Comments on: Understanding the California Budget Crisis

By: Bill Bartmann

Bill Bartmann — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:44:53 +0000

Cool site, love the info.

By: JL

JL — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:10:01 +0000

All the people on here who talk about ‘living within our means’ never specify in what areas we are supposed to do that. Of course what it always comes down to is cutting the poor back to where they go into the streets and the grave, but sparing fat cat corporations, 9 of the biggest of which in CA pay severely reduced taxes which cuts state income from corporations by about 25 percent, while instead we balance the budget on the backs of those least able to pay. We love to scapegoat here in CA to cover our own selfishness. How many of those advocating ‘living within our means’ apply that to themselves? How about cutting THEIR benefits that THEY receive from the state (police, fire, city and county services, income tax deductions, lowered property taxes which have to be shifted onto someone else, etc)? I don’t think they would be such big fans of cuts and budget austerity were that austerity applied equally to them. It is always easier to cut someone else and blame someone else than admit we have a system that actually is skewed toward fat cats and is hard on every day people. It is easy to blame illegals, welfare people, etc…but where do they get their statistics that falsely blame poor people for all our state’s ills without mentioning that for instance CA’s oil companies pay NO severance tax and CA is the third largest oil producer in the nation? It is always ‘blame the poor and feed the rich’ that their arguments boil down to. Why else is the gap widening ever larger between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in CA?

By: TG Wald

TG Wald — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:32:49 +0000

Who said anything was real in california, the land of dreamers and left wing fanatics. What goes around comes around. You vote for spenders and you got spenders. You voted against your future and now you have no near if ever future. So keep those idiots like pelosi coming and we will watch you sink deeper. In fact you will sink before the earthquakes hit to drop you off the face of the earth. In fact, that is your best alternative.

Tominator

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:25:18 +0000

Prop 13 is NOT the cause of California’s budget problems. That would imply that there is a revenue problem, which is factually not the case. California legislators just passed the biggest tax increase in history bringing some of it’s taxes imposed on it’s residents to the highest in the country. Does that sound like the state is not taking enough of it’s residents hard earned money? They just imposed a $16 Billion tax increase and now it has the highest gas taxes, income taxes, and business taxes in the United States. Jobs and small businesses are already fleeing the state to move to neighboring states just to stay in business. They are taking the jobs with them and the middle class is moving out.

Taxes have and will be raised by politicians despite the 2/3 requirement. All it does it require the state legislators to work harder to find real solutions and not run to raising taxes every time they run out of money. They spend too much and that is a fact. Citizens tried to pass reforms requiring the state to live within its means, but they big unions spend billions to make sure they don’t pass. They own the state and every California voter knows it.

By: Leo

Leo — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:15:37 +0000

good article and yes there are serious consequences on on state bankruptcy:

http://www.wealthalchemist.com/Blog/2009/07/east-ease/

By: Satyajit

Satyajit — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:22:00 +0000

Because they are rich and its their money.

By: me

me — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:32:25 +0000

American families in need should get all the help their is that will get them on there feet, especially during hard times like these, there shouldn’t be any starving or homeless children in this country and people that need help to get good jobs to support there families should have to same opportunities to do so as people who have the money just from coming from a wealthy family. Why should we cut down on help for Americans who really need it and make sure the rich people continue to stay rich?

1 like

By: generation millionaire

generation millionaire — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:55:03 +0000

Great article and I love the comments. It is very interesting to here all perspectives. I think it comes down to the same problem the entire country is facing. We continue to spend more than we make – we want to continue to have the best of everything but we don’t want to pay for it. We have an amazing amount of waste in our budgets – we have little compassion for others until we have a crisis in our own lives, and we have a political system built on confict vs resolution and compromise for the greater good.

I hope we don’t have to crash and burn like Rome to relearn lessons in history.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:55:11 +0000

It’s a constant shock to me when I hear about how we can potentially generate additional revenues when cutting government involvement in our lives (and therefore cost) is what the debate ought to be about. The government is *supposed* to have few responsibilities and should handle those well but it has forced itself into so many areas of our lives, quite likely because that can require additional money and additional money equals additional power. And let’s face it, many of those drawn to government positions have the tendency to seek power. So we need to realize that the government is made up of people who want to draw more power unto themselves so their sole purpose is to grow the government. It’s an abomination that our legislators describe their jobs as “public service”.

When budget cuts are made (and they’ll need to be made), they will consist of many of the most damaging areas they can think of… to teach us taxpayers a lesson. The lesson of course is, don’t resist taxation.

Rather than killing two birds with one stone by implementing a school voucher program, they’ll keep the same crappy system but increase class sizes. In D.C. there is a program where students can apply for a $7500/year voucher and choose a qualified private school. Since the regular school system spends $14,500 per year per student, this would be a huge savings. And guess what, the students participating are blowing the doors off the public system while attending the private schools, for less than half the cost. We’ll not see that here because of the teacher’s union but that’s the kind of thing we ought to be talking about.

We ought to be talking about cutting taxes and getting more for our dollar than we get today. Prop 13 didn’t go nearly far enough in my view.

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By: groundpig

groundpig — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:31:32 +0000

Perhaps the thing that gets me is after paying 9% income tax, 9.25% sales tax, and a huge amount for property tax, California is still in major debt. Compare this to a state like Texas: no state / local income tax, and sales tax is around 6.25% or so.