News came out on Thursday that the California budget deficit is actually closer to $25 billion, twice what we are told. This follows from last year’s $42 billion shortfall, which was closed by all sorts of one-time tax increases and gimmicks. Here is our general dilemma in a nutshell.
Taxes
Fact one: California has among the highest taxes in the nation, over 10% on top incomes, and about 9.5% that hits earners when they get above $47,000.
Sales taxes, depending on the county, average close to 10%. The result is that thousands (the exact number is unclear, perhaps between 2,000 and 3,500) of more affluent Californians are leaving the state each week for low- or no-tax states. Raise income taxes or sales taxes or gas taxes higher, and there will be a stampede. Note that property tax rates are not singularly that high in comparison to other states. Yet that fact is of little help since our assessments are often astronomical (given that we like to live on the coast and then, once there, ensure others cannot).
The apparent solution for now is to slap one- or two-year higher taxes on vehicle registration (sky-high), or issue fees to use state facilities, or to hike tuition at public colleges and universities (still cheap in comparison to private counterparts).
State Employees
Fact two: we have among the highest compensated state employees and teachers in the United States, with singularly powerful public employee unions. (I was governed by one for 21 years: professors at the closed-shop CSU were forced to pay union dues — even if we were not in the union, and objected to the union’s efforts to end merit pay and accountability and to ensure near universal tenure).
Yet in many categories we need more state employees to attend to basic services. But we cannot since the state operates a sort of caste system in which we pay so much to the entrenched that we cannot afford to hire more numerous entry-level workers. (Part-time PhDs at the CSU system make Wal-Mart greeters seem privileged in comparison). This is regrettable, because we tend to reward the superannuated and simply write off the younger and idealistic. An entire cohort of young California credentialed teachers and college graduates in general are in limbo, stuck in low-paying part-time jobs for the foreseeable future that won’t pay the interest on their student loans.
The Refined Classes
Fact three: a particular class, largely coastal, professional, and liberal, believes utopia is nearly here, if we just impose more regulation, higher taxes on businesses, and more environmental legislation. They have not a clue how others pump oil or gas, grow food, and produce lumber, only that they like driving, like eating, and like nice houses, but are not particularly interested in the grubby Neanderthals who allow that to happen.
So in times of near depression voters insist on stringent global warming/carbon emission laws, and keep adding regulations that hamper rather than encourage wealth creation. (Note: the more regulations we impose, the more they are ignored and the more lawless we become. Here in rural California, it is now common to see instant restaurants on the roadside: no septic systems, food preparation trailers plopped down with canopies, picnic tables, and plastic chairs, without the scrutiny that struggling restaurants put up with. Ditto instant hardware stores out on rural intersections where everything from new rakes to gas rototillers are peddled: no sales taxes, no questions, just a quick sale and on to the next location).
“Fact three: a particular class, largely coastal, professional and liberal, believes utopia is nearly here…”
These people refuse to listen to reality. They are existentially convinced that the government merely needs to slap some of the wealthier Californians around a bit—and everything should be fine. A small fraction of their deep pockets will easily pay the bills. Are they truly that crazy? Might I be slightly exaggerating? Nope, the situation is that out of control. The crazies now run California. The state’s elites might be comparable to the skid row derelict that is incapable of ever getting their life together without significant outside help. They must seek the assistance of some sort of adult figure to straighten out the mess.
Yes they are that crazy. And much as I fear what will happen, you other states should not bail CA out again. I’m stuck here unless I walk out on my mortgage and last time I checked, I still try to keep my word and pay my debts. But it’s mighty tempting to walk out and leave it behind.
What are liberals thinking? When you point a loaded gun at your head and pull the trigger, the results are predictable. Except if you’re a liberal. They don’t see the gun. They don’t see the danger. Or if they do, they must think they’re bulletproof or the High Mountain Rangers are going to ride in at the last second and rescue them from the hell on earth they’ve created.
Their world is disintegrating and they keep on fiddling. What are they possibly thinking? Their brains must be addled from 40 years of LSD. Do they really believe they’re immune from the coming conflagration?
I’ve visited California a goodly number of times and as nice as it is to visit, I would NEVER want to live there. The human and governmental downsides FAR exceed the natural beauty upside.
Fear not, Dave, it took Michigan eight years to figure out the definition of insanity. Perhaps with “Moonbeam” back in power, it won’t take quite as long.
Personally, I really don’t care what happens to California. This liberal ‘hellhole’ keeps insisting on destroying itself. So be it! I do not think the rest of the country should bail these morons out. They are the ones making the assinine choices and voting for the same type of liberal politicians. I have to admit, it is hard to believe that Ronald Reagan was once elected here, but that was back when people had common sense and were realists. Lets just cede it to Mexico. Then the people of California can live in a country they love. I truly feel bad for the good hard working people who are stuck there but sooner or later one has to say “enough is enough!” The problems of this state are self inflicted and as Barack Obamas religious mentor and pastor says . . . “those chickeeeeens have come home to rooooost!”
Speaking of adults, maybe we can get one in the WH in the 2012 election. No more adolescents.
Mark Steyn wrote about CA: “the statist workforce and the dependency class can outvote the productive class. And, given the number of small businesses that will be ordering the U-haul in the morning, that electoral gap will only widen in 2012 and beyond”.
And when you add to the mix the terminally misguided coastal wealthy who pose as concerned citizens of the world, it seems we have no hope here. This is an interesting view of the problem by an organization trying to rally the real victims in all of this – private sector workers, small busines owners and professionals.
California is run by Eloi, and the Morlocks are getting hungrier by the day.
I was glad that the Democrats won so many high-profile offices in California. They deserve to own, completely, the mess that they’ve made.
There is also an element of giving the rest of the country the finger.
Kalifornians are supremely confident that they will be bailed out by the rest of the country. They are already borrowing enormous amounts to fund their unemployment payments.
If Congress moves toward doing even more, they will be dancing with armed conflict.
The rest of the country is beginning to view Kalifornia as our own Greece, particularly after the nutters reelected Moonbeam.
Excellent synopsis. I fear for my state, and am stunned at the election results. The recently passed proposition allowing our liberal state assembly and senate to pass a budget on 51% vote was the last guardrail that was giving us a chance not to fall over the cliff. Citizen control of re-districting gives me some small hope.
Yesterday on the radio, on the Roger Hedgecock show of all shows, the state of California advertised the “opportunity” for individuals to purchase short term California bonds before the big investors. “California _has_ to pay you back before June 30th of 2011″, the voice smoothly crooned. Again, I am stunned.
I genuinely wonder how bad things have to get in this state before people wake up. Like many opinions I have seen on other sites, I do not want the rest of the country bailing out California (or New York). We need to feel the ugly truth of our choices. Just like tough love on a teenager, only the harshness of reality will penetrate the delusion.
Amazingly, they are running those ads for California bonds on New York radio too. WABC 770, home to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin.
I know this station probably has the largest audience, but still it’s like a joke.
I grew up in NYC and lived there when the infamous FORD TO CITY:DROP DEAD headline was published in the Daily News.
I can tell you that even as a little kid, it hurt. But my understanding is that the restructuring that followed put the city on pretty solid financial ground. I even read the other day that NYC is STILL in pretty good shape, it is the state as a whole that is a trash heap.
Not as bad as Cali, but trying to get there.
Cuomo basically sounded like a tea partier from what I heard during the election, we’ll see.
As for you guys in CA, I too am stunned by your election results.
I guess you are going to try homeopathy, which fits in with your general hippie-dippie ways.
I wish you the best of luck, of course.
But if a bail out is requested I hope to see the headline on the LA Times: DROP DEAD.
“I even read the other day that NYC is STILL in pretty good shape, it is the state as a whole that is a trash heap.”
Hilariously myopic. Upstate NY has always been raped by the Big Apple which then tells it to “put some ice on it.”
>>Upstate NY has always been raped by the Big Apple which then tells it to “put some ice on it.”<<
I grew up in Upstate New York, and I'm regularly astonished how many people in that region actually think this. Consider the relative size of the two populations, and then adopt a basic understanding of both math and tax brackets, and it will be obvious that the economic activity and tax dollars generated by NYC dwarfs anything Upstate NY could possibly generate.
NYC has nearly half the population of NY State (8.5m out of 19m), and that population includes the majority of New York's highest wage earners. Further, New York State's income tax brackets are highly graduated, which means that the vast majority of the tax revenues come from those high income earners, while the vast majority of New York State residents pay relatively little in taxes.
Most NYC-ers have no idea where Upstate New York even is. To them, the Bronx is upstate. If they ever woke up and figured out to what extent they were supporting the blob of bureaucracy in Albany, they'd secede immediately.
Another Californian, I also do not want the federal government to bail out the state. If, however, a bailout should appear inevitable, then the House must attach severe conditions, for example: repeal AB 32 and other intrusive “green” legislation, repeal regulations that stifle job-creation, dissolve the public-sector unions, force the state to balance its budget (preferably by holding or reducing taxes and by reducing spending by a certain percent). Of course, the Democrats in California would never accept such conditions, so they would just have to forgo the bailout.
Another condition:
California representatives in congress do not get to vote until the state is solvent and no longer a liability to the other states.
@styrgwillidar
“Another condition:
California representatives in congress do not get to vote until the state is solvent and no longer a liability to the other states.”
That’s a good start but take it in another direction. Turn the nutty liberal strongholds of Los Angeles and San Francisco-Bay Area into federal districts a la Washington DC with no congressional votes and leave the more productive parts of the states as the functional, right leaning remainder as the state of California. I doubt it’s possible but I like the idea.
We have a micro version of the California condition just down the street from me here in Alabama. It is called Birmingham.
All those conditions are nice, but stand NO chance of being put in as conditions. The unions won’t stand for it, and they own more politicians than the working people do.
And, yet…there can’t be THAT many of these affluent people who believe their groceries comes from Whole Foods and not from farmers.
Plenty of others have been duped.
Joke of the day:
Why is California different from the the Titanic?
Passengers on the Titanic did not vote in favor of hitting the iceberg.
@MtnView Jim:
“Joke of the day:
Why is California different from the the Titanic?
Passengers on the Titanic did not vote in favor of hitting the iceberg.”
friggin classic! … still laugjing (crying?0 5 minutes later
@Victor – spot on as usual, in particular having to play Sybil with our conversations
For those of us who are non-Titanic, watching the death rattle of Crazyfornia is fascinating. More entertaining than a Super Bowl.
Love it. Where can I get the bumper sticker?
LOL! I’d invest into a real estate time-sharing limited partnership in Lagos, Nigeria before I’d buy California state bonds these days. It’s only a matter of time before the rating agencies downgrade California’s municipal debt to junk status, if they haven’t done so already.
I too was stunned by the results of the election. But I did suspect it was coming. A few days prior to Nov 2nd I finally was able to voice the sense of dread I had been experiencing and it went like this: There are not enough people in California in a major hurt yet.
And I think that may be why it turned out the way it did. No matter who the “elites” are, there are very many more middle-class folks than the number of elites (even in this land of fantasy). Those who voted just are not in bad enough shape yet to believe that a different set of values is needed here if California is going to recover from the recession.
Which tells you something about the high unemployment rate in this State and who it has hit the hardest (so far).
VDH: Well, when do you leave for Michigan or another Eastern abode? The time is coming when in reverse fashion the USA must put its border control, and agricultural control, agents near the Nevada state line and Arizona state line. That probably should be any day now but probably won’t; and that’s a shame.
There was talk at one time, not too many years ago, about splitting California into four to five states, the objective being breaking that bastion of Socialism into probably several more and one token bastion of semi-Conservatism. We should now talk about giving California back to Mexico.
Cheers, and enjoy the memories of a California long gone.
That happened during the Great Depression. California’s AG inspection stations were built to keep the Okies out. You can read about it in ‘Grapes of Wrath.’ The stations are still there, but California runs them, so I guess Nevada will have to build their own?
That’s exactly what should be done and ASAP !!! Kalidornia is in essence too big of a State and should be split into atleast 2 if not 3 States at minimum will do a Gov’t good and short of the State gov’t protecting the eastern state lines from the South up to the northern part of the States they will be bleeding residents soon after there guy Mr. Fossil himself Brown takes power over Liberal Country and really takes a Commakazi run into the mountain side !!! But in the end it will serve it’s citizens well when they finally bottom out same holds true for NYC where they to feel there invincible until they demand that there too big to fail and hold there hands out but I sure do hope that hand is refused Tax Payer money and there left to sort it out themselves.
The best thing our Gov’t could do and it would serve the entire Country is to shut the EPA down, along with the Dept of Energy would give all States a huge boost to there respective economy’s as would the Dept of Education and all these dept. go back to the state levels !!!
And give them more votes in the Senate… are you insane?
Dan, I’m sorry but however you split it each will include a major population center which is liberal and dominates the vote. Unless we selected a strip from San Francisco down to LA as a state. I had a thought: perhaps we could have a ballot initiative stating that in the future our Senators would be elected by County rather than by district. That would change the status overnight.
“[P]erhaps we could have a ballot initiative stating that in the future our Senators would be elected by County rather than by district.”
Nice idea, but in 1968 the Reynolds v. Sims decision by the United States Supreme Court compelled all states to draw up districts that were apportioned by population rather than geography.
It is okay for the US, but not for the individual states.
I say we should give California to the Israelis. The Israeli/Middle East problem would be instantly solved. Is there anyone who doesn’t think the Jews could clean up California, deal with the illegal immigrant problems, innovate and create and bring reason and commonsense and jobs and wealth back to California?
No. The Jews of Israel are (mostly) immensely practical. The Jews of California, not so much.
No, Israel is the Jews ancient homeland. Give California to the Palestinians. Solves the Palistin problem, and I’m sure the Hollywood/Academia types would be more than glad to be on board with a cause they readily support.
Call it….Calistine.
It’s hard for a mid-western person to have much sympathy for California. It’s like someone who received a big inheritance and blew it.
California’s problems are mostly self-inflicted. They are most assuredly not the result of an Act of God. Nobody pointed a gun at the heads of the state’s citizens. Moreover, Californians have been screwing the rest of us for decades with their environmental extremist nonsense.
The new $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community School in Los Angeles should perhaps be the final straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. It does indeed remind one of a fool who blew his inheritance with his frivolous and out of control spending. In normal circumstances, the rest of the family might seek psychiatric help for this self-destructive individual—and prevent him from squandering more money. Yup, it’s time for some tough love. The majority of Californians deserve to be treated like immature children. They have proven themselves incapable of behaving like adults.
“It’s hard for a mid-western person to have much sympathy for California. It’s like someone who received a big inheritance and blew it.”
We the common, rural folk in Washington understand California’s plight, making it difficult to watch as our leftist Seattle-dominated political class destroys our state. Washington also received a big inheritance, but persists in following the footsteps of it’s foolish “older brother”, California, to also squander its own inheritance.
It’s tough to stand by and watch, but it may be harder yet to leave my Olympic Peninsula farm, after nearly 60 years.
