UPDATE: The Great California Exodus
This is very bad.
This is not an exaggeration. Californian’s total level of debt, on an off the books, is pushing a fifth of the total annual economic output of the state, which is about $2 trillion.
Some of the usual suspects are responsible for this: overspending and undertaxing during boom times, colossal pension liabilities, taking on too much debt. But the report zeroed in on an important area that I’ve written about before: a California tax system that relies far too much on the incomes of the wealthy, and in particular on income derived from capital gains, or the sale of stocks, bonds, and other assets (see the chart above, which I grabbed from the report).
This is from the report:
As for the tax structure, more work needs to be done to match the tax base with the California economy. Governor Brown’s 2012-13 budget includes an estimated net $5.6 billion benefit to the general fund resulting from additional new temporary taxes that he believes will plug a gap over the next seven years. The pitfall in this approach is that this measure is temporary, like solutions enacted in the last decade that were used to plug budget gaps. Since most of the temporary taxes fall on higher income individuals it is likely to increase the volatility of the income tax….
California is actually $335 billion in debt.
September 23, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Today, CA. tomorow, the rest of obamaville..
btw, I see no mention in that article of the huge financial burdes of welfare and illegal immigration.
September 23, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Never will mention the burden that illegal immigration has on California. It’s a secret.
September 23, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Well, I guess I’d better prepare to accept food packges.
September 23, 2012 at 7:40 pm
No worries, I’ll send you whatever you need.
September 23, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Interesting you can see their revenues “bubble” and implode with each crash of the stock market. Given the volatility of the stock market you’d think someone could have predicted the potential pitfalls of relying on this revenue stream.
However, Florida relies mostly on sales tax…..I think Texas does too…..no income taxes. I don’t know how things are in Texas, but here in Florida every time there is a recession the state’s budget contracts and cuts have to be made. It’s always feast or famine. So to be fair to California many other states plan their budget around revenue streams that are quite often volatile.
Mary is correct the welfare and illegal immigrants do eat up a large share of CA’s budget, but it’s not PC to talk about it.
September 23, 2012 at 9:06 pm
No income tax in Texas. We feel the same pain and cuts are made. I’d rather have it that way than what California is in for.
September 24, 2012 at 4:26 am
Odd how people elect representatives in the false belief they are smarter than the average citizen. This business of having a permanent political class will be the death of us yet.
Husband works just a few miles from the Ohio border- and keeps an eye on prices over there. Often gasoline is 20 or 30 cents cheaper- and he buys his smokes over there as well. When we lived in MA, citizens of MA and NH often crossed the border to get better price and tax deals.
In a good economy savvy people keep an eye on these things- in a bad economy, many more are willing to go those couple of extra miles. NY residents cross over to PA for tobacco products all the time- smokes there last I checked were in the 8 and 9 dollar a pack range for the premium brands- Marlboro and the like- as opposed to about 6 bucks here. So by running over the border they get cheaper gas and smokes- and the state that thought it was going to have extra revenue actually has less.
We need to send regular, working people to run the various governmental bodies.
September 24, 2012 at 6:37 am
And this is a time driven strategy. When we couldn’t get liquor during prohibition, we went to Canada. Lawmakers are such a snotty elitist class of cretins. We have some real assholes here. They just forced a multimillion dollar sports stadium that will bring nothing to the city. We are very close to depleting water here and they do not control anything that is important for sustaining life. Now, you talk about playtime…they are all for it.
This is Barry talking about how to use liberals to get what you want.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/24/full-audio-of-1998-redistribution-speech-obama-saw-welfare-recipients-as-majority-coalition/
“I actually believe in [wealth] redistribution,” Obama said in that 96-second excerpt, published September 18 on YouTube. “At least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”
The following day, NBC News said it had obtained what it called “the entirety of the relevant remarks,” and complained that Republicans had taken the original lines out of context.
NBC published only 35 seconds of video, however, more than half of which overlapped with the YouTube audio from a day earlier. The news agency claimed the full context demonstrated that Obama only “seems” to support “redistributing wealth.” (RELATED: 1998 audiotape surfaces: Obama urged “trick” to aid wealth redistribution)
September 24, 2012 at 6:49 am
Why vet him now? The GOP could have taken this pos out very early on.