you want a certain service,
- 14:44Speaker 2: you want to get hold of the service technician, you
- 14:47Speaker 2: pess plus, press three and it goes on and on
- 14:52Speaker 2: and it is crazy. Now, that's just a pain in
- 14:55Speaker 2: the ass. But let me tell you where it can
- 14:58Speaker 2: be actually dangerous, and that is, for example, going to
- 15:03Speaker 2: an insurance company and you have a problem with the
- 15:08Speaker 2: bill and you're not talking to anybody. You're going through
- 15:13Speaker 2: their menu and you're being moved through this maze. Well,
- 15:19Speaker 2: there are a lot of people that just don't go through.
- 15:22Speaker 2: They just don't do it anymore, and they don't go
- 15:24Speaker 2: to the doctor, they don't follow up. Mahoney in a
- 15:28Speaker 2: study found that companies that make it harder to cancel subscriptions,
- 15:33Speaker 2: for example, try to cancel subscription sometime that can. That
- 15:38Speaker 2: affects revenues from fourteen to two hundred percent that go
- 15:43Speaker 2: up when you can't cancel a subscription. A twenty nineteen
- 15:50Speaker 2: study found that almost a quarter of respondents in this
- 15:54Speaker 2: survey for go or delayed healthcare because of tasks like
- 16:00Speaker 2: scheduling appointments, resolving insurance billing issues. Now that actually has
- 16:04Speaker 2: to do with people's health. That's a big issue. That's
- 16:07Speaker 2: not just a pain in the ass. And now you
- 16:12Speaker 2: have AI and the telemarketer's use of robocalling. I hate
- 16:18Speaker 2: that I get these robo calls all the time, and
- 16:20Speaker 2: sometimes I pray that someone actually is on the phone.
- 16:23Speaker 2: Occasionally someone is on the phone, and then I have
- 16:27Speaker 2: a great time, you know, I have what yesterday was yesterday,
- 16:30Speaker 2: the day before I got a call from I think DirectTV.
- 16:35Speaker 2: I haven't been a customer of Direct TV for twenty
- 16:38Speaker 2: five years. So, mister handle, I noticed that you're a
- 16:42Speaker 2: customer of DirecTV. No, it's been a little while. Well
- 16:45Speaker 2: our record so that you were with us recently twenty
- 16:49Speaker 2: five years ago. Well, we have a special deal going on.
- 16:56Speaker 2: I say, I have a contract. I have a bundle
- 16:59Speaker 2: and it's a contract including cable. Well, we're gonna show
- 17:05Speaker 2: you how much money you can save. I go, are
- 17:07Speaker 2: you prepared to buy the contract out? Then I'll be
- 17:09Speaker 2: more than happy to talk to you. Well, we can
- 17:12Speaker 2: save you money. Let me ask you again, are you
- 17:14Speaker 2: prepared to buy out my contract? Well? I want to
- 17:18Speaker 2: share with you how much money you'll save. And of
- 17:21Speaker 2: course at that point I hang up. But that's just
- 17:23Speaker 2: fun dealing with real people. The problem is dealing with
- 17:27Speaker 2: these robo calls, dealing with scam calls. You know, I
- 17:31Speaker 2: do a commercial on the weekends for a company call.
- 17:35Speaker 2: I'm going to give them a little bit of a
- 17:40Speaker 2: little bit of advertising here. It's called Incogny, and what
- 17:43Speaker 2: they do is specialize in making the data that's sold
- 17:48Speaker 2: to brokers basically off the radar. I mean, it is crazy.
- 17:55Speaker 2: Do you know that your data is actually sold not
- 17:59Speaker 2: only only are you the customer of certain products when
- 18:05Speaker 2: you go online, but you're also the product itself. How's
- 18:11Speaker 2: that for fun. So next time you get any kind
- 18:16Speaker 2: of one of these robocalls or going through the menu,
- 18:21Speaker 2: this is why I don't have a weapon, because I
- 18:23Speaker 2: would literally take a shotgun and blow open my phone.