I share Saltherring’s devotion to Washington State. He’s right about persecution of agricultural interests by Olympia and Seattle liberal elites. Unlike CA, however, we just defeated a goonie bid for a state income tax by a margin of 2:1. We also passed by a margin of 2:1 another (fourth time) 2/3 majority vote requirement for our legislature to raise taxes. We even voted heavily to repeal newly imposed taxes on pop, candy and other stuff. WA voters keep us income tax-free, although our business taxes and regulation are certainly burdensome. Now our legislature will have to cut spending, voters put them in a straightjacket. In CA, it’s the productive people who are in the straightjacket. Big difference in my mind.
yes, but you elected Patti Murray, one of the worst liberals in the Senate and a host of far-left congressmen. it seems like the voters need a State to get into really serious trouble before they can change their ways. but in a world in which the non-productive groups are or soon will be a majority, what are the productive groups to do?
I live in WA state on a rural waterfront home–so I am pleased to encounter the very worst state government overreach. Yet I am completely at sea to understand how the same people who voted out the income tax and additional sales taxes and voted in the utterly hated (by liberals) 2/3s majority for tax increases could vote Patty Murray back into office. And that was after Patty claimed partial responsibility for Obamacare!!!
There must be something in the water in King county.
Of course, the GOP candidate was not too enthused about running and gave up while there were still hundreds of thousands of votes yet to count. Democrats would have stuck with it until the last illegal ballot was found in someone’s car trunk…
The NY Daily News had a headline in 1975 during New York City’s time of financial woes: “Ford to NY: Drop Dead.”
That is what the rest of the country says to California.
I suspect that Obama and Treasury will seek some way to circumvent the wish of the people and funnel money to California.
Gringo,
If the Obama regime tries that, Roger’s friend Rick Perry will pull Texas out of the Union, and probably take the rest of the South and much of the Great Plains with him, along with the military.
A California bailout attempt by the 0bamunist regime will be a flashpoint for a tax revolt. From there, events will take on a life of their own.
I suspect that Obama and Treasury will seek some way to circumvent the wish of the people and funnel money to California.
Count on it! When governments get told “no” by voters, they often just concoct some other way to accomplish the same thing through different means. Locally, our city government had a referendum some years back on whether the city should have a casino. The referendum result was an unmistakable “no” with two thirds of the voters opposed to the casino. So what did they city do? They figured out a way to put the casino on a small patch of land that was well within the city but that was technically provincial property (I’m Canadian) and therefore out of their jurisdiction. So they got their casino anyway despite the clearly voiced will of the people.
The European Union has failed in its last two or three attempts to establish a new EU constitution but new attempts keep on coming.
Obama will surely figure out a way to do an end run around the rules to bail out California if Congress says “no”. Given that Dmocrats will (hopefully) not hold the Presidency after 2012, California is likely going to try to get a bailout before Obama leaves office while they still have half a chance of getting some money. It’s going to be a lot tougher to get that money after 2012….
That $600 billion that the FED is going to use to buy government bonds is scheduled to be spent over ten months, I believe.
Watch for $20 billion to be given to CA and NY – each – some months from now. “It’s not a bailout,” they’ll say. “We’re just redirecting previously allocated funds.”
furball,
I agree they will get their bailouts. Omuslim could care less about the will of the people.
And as you suggest, they will reach into their bag of political semantics to justify the expenditures.
VDH
Crisis socialism at the hands of the shadow party has met its greatest success. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Soros took over IndyMac and named it OneWest. They cut off the water to the farmers, they crashed down the borders, they tore down the capitalist system and they made it a Worker’s Party, state run planning system.
Same game plan as the other governments he toppled.
If it can be proven that a man by financial maneuvers has caused a collapse of any sovereign government or country shouldn’t that be tried by the World Court? I would think so.
Problem is that such a court is probably only concerned with doing the same thing with the United States! Makes you wonder what political philosophies members of that court adhere to!
The chart accompanying the SF Chronicle story on this showed that forecasted spending was increasing 16% over the next two years. Why?
If they old spending flat then the forecasted deficit would be a fraction of the $25B. Maybe all the borrowing and ponzi scheme balancing is coming back to haunt us, and now huge interest payments are coming due.
On top of that, CA Muni bonds took a big tumble today.
How many of the ‘New Californians’ understand anything about Veteran’s Day and Remembrance Day (which is what we call November 11th in Canada)?
There are Americans and Canadians risking their lives, as well as, sacrificing their lives – right now- for the protection of all of us, and to combat the evils of the Taliban and free the oppressed in Afghanistan.
Before any indulgent ad hominem remarks are made, we all might consider all those that have given their lives, and demonstrate good judgement.
VDH, is there a source about the $25 billion, as I would like to share/blog this, but, I get shot down if it is not *sourced*.
Here’s your source from the Sacramento newspaper:
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/11/3176483/california-budget-shortfall-twice.html
I agree with VDH that here in Cal we’ll probably experience some hellish trifecta of increased unemployment, inflation and draconian service cuts. As he said, even with rather large reductions in state workers, the people whose jobs will be eliminated are those at the bottom rung.
The dems wont cut there base, Latinos and government workers. We gonna get 15-20% income taxes. The hard working core of the state has gone and the dems like it that way. Small business votes republican.
Riots; Don’t forget to factor in the ‘Civil Disorders’
when estimating the costs of the collapse of California.
It’s the land where you never have to grow up. And if you do, your ideas will embarrass the adolescent-minded here. There’s always tomorrow for being responsible.
Come to Nevada.
No, please don’t come to Nevada. We already have too many tax and spenders here. The only way it can work is if they leave their California politics in California.
Hold your ground! Don’t let them Californicate Nevada the way they did here in Colorado. Too many Californians are like a virus. They move to a new host and demand the very same government actions that ruined California. According to Einstein, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome. By that reasoning, Californians are insane.
It’s too late for Clark County and Las Vegas. Union dirtbags have installed an entirely democratic county commision to do their bidding. I would flee the valley if I could get what I owe on my house.
Their comes a time when you have to cut your losses.
10. sybilll
is there a source about the $25 billion
California Gap May Rise to $25.4 Billion
- Bloomberg.com
That’s almost as much as Texas.
sembei,
What’s TX’s bond rating again?
Best reply ever!
You mean a state that is now spending $200,000,000 (two million dollars) a day that works out to $7,300,000,000 (seven billion three hundred million) per year.
This does not take into consideration all the other entitlements or benefits like unfunded pensions for unionized public workers like teachers (some are paid to sit around working crossword puzzles or whatever when they should be fired in the first place, but due to insane contracts signed by the legislature it is almost impossible to get rid of them, do you mean idiotic stuff like that?
First, California has an ANNUAL budget, whereas the budget for Texas is BIENNIAL (http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=12658). That’s a HUGE difference. Second, a majority of the States are suffering from budget shortfalls that WILL NOT be corrected until current Federal actions are retrenched or reversed and world markets are confident that the United States is serious about getting its fiscal and monetary policy under control; high unemployment and the accompanyingly loss in tax revenue will persist so long as businesses – the private sector that creates the weatlh in the first place – cannot plan for the future (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711). The Congress can’t even do it’s most basic duty of passing a budget so people know what their tax liabilities will be for FY2011! In the end, I don’t see your point. Dr. Hansen and the other commenters here noted that ONLY California VOTED to stay on their collision course with the iceberg that will sink this state. Even governor-elect Cuomo of New York (D) pointedly noted that it is no longer possible raise taxes in his state because New York is and continues to hemmorhage its productive citizens and businesses to other states and nations (http://online.wsj.com/article/AP222f96b52e0144e6a1a84fd31afb313e.html). Are you really trying to justify the unjustifiable? Given your past comments, you certainly don’t have the wisdom of a troll, let alone a sensai.
We spend money in this state like it’s water. In our neighborhood, the state shut down the local DMV, renovated it, and then decided to shut the branch down, instead. Everyone who works for the state gets giant pensions and pay packages; they retire at 55, with wonderful pensions, and often go to work elsewhere in state government, gleefully double-dipping, telling themselves that they’d make more money in the private sector–after all, it’s doing pretty well right now, isn’t it? The state’s DMV workforce partially staged a sick-out last year because they didn’t get *Columbus Day* off. Yeah, Columbus Day. In the private sector, unless you work in a bank, you haven’t gotten that day off in a generation.
Meanwhile, we elected Jerry Brown in a very strange election, marred by revelations that his Republican opponent fired a housekeeper who turned out to be here illegally. Regardless of what was said about it, that was the story that hurt her: she found out her maid was here illegally (and had lied to her about it) and heartlessly fired her. Jerry wasn’t a very good governor the first time, but the state decided to try him again, and he’s so obsessed with trying to fix everyone’s life, that he’s going to repair everything, by waving a magic wand or something. The strange thing is that he campaigned on austerity, which of course is weird considering he’s a Democrat. The difficulty is that while he’s talking austerity, his allies in the state legislature think that’s an obscenity, and imagine tax increases can solve the problem. The only problem is they can’t get them, because of Prop 13 (which they’ve tried to get rid of repeatedly). Which is where we’ve been for years, can’t raise taxes, won’t cut spending, money’s short and we’re begging for subsidies from the Feds. Anyone think this can have a good idea?
I meant: Anyone think this can have a good ending?
Yes. California becomes like a third world country with crumbling infrastructures; the Democrats and the unions will be so thoroughly discredited in California and they become perpetually condemned and avoided like a plague. Once the people’s mind are freed, California can rebuild. It’s an it’s the darkest before the dawn sort of thing.
I have serious doubts, Wallace.
Civil unrest, destruction of properties more likely. It never ends well. But at this point, the sooner the better. The infection has to come out, to be cleaned.
I don’t see it ending well, either. California is just too far gone and lacks the political will to reverse course. I don’t want it to happen anywhere in the U.S., but I believe some parts of CA are going to burn. And people will die.
Sensei, I’ve said before, this is not fun and games we’re talking about here. Why do you continue to treat it as such? Rhetorical question, of course.
I have been reading several comments on this site,and want to tell you that I was in Argentina during the recent elections. I voted absentee and was so discouraged to hear who got in. Yes, CA is still in deep you know what and I just hope that things get so bad that the instigators of this whole mess will be sent packing sooner than later. The infection needs to be cleaned however not patched up by another tax bandaid. Here in Argentina, I have to say that most of the educated citizens are not happy with their president or how the country is going. Christina Kirschner is definitely socialistic and is stuck to the hip with Hugo Chavez. I actually got to see him, he is a short dumpy looking guy, full of himself. This country is still very poor on the side streets, you just have to look. I actually saw people taking garbage out of garbage bags to recycle whatever they could. How is that a sign of the “government” helping their people?
“An entire cohort of young California credentialed teachers and college graduates in general are in limbo, stuck in low-paying part-time jobs for the foreseeable future that won’t pay the interest on their student loans.”
Welcome to my world. It is beyond frustrating to have spent significant money, time and energy preparing to teach, to have two degrees and a CA teaching credential, only to have no possibility of being hired as anything but a substitute teacher. And it’s infinitely worse to substitute teach and encounter entrenched teachers who will never be fired no matter how incompetent they are (thank you, unions). Such a broken system.
I hear you. The one thing that VDH misses is that even with the high salaries, CA teachers get a raw deal. I used to teach in CA, and it is just not a good deal. Even though the salary is higher, the astronomical expenses hit you from every side, especially when it comes to housing. I used to drive through 50 miles of pristine forest to teach in a highly affluent school. I wonder why the housing prices were so high? (sarcasm)
Get out before you start your career. Teaching is an actual profession in other states, and you can even buy a house on a teacher’s salary. Why lose these years on the inexorable salary scale, if you know teaching in California is not a real life-long option? (You may not get to keep those years if you go to another state.) Make your start in a place you can make a life.
I was born and raised in CA, and it breaks my heart to see what is going on. But not enough that I am going to put my kids through the trauma of the state’s meltdown. I am thankful every day that we did NOT decide to take out a 400K mortgage on a tar paper shack in Silicone Valley. We now have a nice house in a stable middle class neighborhood in Oregon, and I have never regretted leaving California.
A big part of the state’s dilemma is that they have no means of compelling folks to stay.
Ego sum Rex Romanorum et Super Grammaticam
—————————————————————
I’m always surprised…..NO….lemme start again.
I view with derision complaints by teachers who can’t find a full-time job and bemoan their lot in life, even those (I mean – especially those) in California.
Although it’s been a while (several decades, actually) since I got my MA from a California university and passed the CBEST exam requirement for secondary-school teaching in CA, I still feel qualified to comment on the “plight of teachers” in CA and beyond.
1. It’s always been difficult to land a teaching job in CA. This is nothing new.
2. A lot depends on your specialty. If you’re an English teacher, you could spend years finding a job. If you’re a physics or math teacher, you’ll have ‘em knocking on your door, even today.
3. You’d be amazed at some of the obstacles teachers themselves put up to their getting hired. For example, many have unrealistic location limitations. They’ll only work in certain cities or counties. They refuse to work at “inner-city” schools and so on.
4. Often, a substitute position often leads to full-time work but many refuse to start out this way.
Also,
1. Sadly, and it’s hard to believe, actually – the teaching “profession” in the last few decades (even in my time), attracted what you might call a certain “criminal” element.
This is why, for example, almost all states, including CA, now require FINGERPRINTING as a sine qua non to enter a classroom as a teacher and an extensive background investigation. In some cases, becoming a teacher more resembles applying to work for the FBI than it does applying for a lowly academic job.
2. The vast majority of the US population, despite the hysterical denials, view “education” in general, particularly at the lower levels, with little more than contempt and derision. (They should really reserve most of that contempt for “higher” education, but that’s another story). There are a lot of valid reasons for this attitude which I won’t go into here, but I will say that that’s how I personally view education in the US too. (And don’t forget, I’m a teacher, although I don’t work in the US and wouldn’t dream of doing so anymore, no matter what).
One wonders why anyone would want to “become” a teacher anymore. Drop out rates for teachers rival those of drop-out rates of inner-city school students (i.e. 50% + – ).
My point is this: if you really want to teach, you can find work, even in CA. Even I can find work and some would call me “elderly”. I know, because last summer, I tried and had no problem at all ( of course, I turned them down – flat – it was just an experiment).
My final point is this: Anybody who enters a profession and spends a lot of time and money to get the necessary credentials in ANY field should first INVESTIGATE what job prospects are in his field (notice I didn’t say “their” field).
I’ve known lawyers who spend even more time and effort and cash getting a JD only to see them leave the field after a couple of years of work because “it wasn’t for them”. I said to them: Didn’t you find out what the work was all about BEFORE you got your JD? Ditto to teachers. Check the field out first and if it isn’t “for you”, go into something else.
In my opinion, at least 50% of students graduating from high school have no business going to college (the US should really adopt the German system). I would also say at least 50% of teachers in the US equally have no business teaching.
