There is in Mariposa a very successful political group who have embraced the concept of a rural environment and have organized and lobby to preserve and protect it against any and all development they see as possibly having even the remotest potential to threaten our rural lifestyle.

            While most of us do strongly and gladly support the idea of maintaining our rural atmosphere there is yet another side to this issue that all too often is lost in the heady rhetoric and lure of rural living verses the asphalt jungle of so many California cities. 

Overlooked is the fact that each year dozens of our brightest young people who would rather stay and live in their hometown none-the-less are forced to leave because they cannot find jobs with a living wage.  The fact is a pound of hamburger cost just as much in Mariposa as in Merced or anyplace else in California and the cost of living here is not what it was in rural America, back in those so-called, “good old days”.

Without meaningful economic development we will continue to lose too many of our young people who will go wherever they need to go to make a living. And Mariposa will continue to suffer greatly from this ongoing brain drain

Hopefully, one of these days some of our deeper thinkers will concentrate on this problem and just perhaps, a workable solution will “emerge”. Let’s hope so.