“Gas prices are horrible, but not so high as to actually change driving habits.”
Gas would have to sell regularly for over 4 dollars a gallon before people start to think about changing their driving habits. However, it should be noted that it is awfully difficult to change one’s driving habits when one is driving 100+ miles round trip because they just had to buy that house in the ‘burbs because they feared being priced out of the market forever.
Also with regards to San Diego’s “robust” economy, I’m in the biotech/pharma sector and this part of the economy is not as strong as one might think. Merck closed its operations last year and Pfizer is in a holding pattern with their layoffs. Additionally, Pfizer has a bad history of keeping a large number of their employees on contract and not converting them to full time. Neurocrine just got hammered because their sleep aid drug will not be approved at the dose Neurocrine wanted unless Neurocrine conducts more trials. Therefore, layoffs are likely in the near future. Genentech was a huge boon to the county though and all thanks to Biogen-Idec for laying the groundwork (literally). They are the model company. Sure there are a lot of startup pharmaceutical companies (mine inclueded) but life at the startups is extremely volatile.
Overall I would say San Diego’s economy is in good shape and would likely weather a downturn but this might be negated by the loss of housing related jobs. The professor made a pretty convincing case that this might be the albatross to the county’s economic health in the future.
