California is among the top ten high tax states in the union, coming in at either #6 or #8, depending who you ask. The steep marginal tax rates on its most productive workers has resulted in a negative outflow of highly skilled workers from California to other western states, even as the immigration of less skilled and undocumented workers strains the school systems and socials services. By the end of 2008, the on-going recession threw over 250,000 workers from the tax rolls to the welfare queue. Unemployment jumped in January to 9.3%. The trend line is negative.
The outflow of skilled labor, influx of non-skilled labor, increase of joblessness and overall reduction in taxable economic activity has resulted in a state budget shortfall of $40 billion. In the face of all this economic bad news, the state government proposes a $20 billion tax increase.
Herbert Hoover would be proud.
One of those taxes being increased is the vehical licensing fees, the very issue that ushered out Davis and gave us the Govornator. Full circle we’ve come, hamstrung by a legislature that won’t or can’t act. This is the straw that will break this particular camels back, too many porkified-special interested-unionized-tree hugging-crackpottery budget items sucking up our tax dollars.
I don’t understand it, in my house, you spend that which you have. Period. If you don’t have the money, you don’t spend it. Seems so simple really.
Maybe we really fall off the edge and slip into the Pacific.
Government’s at all levels fail to account for any tax measures impact on the taxpayer behavior when they tally the predicted result. Hence tax rate cuts that fail to account for increased productivity that results in increasing the amount of revenue raised and tax increases that fail due the the removal of incentives to productivity. Our, as is more likely in this case, an incentive is created to simply move out of state, causing not only the loss of the potential revenue from the proposed tax increase on that individual but ALL tax revenue from that individual.
You can’t spend your way out of debt and you can’t tax your way out of years of irresponsible spending. California, unfortunately, has now become the model for Federal action so nobody will have anywhere to go.
You seem to favor Perth. Maybe Oz truly is at the end of the rainbow.
Well, cutting spending is unthinkable, so we’re left with trying to tax our way out of a recession. When you’re at the bottom of a hole, dig faster!
Or we could invade Nevada for plunder and Danegeld.
Someone said Detroit doesn’t “get it.” Well, California government for sure doesn’t, at least not the Leftistlature and the idiot RINO Governor.
How they can see the facts and think that the answer to our problems is doing more of what drives people away or causes them to cheat, is beyond understanding by anyone using any sort of logic.
Well,
I suspect if this keeps up and enough people leave, it’ll revert back to Mexico by default…
After living in Calif. most of my life, I finally left after the recall when it became appearant that “the shot across the legislatures bow” wasn’t going to work and the state was going to go down the tubes. I bailed to Missouri. The dems hold California’s legislature and calif’s future in their hands and many of those dems are socialist (to put it nicely). I have serious doubts that Repubs will ever hold power in that state again. So goes calif.
Unfortunately, I have seen many of those socialists move on to national office from waxman and waters to Boxer and Pelosi
So goes the country.
While enjoying my short commute to the office last week, I heard a Seattle radio commentator muse on the fact that the State of Washington has a higher “per capita” deficit than does California. Of course, we all know everything eventually finds its way up I-5, but this is an excellent example of something else we didn’t need.
Of course, now it’s finding the way to another Washington, the one ending in “D.C.”. Where can we go when the bill comes in for what BHO signed today? The only possible answer is more taxes, taxes, taxes… for all of us.
There’s a word for that “negative outflow”. It’s “influx” . There truly is an outflow (negative influx) from the gilded (gelded?) state, and a lot of it is ending up in Texas, or at least has been for a couple of decades now. The Natives are not impressed. Not that I’m Texan by accident of birth. I got here as soon as I could!
Sadly, by way of California.
Mike
The news today is the California budget gap, currently 42 billion dollars. They are planning 14.5 billion dollars in tax increases, along with cutting services to try to balance the state budget.
I still think you need to be considering Texas while you can.
California is not alone, like Peter Gunn stated above. Here in Washington, we don’t have a state income tax, so they nickle-dime us with little taxes on nearly everything. My property tax keeps rising to support levies for schools, EMS, libraries, and anything else they can convince the sheeple to vote for, since it’s “for the children”.
Our car tabs are supposed to be $35, but I end up paying closer to $100 because they tacked a mass transit fee, for mass transit that doesn’t come anywhere close to the small town I live in.
And I won’t even get started on our sales tax…
ASM826 may be right about Texas.
California is not alone, like Peter Gunn stated above. Here in Washington, we don’t have a state income tax, so they nickle-dime us with little taxes on nearly everything. My property tax keeps rising to support levies for schools, EMS, libraries, and anything else they can convince the sheeple to vote for, since it’s “for the children”.
Our car tabs are supposed to be $35, but I end up paying closer to $100 because they tacked a mass transit fee, for mass transit that doesn’t come anywhere close to the small town I live in.
And I won’t even get started on our sales tax…
Of and by themselves, none of these taxes is burdensome. The problems lies in the number of taxing authorities, and the fact that no one cares that they all add up rather rapidly.
ASM826 may be right about Texas.
To you, I can only say:
Doctor, it hurts when I do this!
Maine’s legislature has just introduced a bill to add a 10-cent “tax” onto every plastic bag sold or used. Not just grocery and store bags, but lawn and leaf bags, trash bags, etc.
I am so tired of dirt-worshipers trying to save their souls by oppressing the rest of us with onerous and damned stupid laws.