Sorry, no synmpathy here for out of work teachers, even in CA.
LUX ET VERITAS
“… INVESTIGATE what job prospects are in his field (notice I didn’t say “their” field)….”
Hurrah! It’s great to see someone else fighting the idiotic use of pleural pronouns to indicate he or she, him or her, or his or hers. Here’s my mini-tutorial attacking this trend:
A child ran away because they hated the orphanage. {ridiculously bad grammar}
A child ran away because he hated the orphanage. {not politically correct}
A child ran away because he or she hated the orphanage. {acceptible but awkward}
A child ran away because the child hated the orphanage {acceptible but redundant}
A child, who hated the orphanage, ran away. {perfect: use a better and more interesting sentence structure}
The statement: “A child, who hated the orphanage, ran away.” is not only awkward/stilted, but also does not tell anyone why the child ran away or from what he/she ran. It merely tells us that the individual hated the orphanage and that the individual ran from something or from somewhere; it does not connect the feeling toward the orphange and the action of making tracks. The earlier statement: “A child ran away because he or she hated the orphanage.” is better, as it at least identifies why the child split. However, even this statement does not tell us from where the child ran. Best/correct would be “A child ran from the orphanage because he hated it there.” If the child is female, change “he” to “she”. This tells us the child’s feeling toward the orphange, his/her action, why the action occurred, and from where the child ran. Simple!
to Dr. T: the second choice, with ‘he’ is more graceful than your choice with its unnecessary interruption by commas. ‘He’ in such a usage has always included men and woman, just as the word mankind does. Don’t accept bad writing because some fool thinks using the work ‘he’ is not politically correct.
RT, I know what you mean.
My mother is a retired SoCal schoolteacher, elementary. She spoke many times about teachers with tenure who were miserably incompetent yet un-fireable.
The only hope for these kids were to get a competent teacher the next grade up to try to undo the damage from the year before.
That doesn’t always happen. Those kids get gypped.
In California, superior teachers may never get the chance to prove their worth – stuck in substitute teacher hell until something that pays better comes along and they change to a higher paying career.
In California, tenured teachers salaries are the highest.
Student test scores – 48th
If you really wish to teach, western Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas will welcome you.
Soon they shall all see. I happen to think Tea Parties are fantastic but too late. Deficit commissions, congressman, the Fed…none of them can fix what is coming. National default is the only way some of these destroyers will be held to account. But then what? a Dylan ratigan infused riot of the proletariet?
I hope that scene at the end of “The Dark Knight” is true. Both camps won’t blow the other ferry apart, and we can rebuild.
The Dark Knight comparison is interesting, because the bombs were placed in the same boat as the detonators. So any boat trying to blow up the others would blow up itself.
In the same way, any party trying to destroy the other will simply destroy itself.
As Leto Atreides noted in Dune “There is a limit to the power even the most powerful can use without destroying itself”.
Untaxed cash payment to workers is a huge problem in California. I’ve even seen some “legitimate” businesses and franchises pay their workers in cash to avoid (payroll, I assume) taxes.
California is demonstrably a nanny state, but sacramento is often incapable of enforcing its many regulations. The illegal immigrants in the state do whatever they want most of the time. Some of my friends or relatives pretend to live in the others’ house in order to send their kids to schools outside their district or manipulate credit score and the welfare system. I’ve eaten at Asian restraunts where ash trays were clearly visible on the table. Dog meat is can be found in Koreatown, supposeldy.
The unemployment situation here is becoming worse by the day. I’ve driven 30,40 minutes to Irvine or Santa Monica for a PT tutoring job only to be outmuscled by laid off teachers and other college graduates. I was among hundreds of applicants who applied for an instructional assitant. My MA degree is as valuable as a piece of paper at the moment. I would say 70-80% of college graduates here have deferred their student for 3,4 years now. I know friends who earned nursing licenses applying for positions at a mall.
I meant to say “I was among hundreds of applicants who applied for an instructional assistant at Santa Monica College”.
Baby boomers from Latin America are financially wrecking this country through the cost of dealing with their crimes and social parasiticism. End of story. These are not the people who made America, these are the people who ‘made’ Latin America, from which they wish to escape and for some odd reason, want more Latin America, as if a continent and a half isn’t enough. They are opportunists, not a people with a vision of any kind, shape or form. America? Write it off. Welcome to the age of conquest by birth. The meek aren’t inheriting the Earth, the muslims, Africans and Latinos are by sheer baby power alongside pre-Columbian competence. While American eyes are stubbornly and bewilderingly on a global agenda with a maze of stupid military bases throughout the world, our own borders and culture have been conquered through negligence, lack of resolve and political correctness.
well said and right on the money!!
I have lived in California for 55 years. It was a golden paradise to grow up in. It is heartbreaking to see what has happened and is going to continue to happen to the state that I love because L.A. and S.F. dominate the elections.The majority of people in California do not live in these 2 cities; the live in the suburbs not the elite beach communities; they are hard working families who just want to raise their kids and have a decent retirement.I agree with you Mr. May; you are 100% correct sad to say. Where to go? If they don’t do somethig quick about the invasion of illegal immigrants, pretty soon every state in the union will end up with billions of their own tax dollars going to suport people who have no right to be here.The election was so disappointing..Brown, Boxer and Newsome; sanctuary city boosters all the way. Even with an infusion of cash from the feds it will be squandered on illegals ..we have become a welfare state.
Sadly, I agree with you James. This is as good as it gets. The Tea Party is aging as we speak and there are not enough to fill in behind them. We have bred ourselves out of existence with our low birth rate. The tipping point will be reached in 50 years from now. I’ll be long gone. My children will die out by neglect and my grandchildren will inherit the results. They blithly go through the ‘education’ system, lapping up the politically-correct curiculum, with it’s bias against the exceptionalism of the United States, and will willingly queue up to accept the inevitable collapse into servitude. They know no better.
I have to believe (I hope I am right) that with the Republicans in charge of the House and with their gains in the Senate that the Federal Government won’t bail out the public unions and over regulated State of California through another “stimulus”. At which point the forever adolescent, hedonistic, narcissistic, self-righteous, self absorbed, faux/idiot moral superiorist, pretentious, hate/blame America firster, Gaia worshiping Californian can choke on their own vomit.
Choke Away! Grow Up California!
You forgot nihilistic
Oh yeah…and vehemently anti-Christian,
Amoral
self indulgent
anti family
anti military
pro abortion (hate new people I guess?)
pro Islam
anti America…..
Did I leave anything out? Yeah…Probably enough to stuff the
library of Congress. But I need a smoke break for Crisake.
The only reason California will eventually be saved from itself is the fact that the California government can’t print money.
who the hell is buying our bonds? who is lending us the $25 billion?
Californians keep voting for all the things Dr. Hanson cites, so it’s hard to be sympathetic. They’re soon going to get what they’ve got coming; inflation, vast unemployment, and misery. The rest of the country (excepting New York) seems slowly to be coming to its senses. I hope it’s not too late, particularly since California is so big it can drag all of us down with it.
That’s ok, they can all live on the beach under tarps and
grow their own crops……oops, crops don’t grow in sand! Sure
would’a been helpful to have had some Ag’ classes available
at Berkeley in the 60′s.
:-(
Actually, crops can grow in sand, probably not on the beach, lotta salt.
A good part of Florida is sand only slightly finer grained then your beach sand. Believe it or not, they are a very large agricultural state
As to the sands of the desert, pick one, their so called sand is closer to talcum powder. Still can grow crops.
All you reactionary throwbacks to the 1980′s need to wake up to the obvious – China is both the most prosperous economy AND a Maoist one. So, if China ends up owning California, we will become prosperous and economically stable, And be able to provide for the workers of the teachers unions! It’s all win-win-win!
Dear Dr. Lump,
How do you say “slave labor” in Mandarin
Nǐ zěnme shuō “núlì láodòng” pǔtōnghuà?
That would be:
Nú gōng
Lumplevin ==you are hardly a doctor…a doctor of Polemics maybe and stereotypical nonsense.Firstly,China has an economy slightly larger than Japan–4.5 trillion US$.Our economy is 14 Trillion plus.Even if they grow at 8-9% a year for foreseeable future and we only average 2-3% growth they would not catch us in real terms for 50 years(if ever)They rely on us to buy things..The same worries were expressed about Japan during the eighties but their own in internal dynamics slowed down their economic growth…Overinflated real estate– In China it will be when they move away from collectivisn in agriculture to keep their expansion going and they have the same problems as German Reunification–now you have been schooled…China has two economic systems–growth will slow to a crawl when they HAVE to do this to have 1 country not the 2 or three that economic and political liberalization will bring perhaps inevitably–this is why they won’t float their currency–I will school you later on this!!!!!
China is still a communist state and they have no problem kill those that annoy them, hippies, protesters, anti-govt sorts, rioters, looters, arrogant well to do sorts and just about any others that annoy them.
Sounds like a good start for California. Should prove entertaining.
Sounds like the groundwork is already layed for civil war.
Yes, this is how it happens.
Once all options for “bailout” are exhausted, once the docile masses are enlightened, and once the vanishing bucket of resources makes even food and water scarce…
…there will be vicious bloodshed on American soil.
I’m sorry to admit agreement with you; I think civil war is the more likely scenario as well.
Decent people are the ones targeted by all the foolishness coming out of Washington and State governments, in that they are the only ones who would actually care to uphold the rule of law, even laws they don’t agree are fair.
Indecent people (of all classes) use bribery if they’re rich, or contempt if they’re poor, of any law they deem to be inconvenient. They do as they please, knowing that there will be little or no consequence for their actions, while demanding subjection/submission from the rest of us.
Working, tax-paying, law-abiding schlubs have, up to now kept the whole nation intact. However as their numbers wane, or they weary under an increasing load of parasites and predators they are forced to support, I see trouble looming large, and grieve for America.
Perfectly stated Sir….I digitally salute you
More than 50 people died over some idiot named Rodney King. How many more when the checks stop coming in?
Civil War is likely. How far it will spread is the question.
Anarchists, NBPP, reconquista, militias; it’s gas and a match waiting for an opportunity.
Gloomy read, gloomy times. But one thing to do, have the other semi-(relatively)-sound states share CA’s blues.
Here’s my cold analog: often when somebody dies, the survivors are out with hat in hand to cover funeral costs. To which I say (in my head whilst refusing to entertain any guilt), you really mean, will you cover the cost of my lake house (or whatever) that we had in lieu of buying our own life insurance? Nope, good luck to ya though.
VDH, if you flee, MO isn’t the most exciting place in the world, but a lot of us would welcome you.
Missouri rules…Gainesville here. (Near Arkansas border)
I’m not paying. I’ve had it, thrown in the towel. I quit. Arrest me.
I drive a beater, work a trade, rent, live from customer check to customer check, or cash.
I’ve gone Mexican, or Brazilian, or Greek, or Paki. What ever.
None of my manual labor, tradesmen, fishermen live to collect anyways, so why pay in? All we do is work, work, work. And the local, state, and Fedgov makes it harder, and want’s more money. At least with the Mafia, if you had a problem giving them money, they’d take care of it. Government demands more money, and it’s minions, hacks, paper shufflers, form fillers, desk sitters all make it harder to make the money to keep them off my already broken back.
Like I should pay for the beatings. I. Don’t. Think. So.
I’ve been waiting since before Reagan for this crap to stop. It isn’t. The new GOP is yammering now about cutting the growth, a bit, maybe, in the racket. I have about as much faith in them as I would in the 1950′s with pancreatic cancer being treated at a Mexican baby lamb cell injecting clinic.
I moved from California to West Palm Beach, in South Florida. You can imagine my astonishment to see a road network that actually functions, a downtown that’s pleasant to be in, and low taxes. Everyone here tells me the government is bad, but it’s a model of superb management compared to Los Angeles.
Thanks to no state income tax, the place is brimming with vibrant free enterprise. This city is a lot smaller than LA, but you can get literally anything you want here within 10 minutes of my house. And my house would have cost easily triple what I paid if it were in California – and I probably overpaid for it. (I love its dramatic lake view.)
The Florida climate is probably closest to California than anywhere else in the USA, so you might consider this state more appealing than Texas or Nevada. (I visited Las Vegas once and it felt like I was in a sauna!)
You don’t have to suffer through California’s problems to get paradise. It’s lovely here and very affordable.
David
David…now now…don’t let the clime fool ya. You should feel more at home knowing PB is still a bastion of AARP liberal ( FDR loving ) liberal dementia. Those good vibes you fell might not be there if it wasn’t for some sensible conservatives forcing the libbie nuts…to behave like adults.
Remember…PB is home to guys like Donald Trump.
From what I hear, Palm Beach Co.isn’t quite as noxious as Broward Co. Turns out there are more registered Democrats in Broward alone than in the 28 westernmost counties combined. Regardless, the Dems in PB, Broward and Miami-Dade are hard-core Marxists — most of them likely can quote the entire text of The Communist Manifesto from memory. We don’t call them “Condo Commies” for nothing. Most of them, of course, are damnyankees from NY, NJ and New England, and the rest of the state wishes they’d go back where they came from.
I certainly understand Rush abandoning NYC in favor of Florida, but wonder why he chose to settle in WPB. Tampa, Jacksonville or Ft. Myers would have been far friendler territory for a conservative commentator.
David, I just moved to Bradenton Florida from Blue State Maryland. I left Maryland because of the state income taxes and property taxes. My first month here in Florida and I realized an extra $500 in my pocket, simply because I am not forking it over to Maryland so they can house illegal aliens in their “sanctuary cities” of Gaithersburg, Takoma Park and Baltimore. Like you, everything I could possibly want is just a 10 or 15 minute ride from my house. I bought a very affordable, brand new home and paid for it with the proceeds from the sale of my house in Maryland. Now I am debt free…what a great feeling!!! I also applied for my concealed carry permit. With the savings I am realizing from not having to pay Maryland state income taxes, I am purchasing ammo and target shooting in my spare time. I might just buy myself a new firearm next month. I love living in Florida!!!
I am originally from Florida but now live in the Atlanta area of Georgia. The problem in Florida is similar to that faced by Colorado with the California immigrants, except that it is the New Yorkers and other northeastern state residents moving in in droves. They like the fact that Florida has no income tax, complain about the taxes in New York, and yet bring their stinking liberal “progressive” politics with them. Thus you have the Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Soviet Socialist Republics, areas that have gone solid blue in recent elections. Remember that Palm Beach was where the voters couldn’t figure out the ballot and thought they voted for Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Al Gore.
Of course the radical left Democrat party in Florida would love to pollute the state with an income tax and turn the state into another California. Florida is red right now, but containing the “commie libs” becomes increasingly difficult as long as the liberals keep coming in from New York and other northeastern states to escape the high taxes brought about by their own electoral choices up there. We got lucky in the recent election with the defeat of Alex Sink for governor and the election of Marco Rubio to the U.S. Senate. I hope it continues as a trend, but it cannot be counted upon in the future. Areas of Florida, such as Orange County (Orlando), that used to be Republican bastions are now blue. Even the once conservative Hillsborough County (Tampa) was carried by the Democrat for governor in the last election, so the state becomes increasingly volatile politically.
