DISQUS

The Moderate Voice: Time For The California Budget Reality Check

  • superdestroyer · 1 year ago
    The problem is that the spending cuts will be short term but the tax increases will last forever. California forgot the lessons of the ratchet effect on government spending. They spent the windfalls from the dot.com buuble and the housing bubble instead of paying off debts.

    In addition, the voters keep voting for increased target spending (stem cell research vote in 2006). I wonder how many jobs that initiative created?

    I guess raising taxes to the point that the last whites move out of Califonria is a minor inconvince to the one party state that California is becoming.
  • Dave_Schuler · 1 year ago
    There's a big difference between California's budget and the federal budget. The greater part of the federal budget consists of transfer payments: checks written to corporations and individuals. This includes Medicare, the federal portion of Medicaid, veteran's benefits, Social Security checks, and interest payments.

    That's not true in California. The greater part of California's budget is various different payrolls and related expenses: state employees, teachers, the state contributions to other local government payrolls, state payments to pension plans.


    The solutions are similar but different. California must solve its budget problems by reducing payrolls, either by cutting people's pay or by reducing the number of employees.
  • Don Quijote · 1 year ago
    Question:

    What percentage of the State's GDP does California collect in taxes?

    Does the amount of taxes collected as a percentage of GDP differ from other states?
  • elrod · 1 year ago
    Repeal Prop 13 and you've got a fix.

    It was the worst idea ever invented. It set back California's school system for decades.

    I understand why people supported it, what with massive increases in housing values in the 1970s. But the effect has been stifling. California property values are extremely high. Yet, the state has virtually no access to the tax dollars.
  • superdestroyer · 1 year ago
    elrod,

    Considering the huge housing boom of the last few years, there are large number of houses paying property taxes based upon inflated housing values. How many people in California have really lived in one house since the 1970's?

    the effect of prop 13 is insiginifcant versus the effect of changing demogrpahics in California. As the Hispanic population grows and whites leave California, taxing the middle class is be moot since there will be few in the middle class to tax.
  • DLS · 1 year ago
    Prop 13 is flawed, but it is no excuse for an instant tax increase. (Besides, assessed valuation is an inferior tax base to use, and merely a common means of ratcheting taxes upward when homes rise in value, followed by more upward ratcheting later to maintain "at least neutral value" revenues.) Spending controls are long overdue in California, as part of correcting its cost and political problems that have driven many of its affluent, educated people to leave the state. No, the solution is not instant tax increases, or trying again to tax retirees who have left the state.
  • Dave_Schuler · 1 year ago
    I've read the state's budget. California is not under-taxed. The state's spending is too high.
  • irina · 1 year ago
    I don't think the illegal immigrants can collect Social Security. The don't contribute to the system, but they don't benefit in any form as well. They might get emrgency care, even then they somitimes don't risk going to the hospital.
    Only their children, who might even be American citizens, if born here, receive public education.
  • superdestroyer · 1 year ago
    irina,

    If the illegal alien is using a stolen identify, they can easily collect social security. Illegal immigration is built upon stolen identifies. Thus, the illegals get benefits without paying.