- 18:28Speaker 2: Just put it up there and shoot it with a shotgun. Okay,
- 18:30Speaker 2: we're done, guys. Now a story I want to share
- 18:34Speaker 2: with you out of the Wall Street Journal has to
- 18:36Speaker 2: do with small colleges across the country. Now, I always thought,
- 18:42Speaker 2: I mean, my idea of going to college would be
- 18:44Speaker 2: a small college, let's say in the Upper Northwest. The
- 18:49Speaker 2: old buildings, the grass, the trees there, and you know
- 18:55Speaker 2: it's just sort of a great little place to go
- 18:57Speaker 2: to school. Liberal Arts College. I mean, that was my
- 18:59Speaker 2: idea of college. I went to cal State Northridge instead,
- 19:02Speaker 2: forty thousand students, a lot of concrete, big buildings, office buildings,
- 19:07Speaker 2: and not particularly piss picturesque. Well, all of those colleges,
- 19:14Speaker 2: for many of them across the country are going broke,
- 19:18Speaker 2: they're disappearing. Colleges today are in deep trouble. Why we've
- 19:23Speaker 2: been telling our kids now don't go to college is
- 19:25Speaker 2: too expensive. Now the big colleges do great. You know,
- 19:28Speaker 2: at the esses of this world. The Berkeleys are just fine.
- 19:33Speaker 2: But it's these small colleges, this little bit of Americana
- 19:39Speaker 2: that's toga parties are just not around anymore. And so
- 19:46Speaker 2: you have these small colleges. And one of the reasons
- 19:48Speaker 2: they are going broke there's no endowment. You know that
- 19:51Speaker 2: Harvard has an endowment. If I think fifty billion dollars,
- 19:57Speaker 2: I mean, they almost make more money on their endowment
- 20:00Speaker 2: they do with tuition. Well, small colleges don't have that endowment.
- 20:07Speaker 2: State colleges, for the most part, don't have that endowment.
- 20:10Speaker 2: And so we're seeing something disappearing from America, these small,
- 20:16Speaker 2: picturesque liberal arts colleges that have what two thousand, three
- 20:21Speaker 2: thousand and five five thousand students, which were wonderful where
- 20:26Speaker 2: I wanted to go to school, but it turned out
- 20:29Speaker 2: that I didn't.
- 20:31Speaker 1: Well, while you have something in common with them, you're
- 20:35Speaker 1: not well in doubt.
- 20:39Speaker 2: Wow. Hello, No, what a way to end the show.
- 20:44Speaker 2: What a way to end the show. Yeah, Well, here's
- 20:46Speaker 2: the difference. At one point these colleges were well endowed
- 20:49Speaker 2: and now not so much, but thank you for that.
- 20:54Speaker 2: You know, every once in a while you come up
- 20:56Speaker 2: with stuff that I wish I had said, and it
- 20:59Speaker 2: drives me completely crazy, it really does. So Neil, why
- 21:02Speaker 2: don't you take a few weeks off for a few months? Yeah,
- 21:07Speaker 2: a few months. Matter of fact, I think you're filling
- 21:09Speaker 2: in for me next Monday.
- 21:10Speaker 1: Right, yes, indeed a week from today.
- 21:13Speaker 2: Okay, all right, guys, we are done. Gary and Shannon
- 21:17Speaker 2: up next and tomorrow morning, on a Taco Tuesday, we
- 21:22Speaker 2: start again. Wake Up Call from five to six am
- 21:24Speaker 2: with Will and Amy, and then Neil and I are
- 21:28Speaker 2: here until nine and Cono and and are always here
- 21:32Speaker 2: making the show work as well as it does. That
- 21:37Speaker 2: sounds sincere sure no sort of kind of all right,
- 21:43Speaker 2: take everybody tomorrow morning, KFI am six forty more stimulating
- 21:49Speaker 2: what we do in the morning. You've been listening to
- 21:52Speaker 2: the Bill Handle Show Catch My Show Monday through Friday,
- 21:55Speaker 2: six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
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