At least here in Georgia, most of the blue area is concentrated in the Atlanta area, but the rest of the state has gone increasingly red. All of our state wide constitutional officers to be sworn in in January are Republicans and the General Assembly is solidly Republican in both houses. Even though Georgia has an income tax, there is discussion of abolishing it, which would be impossible if the Democrats were in power.
As for California, I think they are hopeless. They had a chance to elect someone besides Governor Moonbeam but elected him anyway. As the home of Nancy Pelosi which also elected the imperious and arrogant Barbara Boxer, they can live with their choices, but if they want to be bailed out, I would love to kick them out of the union! Let them live with the financial black hole that they created.
“professors at the closed-shop CSU were forced to pay union dues — even if we were not in the union”
That’s a mafia not a “union”.
It’s true. My husband, now a retired professor, did not want to join ghe union. But the state passed legislation forcing even those who did not want to join to pay dues. He has been having dues deducted from his pay for several years now.
Great post, as is so usual.
One solution is for the state to “go bankrupt”, and have the US Congress set up a CA balanced budget commission that provides deep cuts in gov’t salaries.
Starting with retirement — let the state employees get SS, only, like most Americans.
Then index the state salaries to the peaceful sector, such that there is a cut, then a freeze on any increase until the peaceful sector catches up, or until the turnover rate of gov’t workers matches the peaceful rate.
A surtax on all those who benefit from intellectual monopoly (copyright) enforcement might be justified, too, especially those who make more than 10 times the median.
But having the US Congress stop payments until AFTER CA makes big cuts seems the most likely path for an avoidance of disaster.
California’s historical mission is now clear—to provide an object lesson to the nation on a scale so stupendous and so disastrous than even New England will draw appropriate conclusions. One can only sympathize with those who voted for the Republicans, but “where the plane is at work, the chips will fly” as der Fuhrer liked to say.
Good article. One thing is that Kalifornia continues to act this way because they know they will get bailed out. Why bother doing what is right when the feds will bail you out?
VDH:
“The result is that thousands (the exact number is unclear, perhaps between 2,000 and 3,500) of more affluent Californians are leaving the state each week for low- or no-tax states.”
As long as they leave their California liberal attitudes behind, who can blame them?
So when are you decamping for Virginia, VDH?
The Shenandoah Valley has fine farm-land,heck, we even have viniculture ovah heah too; and should you decide to keep at the “professorin’” gig, you have the choice of at least a dozen universities scattered up and down I-81, (although given your area of expertise, you seem like a VMI man t’me)…so the New Market area would be your destination.
Or stay in Selma and keep paying Engineer Brown’s conductors for the privilege of the ride as the train goes right over the cliff.
california has more parasites then producers …so you need to look at that when you try to make sense of the actions you see coming from there.
your points are all valid VDH ….something has to give and it will be soon.
I like best the bit about the (presumably East-Coast and Mid-West) rubes and the flypaper.
B A – L A – CA 90028 — and The Very Far Away
The Republican House must let California go broke and cut off the cash. No more bailouts for idiots.
Anyone holding CA bonds at this point is crazy.
VDH – serious question for you – Why haven’t you left yet? What’s keeping you there still?
I really can’t work up much sympathy watching such fools immolate themselves. As the poster above states, VDH, lock the door as you leave.
Got popcorn?
The California pundits and politicos are wringing their hands about the budget deficit, not seeming to know what to do.
Most households in America know two things that you do in their situation – cut back on the spending, and retire debt by selling off assets (a store of accumulated wealth). California needs to do both to survive this crisis. The State of California owns lots of land, mineral rights, fancy office buildings in high-value sites (and all their furnishings), thousands of vehicles, etc. that it needs to liquidate.
Speaking as a lifelong Californian, all I can say is that I wish you were being pessimistic. Ever since Nov. 3, I’ve been almost in despair about the future of this state. I feel like the election was our last chance to save ourselves, and we blew it.
I was sick about the election too…then I got mad. How incredibly stupid and short sighted are those that put Brown back in the driver’s seat..and Boxer? and Newsome? The trifecta of never ending handover fist give aways to illegals in the state..which is a big part of the problem here..not our only problem..but a huge one that they will donothing to eradicate.
I think what we may be seeing is ground zero for Cloward Piven. The Progressives are going to try and ignite the national collapse by taking down the part that is already furthest gone, but is still the largest single state economy.
Six months ago i would have bet my life we would not elect brown.
Nice observation.
I’m afraid to even read these California articles anymore.
Hey, I have a suggestion: all you rich cry babies GET OUT! LEAVE! All you do is drain our coffers dry. Incomes at the top 1% are skyrocketing because you’ve gamed the system politically and economically, leaving no air in the room for working people. I mean it: GET THE HELL OUT OF MY STATE if you don’t want to pay your fair share of taxes.
Rich cry babies aren’t producing jobs, crops, building infrastructure or buying sandwiches at Moe’s Surf and Turf by the beach. They’re hoarding their stolen cash. MOVE OUT! Go to some “friendly” state like Texas, always in the top ten POOREST states in the nation, so there’s plenty of near-slave labor to polish your Rolls.
GET OUT! Us California born and raised native sons have no use for you.
Dude, take a chill pill.
Careful what you wish for; I suspect that among the uber-rich you imagine as the villainous robber-barons of CA wealth, you will find thousands of hard-working inventors, farmers, entrepreneurs and professionals who are leaving as well–myself included. I’m not paying 500k for a chickenshack and getting taxed into penury at the same time. I love CA, but not enough to blind myself into thinking it can be changed.
And spare me the native son BS, I watched as native CA citizens got filthy rich off the waves of the real-estate bubble for doing nothing more than being lucky enough to have landed as itinerant, Midwestern dirt-farmers in some coastal paradise a mere 30 years earlier. The natives complain about the newcomers, and then build one addition after another on the back of their little cottage plots so they can rent a three-plex out to the people they bitch about coming–all while getting themselves fat city and county jobs that gave them ridiculous wages and benefits to take the day off and surf.
For example, San Clemente CA: locals lived in small little craftsman houses (all local really means is their family came 20 years earlier), but then realized that those houses were not worth the 70k they paid for them, but 1.3 million dollars! So they became real-estate speculators and built and built their little city into a tourist mecca, with everyone living on top of one another and cars everywhere and people everywhere and the rich living on the hillside, and the whole time the locals bitched and complained that their little bucolic world was being ruined; it was, and they all lived off that largess for a long time while they whined about it. But now that train has come to a stop, and you’re stuck with too many people, no manufacturing or agricultural base, hyper-inflated real estate in the toilet, Mexican gangs, and every other person getting a government check in some form or another. You’re a fraud, buddy.
“GET THE HELL OUT OF MY STATE if you don’t want to pay your fair share of taxes.”
And on that declaration, your entire rant flatulates.
What is their “fair share”?
If you’re talking about anything other than a flat tax rate on income across the board and a sales tax with no added excise or “sin” taxes, you’re psychobabbling.
“Rich cry babies aren’t producing jobs, crops, building infrastructure or buying sandwiches at Moe’s Surf and Turf by the beach.”
That’s what YOU think, or what you have been told to think. But you might just find out how wrong you have been quite soon when your state is hemorrhaging 2-3,000 wealthy folks a day.
“GET OUT! Us California born and raised native sons have no use for you.”
Well you apparently sure have use for them at tax time, otherwise they wouldn’t be leaving…so you flatulate yourself once again.
And, when they have all left, and you are unemployed, and your bankrupt masters in Excremento come around to Washington DC seeking a bailout, then you will get your reply from those “poor”
states where all the former Californians have now escaped to.
Guess what it will be?
And guess how many of the rest of us will care?
Better learn to speak Spanish, homes, so that you will understand what your work-gang supervisor will be telling you to do.
Um, a “flat tax rate” means that someone making double the income pays double the tax. Excuse me, but whatever happened to equality (not proportionality) before the law? Until we return to these very basics, the governmental spending machine will continue to run out of control.
Like what lords and serfs? Even the idea of a simple flat tax has you valtures out trying to game the system. I agree with the other poster leave! we’ll happily plow under your beachfront castle and return the beach to the people. None of you do anything but hire illegals to clean your house, then expect the rest of us to care for them when they get sick, and old! and educate their kids, and then pay to improson them when they go to the gangs because there are no jobs.
LEAVE! now is not too soon.
“Excuse me, but whatever happened to equality (not proportionality) before the law? Until we return to these very basics, the governmental spending machine will continue to run out of control.”
With something like 47% of households paying no Federal income tax at all, I think we have some principles even more basic than debating the finer point of which is “fairer”…equality vs. proportionality.
Something like:
“Taxation without representation is Unconstitutional”
and the reverse:
“Representation without taxation is Unconstitutional”
What with people like the moron up above who wants to howl at people who don’t hew unto his subjective notion of “fairness”.
Here’s “fair” for ya:
You don’t pay taxes, you don’t get to vote.
What poker game deals you a hand of cards without your first anteing up?
But if all the rich people left California, who would sign your welfare check? You didn’t really think that the loony Democratic legislators that you elected took the money out of their own pockets, did you?
Don’t forget that a lot of the really rich, the Hollywood and Al Gore set claim other states as their primary residence. In the case of Al Gore Tennessee a state with no income tax.
Whatever you do in California remember taking tax dollars from other states through the Federal government makes you a failed State on a par with Greece. You will be facing service cuts, higher taxes, and with the next President I hope loss of Federal Education money due to the actions of some Universities. It is a violation of Federal law to ban Military Recruiters and the penalty can be loss of Federal funds. All I can say is enjoy the weather and the beach the state has little else to offer, OK well maybe some fairly good wine.
Whenever I feel homesick for Calif. – I think of how much I used to love walking along the beach, and then I think of how I stopped being able to afford that when they started using parking and other beach use fees as their latest money-extraction scheme.
Now I live in a gorgeous rural mountain state, where I can walk down the road from my house and feel the same glorious awe in God’s creation I used to get from walking along the beach – and my family’s total monthly necessary expenses come out to just a little less than we used to pay for just monthly mortgage fifteen years ago (of course, the house we lived in then now lists for four times as much as we paid for it, even though traffic, neighborhood quality, and schools are all much worse).
“Whatever you do in California remember taking tax dollars from other states through the Federal government makes you a failed State on a par with Greece.”
Just so you know, since 1986 California has received fewer federal dollars than they’ve paid in federal taxes. In fact, as of 2005 California received 78 cents for for every dollar their citizens paid in federal taxes.
In 2005 California citizens paid $289 Bil in federal taxes, receiving as a state about $63.7 Bil less than what they put in, effectively paying for other states. Of course their $25 Bil budget deficit is less than half of what these citizens have been giving away to other states for over 20 years, thus a bailout really isn’t that unreasonable – certainly not the stuff of civil wars as some commentators above have said.
By the way, in case anyone was wondering which states are paying more than their fair share of the federal budget, the numbers can be found here: Interestingly, of the states receiving less than an even dollar back of what they’ve paid in, most of them (New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, Minnesota, Illinois, Delaware, California, New York, Colorado, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Washington, Michigan, Oregon) are pretty blue, only two (New Hampshire and Florida) are swing states, and Texas is the only solidly red state.
The other 33 states are, as you said, like Greece cause they are taking “bailout money” or as we called it for for the 230 years before everyone went crazy “federal funds”
It’s not my problem that California is such a high cost-of-living state. Californians did it to themselves. High cost-of-living equals high salaries to keep pace equals additional tax payments to the Feds. You taxed and regulated yourself to the hilt, driving up the cost-of-living, in turn forcing people to earn more money in order to survive. That is the source and summit of your excessive tax burden.
One of the worst my CA brother tells me about is the plight of farmers in the Central Valley, once one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world, that have had their water cut off by environmentalists that are saving some “vital” species of nothing significant. This has gone on for years, consequently the farmer goes bankrupt, long with the towns. Oh well, some do have to pay the price for doing what’s right says the Boxer-Pelosi coastal ninkenpoops, (as long as it’s not us!) And the insanity goes on and on. I am so happy I moved out of that pathetic state I can’t even begin to tell you!
VDH: Are you Captain Hindsight? It must be too much to bear – having all that responsibility… You have to tell every person and institution the way things should have happened, the way things should have been done. Oh, wait – never mind. You don’t really offer any solutions.
Oh, and if Californians prefer one success story to five buried reports of financial havoc, you sure love to conjure up the fear with your “fake IDs, work for cash and untaxed wages, work while on unemployment”.., and especially that ole’ chestnut “public assistance money at casinos and palm readers.”
LOL! Too funny!! The Right Wing Scare Tactics still work here on PJM for the Career State Worker!
Nate , as I recall you live in massachusetts . Why dont you tell us how massachusetts intends to pay off the highest per capita debt load in the country (yes it is higher than californias) . Next tell us how the MBTA , massachusetts public transportation authority, is goin to pay off 8 billion dollars of debt when the interest alone consumes is in excess of 25% of the MBTAs’ income. Finally explain to us how the loss of more than 3,000 high tech and biotech jobs in the last week (Raytheon Genetech, etc.) reflects on industry confidence in the judgment of the Massachusetts voters.
The problems of Massachusetts aren’t so different from those of California. And despite your protestations otherwise, the problems are real and serious.
“but I do know from bitter experience that to even wonder out loud about that will earn all sorts of hatred and invective.”
Thanks for the wonderful example, Nate.
OK, Nate, let’s stipulate that VDH has no solutions to CA’s problems. We’ll leave aside the obvious question as to why he, as an individual, has to come up with “answers” that ordinarily require commissions, or legislatures, or just plain old mass panics that force the issue.
So…what are YOUR answers? Is it because you live in Mass. that you feel so smug? Even though it’s been pointed out that Mass. has huge fiscal problems of its own?
Why do idiots like you to jeer at people accurately pointing out problems, whilst you yourself cannot see the fiscal Black Hole we all are falling into? Where are YOUR solutions?
In a couple of years, when we’re all boiling our shoes over open fires on a beach late at night, we can expect morons like Nate to emerge from the darkness to complain that we’re cooking Nikes and not Bruno Maglis, and then ask to be given the choicest pieces.
I know this sounds harsh, but I advocate a meltdown and no bailout by Congress. California needs to come to terms with the cost of liberalism and I believe this is the ONLY way to do it.
I totally agree. No doubt our resident Socialist-In-Chief will be only to happy to shovel more taxpayer money at California to bail it out yet again and put off the inevitable Day of Reckoning one more time. But hopefully our new Republican congress will refuse to appropriate the money and tell California “You idiots got yourselves into this mess, now you can get yourselves out of it.”
“[T]he more regulations we impose, the more they are ignored and the more lawless we become.”
