Molly Ivins July 31

AUSTIN — Contemplate, if you would, the cover of the August issue of Texas Monthly, our largest statewide publication. Gracing the cover is the stunning Houstonian Carolyn Farb, laden with jewels and holding a dog. The headline is: "Neiman's Wants Her. So Does Saks. How the Retail Giants Are Battling to Win the Hearts and Credit Cards of Carolyn Farb and Other Texas Socialites."

Now, I have nothing against Neiman's, Saks, Ms. Farb or socialites in general. I do wonder about the propriety of a magazine running a cover article about two of its largest advertisers, but then, I am reliably informed that raising ethical questions is passe in this era of the bottom line as God. The notion that journalism should serve the public interest rather than Mammon is, we are told, both quaint and dated. At most, we might raise the specter of bad taste.

The Monthly does not aspire to a large readership amongst the Bubbas and Bubbettes of our Great State, and I'm sure it knows what its readers want. I'm puzzled to figure out where the large numbers who want to know about special department-store services for socialites might be lurking. But then, Texas Monthly is far more successful than my alma mater, The Texas Observer, as Monthly proprietor Mike Levy has so often reminded us.

Were I looking around for a topic of some interest to general readers in this state, I doubt that specialty services for socialites would spring to the fore. On the other hand, the contents of a boring little book called "The Texas Challenge: Population Change and the Future of Texas" do resonate.

"The Texas Challenge," put out by Texas A&M Press, is not for general readers; its five authors are demographers with a collective prose style more leaden than is usually found on the backs of castor-oil bottles. The bulk of the book consists of endless charts and tables of interest only to other demographers.

On the other hand, the book's conclusions, and their implications for Texas, are profoundly important and fall somewhere between eyebrow-raising and "Holy ——!" Our authors are a cautious set of scholars, reminding us again and again that many factors besides population will affect Texas' future. But based on their study of population trends alone, they come to the following:

By the year 2030, Texas will have:

— a population that is only about 37 percent Anglo.

— a poorer, less well-educated population and a labor force that is ill-prepared to compete in the global labor market.

— reduced levels of consumer expenditures and of net worth per household.

— substantial increases in markets for owned housing, health care and related personal-care costs but reduced demand for traditional educational services.

— substantial levels of increase in welfare and human service usage.

— reduced per-capita tax revenues but increased government costs.

And using a fairly conservative set of projections, the state will be majority-minority by 2008.

So, we're going to be older, poorer and dumber, and Anglos will have to learn what it's like to be a racial minority.

This is not good news for Bubba, but it might be more important to him than Carolyn Farb's shopping habits.

Are there any glad tidings from this book? Yep. Because the median age of the population will be older, crime should go down, and we'll need fewer prisons. But that means our current mania for building more prisons is mostly wasted money; and, of course, what we need to do is build more schools.

Now, this same aging pattern means that even though the population will double by 2030 (again, using a fairly conservative projection), school enrollment will not quite double in the same time. On the other hand, enrollment in special programs — particularly bilingual, English-as-a-second-language and immigrant programs — will soar, and these programs cost more money than traditional education.

Our ethnic profile by 2030 will be 36.7 Anglo, 9.5 percent black, 45.9 percent Hispanic and 7.9 percent other. Our others, mostly Asian, are growing very rapidly, but the big gainers are Hispanics. I have a small bet on state Rep. Hugo Berlanga becoming the first Chicano governor.

Basically, what we're looking at here is a situation we are totally unprepared for. We need to educate, educate, educate — especially our minority citizens — at just the point when the Fifth U.S. Circuit and Texas Attorney General Dan Morales between them have devastated minority enrollment at state colleges. Quel recipe for disaster.

On top of the demographic trends, we are increasingly in the grip of a Republican theology that holds that government shouldn't do much of anything about anything. Gulp. Maybe we should go back to worrying about whether Carolyn Farb will get better service at Saks or Neiman's.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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