In my agricultural community, the hardworking local farm stand owner and hydroponic farmer who follows the rules cannot expand his business in desirable ways because he is subjected to an endless stream of regulators limiting his choices, checking his equipment, testing his scales, demanding signage directing customers to “exits” in his open-air cashier stand, and so on, privileges he pays for with property taxes and multiple business fees. Meanwhile, just up the street, utterly unregulated food stands and dangerous (for the cars stopping on the side of busy roads) itinerant swap meets are permitted to flourish, unregulated and untaxed.
We have created two classes of American: some are permitted to openly flout the law while others are subjected to ever-spiraling regulation. And this is two sides of the same coin, with the latter entirely subsidizing the former: anyone who tries to follow the law is being forced to both bankroll and compete with others who do not.
And for all the chatter in the conservative media about our photogenic new “tea party” senator, we have just elected a career politician who slyly refuses to go on record about such injustices, who did exactly nothing to address them while running the state legislature and is abetted in his silence and inaction by otherly-situated cheerleaders chattering on about his Reaganesque eloquence.
So we have just lost an important opportunity to change these things, or even talk about them honestly. But the columnists and operatives have a shiny new bauble to play with.
What you appear to be complaining about is the free market re-asserting itself. The answer is for the “legitimate” businesses to go off grid. When nobody obeys the regulations that are killing your economy, the regulators will have to relent and make more reasonable regulations. As long as you encourage illegal aliens to live in your state there is no hope. They can undercut any business that makes even token efforts at following the law.
The only farmers that I know in California making a living at the trade are pot farmers. They pay no taxes, and are completely unregulated. Perhaps California should extend that condition to all farmers.
It is laughable to claim that pot farmers are unregulated. Of course you know that the crop they grow is ILLEGAL. They are prospering because they are enjoying illicit profits from the black market. If regulations were truly relaxed (meaning pot was legalized) the price of pot would drop and most of the profits would disappear. The pot farmers are benefitting from the regulations and reaping fat profits that would not exist in a free market. They are against legalizing pot. It is classic rent-seeking behavior.
californians are no longer spending thier own money in an irresponsible way…they are spending your money and my money…we are already bailing them out…sadly they are viewed more and more by thier countryman as a bunch of damn fools… thier claim to cultural superiority is a sham… they are a joke…the emperor is butt naked in cali
Your comment about the roadside vendors is interesting. Question: are flea markets permitted in CA?
Well, ordinarily I would be merely supportive of any private initiative. But when you think about the businessman who follows the rules and pays his taxes competing with the growing number who do not and are selectively not asked to do so, I’ll side with the person being honest and responsible.
And in Florida, like California, that’s a problem arising from the legal and illegal underclasses. Anyone productive is paying all of the living expenses for households, legal, illegal and mixed, where many if not most of the adult inhabitants are lying to the people paying their bills, primarily by hiding the fact that unattached males are piggybacking on the aid generously given to women and children, also hiding any income the male brings to the household.
So you have the fact that some people are forcing others to subsidize their lifestyles and the added violation of the social contract by the many (most?) who cheat and steal from these programs, with absolutely no consequences.
The poor guy paying for someone to test his produce scales is also paying the rent, utilities, groceries, transportation, and healthcare for his neighbor who is not really being asked to conform to any rules. I can think of no better way to utterly mutilate community cohesiveness. And as times get tougher, that lack of cohesion is going to be very, very, very costly.
I’m beginning to like the term “gamers” to identify the cheats in our society WHO WE LET live off of us.
They game the system, and unhappily, they exist at every socio-economic level. But this is all to the good for the liberal utopians who want to bring down this grand edifice called America, and have it crash over our heads so they can finally achieve the hell-hole, or was that paradise?, they work so diligently, relentlessly, to impose.
Do not for one moment imagine that theft (from the productive and honest segment of society) on such a massive scale could exist without the wholesale rejection of our Judeo-Christian traditions by the so-called elite of our society and their underling cronies.
We need to create city states from all metropopulations greater than 5 million. Let them self fund, do whatever they want. They can learn to trade their resources for resources the rural areas have, such as energy, food and water. I think that the rest of the country would turn around pretty fast.
Right on! I live in the suburbs of Chicago. Crook county drags down the whole state of Illinois. Make Chicago it’s own state and see how long they can survive without milking Illinois. Let all those Chicago-style politicians fix the problems.
California, good luck getting more handouts from the Republican Congress. You are NOT “Too big to fail” and, trust me, you eventually will. Either the Federal Government will stop giving you bailouts, or you will just go broke on your own with nobody wanting to lend you any more money. And, with the great liberal Jerry Brown as your new governor, I think you’ll just run out of cash. You will cry to Obama and Washington for yet another bailout, but it will not come, not this time around. And then you’ll either have to stop spending money, or go bankrupt and re-negotiate all of those union and pension contracts that got you in this mess in the first place. Either way, as soon as the new Congress is seated, the game is up.
And to all the people living in California, you know what you can expect in the future? Did any of you see the movie “Mad Max?” I think that’s what’s in store for you, and soon.
” Either the Federal Government will stop giving you bailouts, or you will just go broke on your own with nobody wanting to lend you any more money.”
Standard & Poor’s rates California general-obligation debt A-, its fourth- lowest investment grade and its lowest for any state.
DAMN you Lotus Eaters. I know what’s coming. You are going to drive your most productive citizens and businesses out. You are going to continue to protect some dozens of spiders or minnows at the cost of ruining your farms and forcing the farmers to let the land lie fallow.
And then when disaster is imminent, you are going to come to the rest of us and demand that we come up with the money to bail you out of your problems so you can continue your follies. After all, the nation can’t let a great State fail, can we?
What if you call for a bail out and nobody heeds the call?
Nah, if they were Lotus Eaters, they’d have legalized marijuana. I believe the term you’re looking for is Cloudcukoo Landers.
That’s why I moved up north to Oregon:)
“The more regulations we impose, the more they are ignored and the more lawless we become. Here in rural California, it is now common to see instant restaurants on the roadside”
Every since I heard about the Danger Dog I have wanted to try one. These are sold by illegal street vendors in California. They consist of a hot dog, wrapped in bacon, deep fried and smothered with onion and chili sauce.
Happy Meals are illegal now in San Francisco. No problem though, children are pretty much discouraged there anyway. Lowest percent of any major US city. Its weird, you go there and see almost no kids, its like that town in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang except more homeless people and really good chinese food.
note to my congresscritter: “No bail outs for California!”.
VDH; thank you for another well considered essay on the evils of socialism, BYW; you’d probably feel right at home here in Texas on the Red Neck Riviera. I’d love it if you’d be my neighbor here in Corpus Christi. Life ain’t bad here.
I cannot help after reading this piece but remember rural Romania just before and after the fall of communism there. The roadside small businesses were ubiquitous. The most common signs were “auto parts” and “food.” No taxes, no receipts, no returns. It was a basic survival economy.
Sound familiar?
The thing California pols should also remember, if they’re planning to try and use the “too big to fail” tactic to blackmail Washington into bailing the state out is the Republicans have already assumed they can win the presidency in 2012 without California, and given Obama’s approval rating there is higher than just about every other state in the union, are perfectly willing to write the state off in the upcoming presidential election.
What that means is because California is so solidly Blue, there’s no need for the House leadership, or any of the potential GOP candidates to appease California by pandering to its voters, if the state tries to be intransigent about reforming state spending, salaries or pension/retirement benfits for state workers. And unlike New York’s near bankruptcy in 1975-76 — when voters in general were irate at Republicans in the wake of Watergate and the city’s pols were able to coattail their tantrum onto the general anger — right now the vast majority of swing voters on on the side of Republicans when it comes to cutting federal spending. So the House telling California to pound sand if they come looking for a no-conditions bail-out might hurt a few Golden State GOP congressmen, but it’s unlikely to do much damage at all and would probably be an asset in most of the 49 other states.
Another great article by VDH. Well, Cal made it clear their policy is “full speed ahead to the crash and damn the consequences.” If that’s what you wanted, fine. Don’t expect this American to have even the slightest sympathy for you. Not one iota. I’d love to see a newspaper headline reading, “Republican President to California: DROP DEAD.”
You did it to yourselves, Cal. To quote Kipling, on you “the sin and the saving lies.”
Residents of the People’s Republic of California: google “Detroit photos” and take a look at your future. Voters of that People’s Paradise: and your brought it upon yourselves. Potential refugees from the People’s Paradise: move to Texas, Oklahoma and other parts of the real America. It is – only a little exaggeration – time to cast away your apparrel, your toys and your over-priced houses and flee for your lives. Imagine the reaction of the unnumbered welfare recipients in LA when no stores will accept “Cali-Dollars”.
The answer, at first, is that the money changers will move in and make the market. This will continue for as long as they expect that California will make good on at least a substantial portion of its debts. Of course, the money changers will extract a major premium for accepting California notes. This will hurt, but not destroy, those dependent on the California government. What will destroy them is impending default, at which point, no one will make good on the money they are counting on.
Victor fails to mention one worisome problem. All of those talented folk who leave California tend to bring their utopian attitudes along with them as they flood into lower tax states. Western Colorado is a case in point.
And Minnesota.
Actually, California may appear solidly blue from afar, but if you look intrastate it shows quite a bit of it red. I moved last year and I can say that many people moving are NOT condescending elites with foolish utopian worldviews (aka liberals/progressives). But once the last of the red bleeds out of CA, it will consist of nothing but the uber rich and poor – a master and slave class – just what the left has always wanted.
When this happen, who will be taxed by the “master class”? And who will pay for the hand-outs to the slave class.
State workers will be paid with the taxes of who?
I’ve read similar complaints on many conservative blog for several years now. However, I’ve yet to see any actual data presented regarding this phenomena. It’s not that I doubt your experience but, as researchers say, the plural of anecdote is not data.
Again, I don’t mean to pick on your comment in particular but from what little I can glean on the net, up until about 2001, the exact opposite of your complaint has occurred.
“The eight mountain West states — Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho — gained at least 1.4 million more people from other regions than they lost from 1992 through 2000, according to data from the Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service.
Many of the newcomers were affluent white voters from California. About 1.8 million more people left California for the other 49 states than arrived from them from 1992 through 1999. [...]
The new arrivals strengthened the region’s basic Republican tilt instead of diluting it.”
USA Today, 2002-10-28, Mountain West region becomes biggest Republican bastion
Victor wrote:
“Either way, it should be an interesting ride — perhaps a panic of 1893, Great Depression, 1970s stagflation, and 1992 state meltdown all in one surreal experience.”
Left one out: war. With so many crises, and so few outs left, could it be states like California are aching to drag America into War?
It’d provide just the right kind of cover for the massive transfer of wealth from the Feds to Sac that Jerry Brown is going to need. War ought to be on the list of scenarios at this point.
Those in California should probably tell someone who cares [either of them].
….
I don’t see any problem here.
….
California has the resources at hand to easily solve this deficit problem. — The CA legislature is entirely competent and experienced in raising taxes.
….
Impose 100% tax on state & local government pensions & benefits above a total of $60,000 / yr.
….
Budget deficit eliminated.
The Supreme Court has defanged that strategy long ago. Mario Cuomo decided that NY should be able to tax any money earned in the state, even if one was no longer a resident. The court said no. Florida is full of the rich retirees who are paying nothing on the pensions they earned working for the state.
I too will be gone as soon as I retire. I can’t afford it. I don’t work for the state.
Hell why stop at 100% make it 200% and see what happens!
@ #3 Doug Wright: “We should now talk about giving California back to Mexico.”
Done. Only the necessary legal papers remain to be filed.
This reminds me of the family member that always needed a bailout. It was always going to solve the problem, but it never did.
Bailing out California won’t solve the problem.
When we finally told the family member no, we couldn’t afford it, he committed suicide a couple months later. We loved him, it was horrible, but there are some things you just can’t fix.
We fled from LA back in 2006 after observing the local schools for our new family.
Conservatives: Utah has room for you.
Liberals: I understand that Oregon is about 10 years behind you; when you wear out California, you can go ruin it next.
The optimistic case is that the new Republican-led House of Representatives will show some tough love and cutoff further bailout funds to California. Should this occur, California will likely go through a wrenching withdrawal crisis, but emerge stronger a few years down the road.
The pessimistic case is that power-brokers in the Congress will find a way to overwhelm the new Tea Party legislators and continue sending financial heroin to California. Should this occur, the hole will get deeper and the eventual reckoning will be much worse.
Thanks for the great article. Dead-on. I live in Half Moon Bay, CA and it long ago became a place where people do come to better themselves. The entire region is regulated by tons of public agencies and the evil California Coastal Commission.
So a few rich folks move here…oh yes and alot of illegals who own our town square (for jobs) and had a little government city built for them south of town in a pristine little valley one mile from the beach and the Ritz Carlton. A cute little development with soccer fields, a post office without a flag, child care and much more. Quite a vibrant little segregated community. It called Moonridge. Maybe you could google it.
Anyway, for the illegals, I guess it is a place to better yourself, just not citizens.
The election results hardly surprised me. However, someone has
to question people’s common sense when you ask who is going to pay for all the largesse that California loves to give away time and time again. It seems like we have a bottomless pit of monies to spend as we wish. While, the average Californian struggles to pay his bills and put food on the table for his family, our irresponsible Governor and the Legislature continue their accounting gimmicks hoping nobody will notice. Not that all those
accounting gimmicks will pay all the bills of California or address our budget problems. Is it REALLY to much to ask our legislators and the governor to cut their spending and let it start by them taking say a 10% pay cut? Atleast, then, we can believe they are serious in addressing the problems of California and not merely paying lip service to it!
California refuses to address their problems or elect politicians who are willing. US taxpayers should not bail them out. They should start over….
California is certainly an amazing place. On the one hand, as VDH points out, it is absolutely beautiful with more natural resources than most nations. On the other hand in the last forty years it has been taken over by hippies who never grew up, union bosses and criminals.
In the recent election it faced a choice. They could return to one or the other California pasts. Reagan or Brown and weirdly they took Brown!
They have given the keys of the state to the drunk driver and as they go off the clift with Brown at the wheel they will be screaming for the rest of us at the bottom of the revine to catch them.
Good luck with that.
I have only one thing to ask regaring the failing California economy. When you Californians flee your bankurpt state, can you please, please, please stop moving to Denver, Colorado (and all other places Colorado)? My state, of which I am a native, is being overrun by liberals fleeing the “utopia” they created in California. But they don’t learn from their own history or their own mistakes. Instead they bring their politics and their large government mentality with them as they vote their stupid ideology into existence a little bit more every election.
Bottom line, find another place to destroy with your overcrowding and your politics. Colorado does not want you here.
I too am a Colorado native and I agree with R. Worley above. Please go somewhere else. I hear Russia is nice this time of year and they are supportive of your politics.
Two laws:
Federal – “No person born in the United States, and who has no parent that is either a citizen or legal resident of the United States, shall be subject to the jurisdiction of any law for a period from one minute before beginning of their birth to one minute after the completion of their birth.”
Combine with the language of the 14th Amendment, and just say “no” to anchor babies….
California – (Ballot Proposition) – “All pensions and benefits paid by public entitities or paid as a result of employment by a public entity shall be subject to a tax of 95% of any amount or value over $80,000″
And that’s being generous….
Everybody keeps saying, “no bailout for California”, as if that would take care of it and as if the Republican majority in the house is sufficient to cause this to be. But I don’t think so. Nobody is going to put a bill into Congress that talks about “bailing out California.” Instead they will just keep on doing what they do now, borrow money from the Federal Government, and the Democrats in the administration will be glad to keep doing this on a larger and larger scale. A bailout means you get money gratis. A loan means, at least technically you arrange some schedule to pay it back. I think instead we will see a series of increasingly large loans to California, and when it comes time to pay back, they will just say, “Sorry, I can’t do it. How about rolling this over into a new loan.”
And the administration will do it. Congress doesn’t need to be involved this way. If Congress was involved certainly they would shut the money flow down or put a lot of conditions on it.
“I think instead we will see a series of increasingly large loans to California, and when it comes time to pay back, they will just say, “Sorry, I can’t do it. How about rolling this over into a new loan.””
This is quite likely…and you are correct in that this is how it is being done, but that is also why California is a net loser of Federal monies.
To get the votes to okay the loans, Cali’s reps have to give up other things, or pledge to support other states’ reps initiatives.
As long as Californians won’t bite the bullet and endure the pain it will take to set their house in order, they need to keep making the rounds and rattling their begging bowl while they pimp out their own constituents.
And the rest of the states will keep taking advantage of the discount rates on offer.
Actually, this is a great opportunity for California. I am rooting for you to pass more of the regulation, have more strict environmental standards, and continue to cater to public unions. I also wish that you can continue to show the wisdom of a highly progressive tax system.
All this will add up to the liberal utopia. It will also show the rest of a country what a spectacular failure that the liberal utopia has caused. For anyone that wants to run on a liberal platform all a conservative will have to do is point to California and it’s enormous deficits and declining standard of living and say “There you go”.
California is the liberal case study that will keep on giving. So I say, don’t hold back California. Go full tilt progressive on us. Heck, why don’t you start confiscating property from the movie stars in Hollywood also. After all, how much money do they really need anyone. Please do us proud as the liberal basket case that you are. I am rooting for you.
The wags have spent decades predicting that the Big One would sink the Golden State. Who knew it would come in the form of a fiscal crater created by her own people instead of an earthquake?
As one of those 2,000 to 3,500 affluent Californians who finally had enough and moved away (I now live in Dallas, TX) I can personally attest to the fact that everything Dr. Hanson says is absolutely true. California is a textbook example of how a vibrant, thriving economy can be laid waste by decades of dumbasssed liberal policies.
There are many changes that need to take place in California to put the budget and overall government back on solid footing. But perhaps the toughest to accomplish, and the ABSOLUTE most essential, is repealing or drastically amending Proposition 13. Income and sales taxes are ridiculously high and still come nowhere near compensating for the loss in revenue caused by this astonishingly idiotic law. I fully understand the rationale for it, but the cons far outweigh the pros.
Cheyne,
You are what is exactly why California is in this situation. You and everyone that insist on repealing Prop 13 continue to focus on the wrong problem. California has no REVENUE problem; it has a SPENDING problem. Tell Sacramento to STOP spending money it doesn’t have.
Lets hope Jerry Brown has the courage to get rid of Prop 13. The property tax structure in California is patently unfair. One household paying $800/ year tax for the same tract house their next door neighbor pays $800 each MONTH for the identical services his neighbor receives. Unfortunately the greedy elitists don’t see it that way. They want it all, they want it cheap and they want those illegals around so they don’t have to get their hands dirty. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s team of advisors understood this.
If you don’t want to pay your fair share then good riddance. Move to Arizona, Nevada, Idaho.
Bill, maybe you aren’t old enough to remember 1978. Prop 13 was passed to stop the out of control politicians from literally taxing people out of their homes. My parents are a case in point: when my dad retired in 1968 he had a very adequate pension of $600 per month (what a full time worker made in those days) My parents thought they were set for life, with a mortgage fully paid for, through thrift and hard work. The problem is: theirs is a fixed income, and never goes up, but the taxes kept increasing on their Lakewood home, from $300 in 1968 a year to $800 a year in 1978. At that projectory they worried every day about whether they could stay in their home of 20 years, Prop 13 is a lifesaver for people who have budgeted to afford their homes and can’t afford to be at the mercy of the tax and spend politicians. The 1978 assessed value can increase no more tha 2% per year (inflation) and the taxes are currently at about $1100 per year. I see your point about the unfair taxes between “old” taxpayers vs their new neighbors but the new folk budgeted their taxes (I assume) when they bought their house. Any “free-riding” problem should be dealt with through special accessment districts to pay for extra services.
Or go back home to Mexico?
Reply to Cheyne – Comment #79 above:
Re: “Absolutely most essential is repealing or amending Prop 13″
You can’t look at Pro 13 in isolation from the total tax burden in California. According to the Tax Foundation California ranks 49th worst in taxation of 50 states. Here is how California ranks:
Gasoline Tax – 50th
Capital Gains on Real Estate – 50th
Utility User’s Tax – 50th (only in California)
Public School Parcel Tax – 50th (only in California)
Sales Tax – 49th
Corporate Income Tax – 33rd
Property Tax – 18th
Sure, property taxes are more modest in California (1%) than Texas (2% to 3%). But as shown above the solution is not for property taxes to also be the highest of all states when California is already ranked as having the highest gasoline tax and capital gains tax, the next to highest sales tax, and is the ONLY state where its cities imposed a Utility User’s Tax (5% to 10%) and its school districts can impose a Parcel Tax in addition to property taxes (about $250 per lot per year). High gasoline taxes (46 cents per gallon) offset modest property taxes under Prop 13.
If you removed Prop 13 tomorrow, there would be millions of tax foreclosures and fire sales of properties to pay off tax liens. The property tax base would plummet overnight and the state would be in worse budget chaos. Even worse, if you eliminate Prop 13 for just commercial properties, so many small businesses now have SBA loans that would default and would result in a wave of foreclosures of homes serving as collateral for those SBA loans. Maybe a million people would lose their businesses and homes. And the wave of foreclosures and fire sales would drag everyone else’s property values down with them.
The total tax burden has to be considered, not just property taxes under Prop 13. High income households and businesses are hit with very high taxes in California and are not undertaxed while cities and school districts are financially stressed and the unemployment fund is broke.
Social psychologists have shown that if I have a belief (Californians are undertaxed while cities and schools are running deficits) that doesn’t square with reality (Californians are the most taxed state) that typically people with resolve this conflict by their beliefs becoming stronger, by denying reality, and by demonizing those who point out the undeniable reality. So I’m sorry if the above doesn’t convince you and makes your beliefs only stronger.
If you google for the effects of Prop 13, and compare property tax revenues from 1978 to present, you will find that property tax revenues exceeded inflation by a great margin. The “genius class” in Sacramento just spent more. The revenue far exceeded population growth, so it is not a matter of more people…
If you consider that most Californians moved every 5 years, there are very few homes that are still under protection of the original proposition. Most have been re-valued and their taxation is close to contemporary value.
To claim Prop 13 is a cause of revenue shortfall is not believable.
tom
What do you do when your neighbor lives high on the hog? New cars, expensive vacations, eating out at the finest restaurants and then loses their job?
They knock on the door and tell you that if they get foreclosed your house value will drop – all of a sudden their irresponsibility is your problem; they want you to help bail them out. They need money to pay the gas bill or they will freeze to death tonight. Little Tommy hasn’t eaten for 3 days and the dog is starting to look pretty good right now.
Me; I give them the name of a good mover and slam the door closed.
They did not need my assistance to live high on the hog and they don’t need my assistance to move out.
Hasta la vista baby….
Dear Victor,
You are right on the money. I voted early this year………with my feet.
After a long stint with the Navy I returned to my native Oklahoma. Taxes are half
of California. I registered all my family cars for what one previously cost in
California. I sold my San Diego house and paid cash for a nice one in Oklahoma.
Etc. Etc.
I miss all my friends and the San Diego weather……..but that is about it.
People are just as nice here…….and I am financially secure again. I felt
nothing but impending doom during my last couple of years in SD.
Obama and the loony left wing of the Open borders, Multiculturalism wing of the Democrat party must be the only species on the face of the earth that cannot or will not learn from experience, even Animals learn from experience!
The Socialist countries in Europe , Britain, France, Germany, Greece etc. have finally recognized Socialism and the Welfare State with unlimited immigration of uneducated, prolific breeding third world parasites flooding in to get on the public dole, does not work and are cutting back government, including numbers, wages, & benefits in order to survive as a Nation and returning to capitalism.
While here in the USA Obama and the Democrats are hell bent on taking the USA to a welfare socialist paradise in spite of proof all over the world and in the failed Blue States here that it does not work.
Illinois, Calif, New York, New Jersey, all Blue States that have been controlled by Democrat Majorities for years and long enough to try there taxing, spending and vote buying of public union members by giving wages and benefits that is bankrupting the government while pandering to illegal Aliens, are now seeing the results, all are bordering on bankruptcy.
Now Obama is following the same blueprint on a vastly bigger scale for the rest of American using 100,s of billion of the simulate money to reward Democrat supporters and to keep the under worked and overpaid public unions in jobs and buy Workfare & Welfare votes!
The same multi-trillion dollar con job Obama is attempting, by open borders and giving Amnesty to the invading horde of Criminals & Uneducated Prolific breeding third world parasites & with chain immigration all the ones still left in Mexico to buy 10,s of millions of welfare votes for the Democrat party with money borrowed from China while bankrupting this Nation.
With the future & further goal of turning the USA into a Spanish speaking Third World Slum modeled on Mexico but controlled Lock, Stock & Barrel by the Socialist/Democrat party Dictatorship of the United Sates of Mexico!
Capitalism is the unequal sharing of wealth, Socialism is the equal sharing of misery, with the exception of the elitist ruling class they still live like royalty on the misery of the rest, which is Obama’s and the Democrats plan for Them & Us.
It’s all part of the plan…
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/24-4
California the Golden state, Obama & the Democrats model for American future, is fast becoming the poster child for an bankrupt third world State!
An unholy alliance of Socialist Democrat politicians, Unions, and Illegal Aliens supporters are feasting at the trough of tax payers paid benefits while taxing & regulating business and the tax paying public into poverty.
The pandering of Left Wing Democrat Politicians to their constituency of Welfare leeches, Illegal Aliens Parasites, Public Unions and Left Wing American hater,s are driving business and citizens to other states & countries, while leaving the parasites & welfare leeches in an increasing bankrupt, crime ridden, dysfunctional state!
For years California has ignored economics 101 by rewarding Public employee with wages and benefits that far exceed any in the private sector or tax payers ability to pay, to buy their votes while importing poverty, Criminals and uneducated parasites from Mexico, which increased Medical, Welfare, Crime, Prison, etc. & adding a estimated 16 billion per year to Calif. State expense to provide for the invading horde of Illegal Aliens while exporting business and educated working tax payers.
Like all Socialist & Marxist States the results have been a astronomical increase in social welfare, schooling, prison cost etc. and a lowing of Living standards, Education standards, Tax receipts & finally Bankruptcy.
The policies of Obama and Wash. DC Democrats are intent on following Calif. policies and are rewarding the Unions, Lazy, Corrupt, Criminal, Greedy and Stupid while punishing the tax paying, Law abiding citizens that pulling the cart and carrying the load.
Amnesty & Citizenship as a reward for their invasion of the USA, will result in the rest of the USA turned into a Spanish speaking third world slum, modeled on Mexico and follow California into a polluted, over populated, Spanish speaking third world Nation of Crime, Corruption, Poverty, Cruelly & Misery!
This will result in a population depending on Welfare and the Democrat party, thus assuring the lock on power for the Socialist Democrat party of the United States of Mexico!
SPLIT the state. CA. is broken beyond repair… let’s just start over with three new states:
SoCal: All counties south of the tehachipi’s.
NorCal: All counties north of the Sacramento river from the Golden Gate to Sacramento, plus Sacramento Co, plus all the high Sierra counties / non-foothill going south towards Yosemite.
Central Ca: The remainder.
Or if you don’t like that, try five, but be sure to put Marin, SF, Alameda, and San Mateo together into one and call it Wonderland. As in: Alice In….
Oh my goodness! NOT! This would give the rump States each two more Senators in Congress! The idiots you have saddled the rest of us with already most certainly cannot be EXPANDED!! Any State which would re-elect Barbara Boxer for a fourth term (!) deserves what it gets. At least here in Illinois we tried to change something!
I love the state, and finally left it in 2004. VDH nails the problems; I do not believe there is a real solution. The State will just have to run out of money; it really is that simple.
Even though I am a conservative, I was rooting for Brown because the liberals broke the State so now they have to fix it. Had Whitman won, they just would have fought her every step of the way and said she was the problem. Let Brown be the one to screw retirees out of their pensions.
In the meantime, I will fight with all of my energy to keep the US Government from bailing them out. I like Rick Z’s proposal.
BTW, BillyShaft is right now, Utah is now my home. Just don’t try to Californicate Utah, ok!
Step 1: De-certify all public unions. (The governor in Indiana did this – not sure how.) Repudiate their pensions. (There are enough unemployed here that we could easily replace former union members who threatened to strike . . . except for police.)
Step 2: Photo ID required to vote and work. Birth certificate or naturalization papers required in order to obtain the ID.
Step 3: School vouchers.
Step 1 helps the immediate debt problem. Step 2 helps with future voting problems and illegal immigration. Step 3 is a long-term effort to actually teach the next generation history, economics, math, science and civics.
As with previous California attempts to restrict public services to illegals, all 3 steps will be challenged in court.
great article. my wife grew up in california and that is why we moved here with our small family. in the four years i’ve lived here i’ve been dumbfounded by how narrow-minded the poeople making decisions for the state are. how can it be difficult to make your home, your state, successful? yet time and time again the vast majority of those in politics choose what goes against common sense, and have even more so in these times.
i vote to fire them all and start over. or, please let the north separate from the south. northern california would get along just great without southern california and the bay area.
oh well, i can hope can’t i. the state will be strong again, i just hope i’m able to enjoy it when it does.
I live in Henry Waxman’s congressional district in Los Angeles and I can testify that the people in this rich, overeducated area are dumber than a bag of hammers. They dont see any relationship between high taxes and a sluggish economy; they fervently believe that the government can fix the weather by building windmills and closing oil refineries (without thinking about what is going to happen to their precious Escalades). Their granola-fueled stupidity is shocking and appalling. The few who know about the state’s budget deficit just see that as a normal function of government and sneer at anyone who is alarmed by Cali’s impending default…the effects of which they have no concept of. These are ‘the best and the brightest’; miseducated in universities that have been converted into politically correct indoctrination academies run by tenured radicals who are militantly foolish and misguided and eager to misguide others. The only cure for this mass idiocy is a resounding crash and Jerry The Jerk is just the governor to engineer it, helped by a legislature that should be rounded up and lodged in an institution for the criminally insane. One of them was caught by an open mike advocating mass suffering so that resistance to raising taxes will end. I would move if I could but I’m stuck here.
Skep, I’ve seen your posts elsewhere, and I sympathize with you. Cut your losses and get out NOW!! Cali is doomed. Cash in your chips and relocate to Oklahoma or Tennessee. There may not be much employment opportunity there just now, but they will be the first to bounce back, and you can survive there in the meantime.
I hate to say this but the sooner California goes bankrupt (I think they are already) the better and with (Jerry Brown) Moonbeam or is it Moonbat the Asshat as the new governor compared to Chris Cristie in New Jersey then what will be said?
There is always a time for all sins of the past to be paid for. They say the Mayan Calendar call for the end of civilization to be somewhere around December 21, 2012…for California i think it will be sooner before sanity returns, but only after great trials and tribulations.
It may be that it does go back to the backwards native Mexicans to fend for themselves as a massive exodus of sane people leave the state just to save their lives and then with nothing not even water or people capable to run the infrastructure to provide the bare necessities they have become used to will go back to adobe huts cannibalism and savage behavior like the street gangs they already have which are commonplace. Then they can kill each other off without anyone producing anything but death!
Viva Mexico!
How utterly tragic for my native California. It had everything and threw it away. I fled and now live in fiscally stingy Utah, which is often maligned but totally solvent and rated one of the best places to do business. Unemployment is several points lower than in California. Which state is kinder in the end? Some of you may hate me for saying this, but I actually think the change to allow 51% of the legislature to pass a budget will be a good thing long term. The Democrats must own the problems they have largely created–no more blaming “obstructionist” Republicans. Accountable must vest. And it just did with the election of Brown and the Democrats. They own it all now. No excuses. In two years the voters will render their verdict and my guess is it won’t be pretty for the Democrats. Hopefully by then it won’t be too late.
Make that “Accountability must vest.”
It is indeed a shame that so many good people will be victims of the “progressives” (socialists), but with an agenda of driving out the productive businesses, and welcoming illiterate illegal aliens including criminals, collapse is inevitable.
You should cut your losses, cash in what chips you have left, and move to a more sane part of the country. I wish you well, but I have little hope for Cali, and I will fight hard against any bailout for them. They don’t deserve it. They have brought this mess on themselves, and they are going to have to sleep in the bed they made for themselves. Too bad, so sad, your Dad.
Would the last person to leave California please leave the lights on . . . just to piss off the environmentalist.
No they should punch their lights out with a left jab followed with a hard punch to the solar plexus as a good boxer would do.
An uppercut to the jaw might also be a good idea, but as I am an ex boxer in the Golden Gloves and Honorably discharged Veteran I suppose my comments do not count especially to such as BC the troll.
I invite BC to attempt to take me on any where at any time an we will see what he really is and is suppose that I will be the last man standing!
Oh yeah trolls blow it out your rear we have had enough of your bullshit, notice I do not abbreviate anything but just put it down like it is you bunch of chicken shit idiots!
Want more of adults that can kick you ass you just found it!
Yet, when the ruined cities and fly-blown bodies are still burning and unburied, we will hear the faint cry from amongst the ashes, “It was the Republicans thus destroyed our paradise.”
And not a damn thing will have been learned by anyone.
Atlas has shrugged in California. The remaining people there just haven’t realized it yet.
Back in 2001, I took a Geology class in college;USM of Maine, our professor was well known, having 25 years of experience. He told us back in 2001: ” Be sure you visit California within the next decade, because the Big one ( Earthquake over 8.8, possibly in the 9 level range on the rictor scale) is predicted to hit sometime between 2011- 2012, or very soon after. When it does, there won’t be much left of California left worth seeing.”
California, the richest state in the nation, has been turned into a financial basket case by the arrogant left wing Elite/Democrats. Despite Californians went to the polls, and by solid margins, reelected Gov Brown and Sen Boxer. The people that have done a good part of the current damage and are determined to do more. The Republican in the New Year need to cut of the money. The sane folks in Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi etc. should not be paying for California insanity. California can tax the Hollywood Rich and the silly left wing billionaires 99% on every dollar to fund their ponzi schemes. I’d tell working people and anyone who owns a small business to get out while they can, but unfortunately if you look at a state like Colorado, where tens of thousands of Californians have fled over the last 10 to 15 years, they bring their insane left wing voting patterns with them even when they flee the results of their previous votes, and consquently Colorado elected Democrats despite the total failures of the last two years, and that state may be headed toward the same sort of insanity that exists in California. So if you live in California, and are fed up with the arrogant left wing Elites, and ready to insure they never take power, then get out of California while you can!
An excellent article that does lay out the a number of the issues. I am from Illinois, and we are all just thankful that there is a California, to show us the way to bankruptcy and ruin… We too re-elected the same schmoes who got us into this mess in the first place (other than the Senator that took BHO’s former seat!). My personal plans are already complete. I am nearing retirement, and have already bought my retirement home in a State with lower income taxes and Republican politicians in charge. I will dump my house here for what I can get and head for the exits just about the time the State of Illinois runs out of cash. Good luck to them and the Californians. Hope it works out for them, but I didn’t vote for the idiots who created this mess and I’m not going to pay for it. And I will work like a dog to vote out any Federal politician who even suggests bailing out the irresponsible States like California, Illinois, and New York. These states made the mess, they can clean it up, just without me!
Budget 25B hole
Borrowed $10B from Fed for unemployment payments
$500B in unfunded pensions
CA, my state, is insane.
Pensions must be cut, wages dropped 25% for public workers, scale back welfare 50%, reduce unemployment payments by 25% and reduce by 6 weeks.
But let’s remember that people will suffer. NO cut back on food stamps.
So why will the public unions agree to this?
10 years to resolve, and hopefully no riots.
:)
Victor
We lived in Ca from 1983 to 1998. Most beautiful place I ever lived in. We lived by San Luis Obispo paradise. Driving distance to Sequoia and Yosemite. Hetch Hetchy yup the beautiful valley in Sequoia that had some of the largest trees damned up. But we were driven out by costs. When illegal aliens lived in a house behind us larger then ours and trashed it and left garbage all over the place financed by the state that pretty much was the end for us. Even had a chance at a job there this summer an old client wanted to hire me as the IT guy. Money was great. But all I mean all the working class friends I knew wanted out of the state. Longed to move to Arkansas for Gods sake. When this starts happening I knew no way I am coming back. Very sad. We still miss the scenery badly.
The best thing we can do is pressure the new House of Representatives to DEFUND California’s profligacy. I, for one, am tired of putting my money in that rat hole. Let George Soros bail them out.
Although I know that there are some rational people in California, and I hate to see them suffer for the extreme irresponsibility of the apparent majority, I strongly encourage them to get out while the getting is good.
There is no way that the majority of Americans will allow a bailout of California with taxpayer money. They have brought their problems upon themselves, and they will have to suffer the consequences, and go bankrupt in order to abrogate their totally unrealistic contracts with public employee unions. They must prohibit public employees from union membership, and stop funding illegal immigration. If they do not do that, then they must reap what they have sown.
Saying NO to corrupt unions and illegal aliens is the only way California has a chance to recover from it’s own irresponsible actions. Tough love maybe, but reality can be a b1tch, especially when you have been screwing up for decades. The bill has come due, and I have no responsibility for it. Their problems are due to their love of “progressives” (socialists). They should demand that those “progressives” (socialists) they keep electing resolve the problems.
Personally, I’m perfectly OK with letting California break off at the fault and drift out into the Pacific. That would be justice.
As a California public school teacher, I know quite well the punishment one receives when one dares to question Democrat and Union authority.
For 30 years, I have been speaking and writing about the cataclysm of the “free-stuff” state. Now, it has become fashionable to speak about this problem with a national reference. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, all Democrat programs have, very simply, ruined the economic future of the country. In California, the collection of undereducated ideologues who have hitched their career wagons to public employee unions have doomed the state. There is now no way out. Disaster looms as the rich flee to their third and fourth homes. If I could get out, I would. But the house is underwater and there are no prospects for a job in another state. Those of us in the middle will be forced to fight it out with an eternal subclass that has no interest the American experience excepting the address of the nearest WIC or welfare agency.
The only saving grace is that the Democrats are in control of everything in California, which is kind of reminiscent of the 2008 national election where the Democrats have been in control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency. If my memory serves correct the total spotlight was placed on the tax and spend party, who spent, spent, spent. Although, it is painful being a California resident to deal with the down economy, no jobs and the left wing politics, my hope is the people of the state will wise up. When this is coupled with citizen redistricting our state might just have some hope. Keep your fingers crossed.
Dick Morris has the solution on his website. The US Congress must re-write the bancruptcy code to allow state, counties, cities, and school districits to file for banruptcy with requirement that they void all public employee (union)contracts with their exorbinant salaries, benefits, and pensions (Califonria teachers unions and SEIU come to mind). No more Federal bailouts (like last year). No turning over the state assets to the unions like Obama did with GM & Chysler.
these 2 quotes should scare everybody.The conversations reflect a sentiment voiced earlier in the week by Rep. Charles Rangel (N.Y.), who told the New York Observer: “If I had my druthers, I’d just put another chair up there. What the hell?”
Some Democrats believe that’s exactly what Pelosi will do. “There’s a lot of flexibility there in terms of bringing people into the leadership mix,” a senior Democratic aide said. “The Speaker can do whatever she wants.”
we’re in big trouble.
I believe that the country has been bailing out CA and NY (primarily) for a year already with ‘Build America Bonds.’ The Federal government subsidizes 35% of the interest of the bonds so that local governments can continue borrowing to pay the bills.
I love VDH’s stuff.
Far from this madness here in KC, Cali is always a portent for the rest of us. For better or worse (usually worse). the bear republic prefigures our fate.
One of his lesser points was right on too. More regulations means more lawlessness. I was in Canada this summer and met a RCMP while fishing. The nanny-state American lefties want to emulate has beaucoup road rules out the ying-yang. Anyway, he said that when he pulls over Americans they are much more respectful and generally law-abiding, which he attributed to the fact in the states that people think when you get pulled over its because you actually did something wrong. In canadea you are prima facie violating some nonsense provision, so it is treated with derision. Canucks, being the mild-mannered sort they are, demurely toleratetheir kind, gentle but nonetheless police state.
We will be there soon— but as the USA was born and held together with bloodshed— the transition will take place with a different and more spectacular reaction from the populace.
It is too late to save California. Atlas has shrugged there.
Exactly.
Count me among the thousands who bolted — about five years ago (read the tea leaves) up to Washington State. It was hard; I’d live in NoCal and SoCal over 40 years. Oh, and I took a half-million dollar small business and family with me. Zero regrets; let them spike someone else. And though there are plenty of lefties up here, most folks are also more relaxed, personable — and certainly less taxed and harassed.
VDH: Thanks for the update on my former home. I know you love the central valley — and I don’t blame you — but we have plenty of great (albeit a bit chillier) farmland up here. Just sayin’.
Instant roadside restaurants and hardware stores in the formerly Golden State? I live in South Korea and people here do that ALL the time! Cheer up Dr. Hanson! Maybe’s there’s hope for California after all!
Mike Gallagher
Seoul, Korea
The professionals, elite and very rich think the problem will never reach them so they want more of the same that that caused the problem.
Which is a common reaction to a liberal that does not believe their interests are at stake.
As goes CA so goes the rest of the country. Hyperinflation will save the state and the US. The pain will take three years but will lead to a new Gold based currency.
If Californians had ANY sense at all, they would reopen many of those gold mines that could still produce. This would create jobs and bring in some currency. Nahhh….that would be too easy and too intelligent.
Hello Mr. Hanson,
There is a very easy way for the nation and California to revive its finances and return to growth. It requires, however, looking at old problems with new eyes.
First of all, the government is in deficit to whole of its expenditures because the taxing authority actually generates none of its own revenues. Governments do not pay taxes. They never have and they never will. When the bill for public expenditures arrives, the various levels of government simply pass it along to the taxpayer.
If the government spends $200 billion on various public investments, then the deficit is actually $200 billion. It does not really matter if the tax financed portion of this deficit were $180 billion and the borrowing financed portion were $20 billion. Its all deficit.
The only thing to really decide is would the nation have been better off if those who earned the funds taken by government had kept them and put them to more productive use. If the government had a more productive use, then the nation would have benefited. If otherwise, then the nation loses. Generally, the nation loses.
The only reason a nation will tax is to avoid interest charges. In government borrowing, the nation, its taxpayers, must pay interest on the principal borrowed whilst the government delays taxing the principal and repaying the loan.
Here is a little paradox:
If the state of California’s citizens and corporations were to purchase all of its Governments’ debt instruments, what is the effect on California’s finances?
Well, there would be no effect as the state would see its debts rise by the amount of bonds sold and Californians would see their personal financial assets rise by the same amount of bonds purchased. It is the same with the interest paid out. The nation’s debts will rise by the interest paid out and the nation’s assets will rise by the amount borrowed to pay such interest.
How few people seem to understand this simple fact!
In conclusion, if the state were to borrow all of its expenditures, and the interest also, the wealth of the state would be unaltered in the transaction. A rise in the nation’s aggregate debts would perfectly balance with rise in the nation’s assets.
The only question remains is what would the nation be getting from its public expenditures? Well, in a nation wherein the borrowing government must face its banker daily and must justify each and every public expenditure, I would say a lot more than in a nation wherein the taxing government can take as much as it desires and spend it accordingly.
Regards,
Gary Marshall
As long as Ca lets themselves be run by the nut types from cities like San Fran then, they will never deal with reality. Unfortunately I see the next big bailout will be the unfunded pensions in all the mostly blue run states that are in deep trouble. The Dems will say the Feds have to bailout those poor union people who have done everything they can to bankrupt their own states.
When you have Frisco debating whether to make circumcision illegal, it shows that they are in their cloud land, and they will never leave it to see what other people are concluding.
When will the rest of the state push for a vote in California to redraw the borders? Because, as long as the status quo is maintained, it will be all hands going down with the ship, instead of only the captain.
What part of “Freedom of Religion” do they not understand?
VDH is a national treasure.
The left has their tactical missions in place. They have worked the system to their advantage for decades. And their tactics have just about reached critical mass, because so many people voted them back in Nov2. The only way to save California, or any other broke state, and even the entire country, is for individuals to educate themselves on the tactics used by the far left since at least the 60′s, and probably earlier. It’s not enough to yell for stopping the spending and cutting entitlements, and taxes, etc, without understanding how they have created this mess. It has to be dismantled targeting the routes and tactics they took to get where they are today. Read these books, and get the bigger picture:
Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties; Shadow Party; Radical in Chief; The Roots of Obama’s Rage; Thirty Years of Treason. I know this column is about only California, but these books will give one a very large window into how it got to be so bad. And it will definitely get worse before it turns around. If it can be turned around.
So Californians will experience a 25 billion dollar budget shortfall this year. So sad, too bad. Somehow I don’t feel any sympathy for them at all. The good citizens of California continue to elect moronic Democratic legislators who apparently can’t add or subtract and don’t own a calculator (or don’t know how to use one) but can shovel out California taxpayer dollars without restraint. The rest of the country is tired of hearing about California borrowing from the federal government (i.e. the rest of us) to pay unemployment benefits to the tune of millions of dollars a day. Californians: if you want to continue to elect idiotic legislators who are running you into the ground, so be it. But don’t expect the rest of the country to be too sympathetic to your plight. After all, your votes got you where you are today. PS get your own printing press, you’re gonna need it!
“…perhaps a panic of 1893, Great Depression, 1970s stagflation, and 1992 state meltdown all in one surreal experience.”
Or worse yet, civil war.
If California, New York, Illinois and the like expect the rest of the nation to bail them out they are sorely mistaken. Texas, who with conservitive leadership, has actually been almost immune to this depression (lets call it what it really is – as it will continue to be for some time) will be the first secede from the union. Others would follow….
1) The optimal outcome is that America wakes up and liberalism / progressivism dies.
2) The second best option, America splits up peacefully, resulting in the liberal bastions on the coasts becoming third world nation. The conservitive right in the middle thriving by attracting entrepreneurs, capital investment, business, self reliance..etc.
3) America continues to reward poor judgement and irresponsible policies, chases all business, investment, whats left of manufacturing and entrepreneurship out of America and nation as a whole fails. Welcome to Banana Republic status….
4) And finally, the worst outcome, a war would break out neighbor fighting neighbor in order to hold the union together….the cost would relegate the entire nation to third world status.
I guess hitting rock bottom is the place where drug addicts and alcoholics start to fix their problems. Maybe rock bottom for the state will be going broke at which point they will have to fix their own problems.
Lots of Californians are flocking to Texas (if they can sell their homes on the west coast). But, when they get to Texas, they get converted. We are not allowing them to come here and ruin our government the way they have ruined CA.
I spent thirty years in the SF area and the past 10 in L.A. The fact is that we do have a huge population of very wealthy people who wouldn’t live anywhere else and they will pay whatever taxes they have to.
In fact, they consider it to be a badge of honor to be “in the highest bracket”. It’s become a symbol of their moral superiority and largese. And yes, they will always shop at Whole Foods and pay whatever they have to in order to have “the purest” of everything, and no, they haven’t a clue as to how it is produced. “Don’t raisins just, sort of, like, just grow inside a little red box?”
AS to infrastructure, it is community based. i.e. if a wealthy community has a street that needs to be repaired, they raise a ruckus and the city council repairs it.
The schools are local too; wealthy parents are involved parents and have good schools, the poor areas have uninvolved parents and terrible schools. “So what’s the big deal (as the wealthy say) we have good schools because we demand them and if other parents wanted good schools they would make that happen too”.
The wealthy don’t drive far (they would never make the drive that VDH describes – from the Sierra to the coast – because they only go to their 2nd homes in Mendicino or Tahoe; otherwise they just drive to the airport and leave the country altogether. So good freeways for long distance driving by the unwashed (such as the truckers who stock the shelves at Whole Foods) really aren’t of concern.
As VDH describes in a very limited way, the cash economy is enormous in CA. I will venture a guess that it is probably larger than the entire economies of some States. “Cash Only” is posted on countless cash registers in countless shops. Barter is also vigorously practiced.
Life is grand in Kalifornee. All you have to do is adjust and become accustomed to the new way of life in this socialist paradise.
Just raise the taxes on the rich (throw in a day or two at the local ‘spiritual spa’) and they will feel better, and let the illegals run their cash-only shops-on-wheels, and everyone will be happy.
Now, can you pass me the gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, cage-free-free-range-grass-fed-happy-chicken-tofu-appetizer and hand me my glass of 1991 estate bottled Sonoma-Napa Chardonney with the Californa Sunset bouquet (in the bottle without the lead-sealed cork, of course)? Ommmmmmmmmmmmmm
California’s job-killer bureaucrats are as aggressive and as arrogant as they come. There’s a nastiness that comes from the realization that 4 years at Berkeley will barely get you into a drywall hut on an endless cul-de-sac. The name of the game in Cal is: get a State job, get a County job, get a City job. If you’re smarter than average, you might go for a consultant company that works for – the State, the County, or the City. If you’re a construction company, your business depends on projects for – the State, the County, or the City. Agriculture and Hollywood are among the few California economic sectors not totally dominated or owned by the government – yet.
I’m a SoCal native and still love the state, though not the politics. Just a few observations outside of the narrative that most Californians and outsiders seem to share about the state:
* CA has been on the federal payroll since WWII. Much of its wealth was due to the many defense industries (and bases) that dotted the same coastal areas that the liberal spending class now occupies (perhaps they got a bit spoiled). Watching the defense industry shrink over the decades has been like watching a diabetic get various appendages hacked off — painful to watch and even more painful to contemplate the the next one. CA was able to afford so much infrastructure that other states couldn’t because of all of those federal dollars flooding in. We cannot even afford to maintain that infrastructure at today’s levels of defense dollar inflows.
* Direct democracy will lead to the ruin of the polity and society. Many commentators here and elsewhere blame Sacramento. Sacramento is a cesspit, I agree. But so much of our spending is mandated by the hundreds of laws and “constitutional amendments” that we the people have enacted through our easy to use initiative system. If I was king of California for a day, my sole act would be to make every eligible voter to turn out and vote yeah or nay for Proposition 1: The initiative system is hereby abolished.” California is PJ O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores.
* Almost all of you are underestimating the effect of illegal immigrants on the school system. How do you take a bunch of kids whose parents grew up without even a high school education (and who may in fact associate education with belonging to the hated Mexican upper classes) and motivate them to do well in school? The answer is that you will not. The reality is that areas that have low concentrations of first through second generation Hispanics the schools are nationally competitive. Teachers unions ain’t got much to do with it (the problem they cause is pension debt). Bottom line is that illegal immigration is destroying our schools, hospitals, police departments, and even the “voluntary associations” that are the foundation of civic life.
* Proposition 13 was a failure. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then going hungry is proof that the pudding doesn’t exist. Given the state budget disaster, I’d say only the most hardheaded could say that Prop 13 worked. What Prop 13 really did was to transfer the spending from cities and counties to Sacramento. This had three very bad second-order effects:
1. Sacramento gained more power and became even more corrupt.
2. The cities and counties became ever more dependent on Sacramento to pay the bills and on Sacramento’s ability to borrow more than they could ever hope to at better rates.
3. The cities and counties and their voters became hopelessly detached from reality. Since the Sacramento was paying a lot of their bills with cheaply borrowed money, they had no clue. Before Prop 13, if a municipality had a money shortfall, the sewers didn’t get laid or the schools didn’t get built. Afterward, Tio Sacramento simply bailed them out.
My advice: Get rid of the initiative system, re-boot the state constitution to get rid of all the garbage the initiatives put in there (many of you would fret that the liberals would muck it up; I suspect that adopting the old Soviet constitution might be an improvement at this point… that’s how hopeless the current document is!), and give tax power back to the cities and counties and limit Tio Sacramento’s greatly. Some cities and counties will have high taxes. Some won’t. The good thing is that in every single election, the voters will have their noses rubbed in reality and will have to deal with it. I’m not even going near the illegal immigration problem. That’s a book, not a blog post.
Whereas last night’s news had a story on one family, which has taken in a foreclosed family into their own home and they are working out the living arrangements, but then, they are friends, not just neighbors.
Better make sure all doors and windows are locked, and I wouldn’t leave your house for long periods of time.
Indeed D-White. Keep you door locked. There may be Manicial Republicans lurking Beyond the Valley of Picket Fences. You need protection, and Mrs. Palin may be about.
Commanding his very own tank…
This was supposed to be a response to PerryM’s #80. He was the guy whose neighbors came by to ask for help.
California is a joke. Jerry Brown as governor? Barbara Boxer as senator? Welfare cards used at casinos and cruise ships? Red America says “Nyet” – NO – to any California bailout. Not a single red cent for California. Give California back to Mexico – let’s see how long their regulatory welfare state lasts.
We love San Diego and have often wistfully wished it weren’t in California…we would move there in a heartbeat…and work.
Since I don’t live in California, I can say that I don’t care if it falls into the ocean; they got what they voted for. However, if I have to pay to bail them out (aka federal assistance) then I’m gonna get mad. Then I’m going to vote for some unsavory, ruthless types who agree with me.
Bailing out California’s government debt is like playing chess when one can see checkmate in a few moves more.
The country can bail out California’s 25billion debt and it will just put off another crisis without downsizing and reforming government. You will also notice that California is becoming like the Soviet Union before the collapse, when 50% of the GDP was achieved by the underground economy.
I see no positive change happening in California until the present system collapses on its one bloated weight, and the government is forced to downsize.
This whole thing really saddens me. I am a fifth and last generation Californian in my family. As a kid, I traveled all over that beautiful state, and studied its history as a hobby. Left the state nearly 40 years ago. I have visited quite a few times, but now it is just depressing to go and see what the liberal mentality has done to the state.
In the 1820s, a bright young Boston Yankee and Harvard freshman by the name of William Henry Dana Jr. went to sea aboard the brig Pilgrim. Dana landed on the California coast and spent two years working as a common seaman engaged in the hide trade. When Dana first saw California, it was still part of Mexico. However, an influx of American who could be likened to the “Okies” was already underway.
The liberal progressive Dana wrote a travel log about his voyage called TWO YEARS BEFORE the MAST. Dana had nothing but contempt for the spend thrift native California population he saw, and he equally despised the second generation California-Americans, because most of them become infected with what Dana called “the California disease,” meaning they became lazy spendthrifts.
To paraphrase a conservative talking point, “At some point you run out of other peoples’ people.” Human resources are more valuable than forty-niner gold or California bonds. California’s real problem is that California ran out of Okies. Starting with Dana, and continuing into the 1950s, the other states kept California afloat by loaning her our human capital, people the Californians called Okies. These Okies were mostly hard working people who wanted to earn their own living or none at all. The Okies largely built the California of today. When California assimilated the Okies she turned them into worthless Californians. Then in the 1960s, the influx of hard working Okies slowly was replaced by drug addled communal utopian dreamers, then by a tidal wave of illegal aliens. Now California wants the rest of the country to treat Dana’s California syndrome buy throwing our money at it.
A California bailout is nothing more than parental capitulation to a West Coast “I’ll hold my breath till I turn blue” tantrum. The rest of the nation should say, “Go ahead California, hold your breath, your already blue.” While “Kalifornia dreaming may become a reality,” I hope and pray that the nation wakes up from this nightmare and imposes reality on California.
My only regret about Califoria self-destructing is that many of the morons will move to my state.
When every state needs to bail out every other state then we have finally arrived at Obama’s dream goal of “spread the wealth” socialism. Now if we can only achieve the same thing between countries – Obama’s real dream. Oh sorry, he has already begun work on that.
None of this should be surprising. If anyone has read Hernando de Sotos, you know that bureaucrats, legislators, and unions keep adding millions of laws, rules, and regulations until the economy goes under. They then blame the rich for all of the problems which destroys wealth and jobs. You just look at Zambia and Venezuela. Our country is now a banana republic and we will have 2% growth for the next twenty years. The Federal Reserve is emulating Japan and destroying sales by rewarding the borrowers and hurting the savers. Meantime, Congress and the states are destroying jobs by rewarding the purchase of technology which destroys jobs. Hang on.
We are the Krell…see the Forbidden Planet 1956…Dr. Morbius will one day study the Californian landscape and wonder one day why they all disappeared…
To be fair, didn’t California vote repeatedly on propositions to repeal benefits for illegals and the commie liberal judges struck down the will of the California people. It can happen to YOUR state too, and it will soon as activist liberal and all too frequently JEWISH judges try to remake AMERIKA and ethnically cleanse America of its founding people.
I’ve never seen a state committ sepukku until now. Gawd it looks awful.
I know several people who work for out-of-state chamber of commerce boards and their duties are skyrockting. They’re in hyper drive getting Californian businesses to relocate. In a matter of a few years, many of the big corps will be out with 2nd tier companies following suit.
California will end up as on big slum with those too poor or too entrenched to leave.
All that I ask is that they leave their liberal tendancies at the state line. Don’t export your liberal tax-n-spend beliefs to other states and mess it up (like what they did or Oregon and Washington)
I grew up in California and lived there most of my life, but moved to the Southwest over a decade ago because the state was simply becoming unaffordable. At the time we moved my wife and I were making more money than we ever had, but there was still no chance of buying a house. I still love the state, many great memories I’ll never forget, but i wouldn’t live there now fro all the tea in China. The fact is California is a majority vote that represaents all of the non-producers of the state, the producers aka. taxpayers, employers are totally outnumbered. Fiscally that just doesn’t add up. like Phil Gramm said years ago “We need more people pulling the wagon, than just sitting in the wagon getting a free ride”. The Golden State is no longer golden……
public service unions get to have their cake and eat it, at the taxpayers expense. call it greed. and politicians give in to them out of fear — of strikes, and of union funds disappearing from their campaign coffers. this is a form of blackmail that passes for fair play for the working guy or gal.
I am not suggesting unions are the only problem CA faces. Look at government bureaucracy and regulation. And a general reluctance to face the need for change.
This is a time for deleveraging at every level of government and in the private sector as well as households. The alternative is obvious : bankruptcy. We have all been living beyond our means.
Lets see if Congress does any better than CA under a Republican led House!
I dont see or hear anybody willing to walk the walk. Not yet. Not while Bernanke is doling out another cool $600 billion. If you cant earn it, you can always print it, right?
Reading through these comments, particularly the ones by and about teachers in California, why does a scene appear in my head where two communists from about 50 years ago are in a friendly arguement about whether to unionize teachers, and one of them is saying to the other: “Niki, you just don’t get it. Once the teachers are unionized the capitalist dominoes will fall one by one. It’s the ultimate way to subvert these tools.”
So California has a huge deficit that cannot be addressed by taxing more (already taxed to the hilt), spending less (unionized to the hilt), or expanding the economy (regularized to the hilt).
Someone just has to light the fuse on this powder keg.
Sad fact of the matter is California will be bailed out as “The Union Must Stand”. What price Californians pay is another matter.
I first came here to California as a young 17 year old in the military.
I left that time after 4 years but the allure of th state called me back 7 years later.
Now as a 55 year old,I am planning my move back to Indiana.
here is no gold in California.
Nothing but illegals and socialists around me.
I do not wish ill will on the place.
My children know of no other place.
I can not wait to leave and return to America.
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