California: Raise taxes wealthy and business will flea, cut services, poor will end up homeless (San Francisco: homes, income)

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by ndfmnlf

Your own state? Since when did you own the state? And where is it written that you - a Caucasian - are entitled to be always the majority in the state - as if the demographic changes in California are somehow depriving you of your divine right to be the master race of the state?

Socially speaking I am a minority in my own state. Race has nothing to do with it. In fact, I wish we could do a sort of free state project focusing on blacks, Asians and Latinos who are social conservatives. Do some promotion to attract them here. To counter the "Tribe of SWPL*." That would be sweeeeeet!

TAKE BACK CALIFORNIA!

* Stuff White People Like

[hsw]

Gvt services are largely consumed by non-taxpaying welfare recipients; will be good to see them leave CA for other states

Top 1% of taxpayers pay ~40% of all taxes; and, if CA taxes become more absurd, the truly top taxpayers are clever enough to officially claim TX residence while enjoying their wkend house in LA or SiliconValley quite often

Life is too short to not enjoy CA weather/topography if one can afford it

CA will be a better place if a few million losers leave the state and reduce crowding/crime and tax burden on hardworking taxpayers who pay for lifestyle mistakes/choices of these welfare recipients (and overpaid, too numerous gvt workers)

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by ndfmnlf

They are the enemy, as defined by Curmudgeon (who himself used to work for state government, getting paid with taxpayer dollars).

You couldn't be more wrong. The state workers are not, nor have they ever been, the "enemy." It's the politicians.

By the way, in 1996 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down California's source tax collections I made the decision to leave the state once I retired. In case you're mathamatically challenged, that was 13 years ago and I did so for all the reasons previously stated.

It might come as a surprise to you but many of us in state service, especially in management, did our level best to minimize the harm done by the legislature because we cared about the future of the state.

As for your continued attempts to belittle, inflame, and insult, they are simply more concrete evidence of your stinkin' thinkin' and will receive no further response. They don't deserve to be thusly dignified.

[ndfmnlf]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

You couldn't be more wrong. The state workers are not, nor have they ever been, the "enemy." It's the politicians.

By the way, in 1996 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down California's source tax collections I made the decision to leave the state once I retired. In case you're mathamatically challenged, that was 13 years ago and I did so for all the reasons previously stated.

It might come as a surprise to you but many of us in state service, especially in management, did our level best to minimize the harm done by the legislature because we cared about the future of the state.

As for your continued attempts to belittle, inflame, and insult, they are simply more concrete evidence of your stinkin' thinkin' and will receive no further response. They don't deserve to be thusly dignified.

Excuses excuses. Fact is, you lived in California while the getting was good. You worked for the state bureaucracy (yeah, the evil big government created by those darn liberals). You were a recipient of tax money which subsidized your lifestyle and fed you for 35 long years. It's not like the significance of your employment with the government suddenly dawned on you yesterday, or even 13 years ago.

Don't give us any more rationalizations about "doing your level best" as a state employee to "reduce the harm". Listen, if you were really consistent with your ideology, you should not have worked for the government at all. But you did because you liked the money. Now that you're retired and the income stream is gone, you have the cojones to badmouth California and its government.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

Socially speaking I am a minority in my own state. Race has nothing to do with it. In fact, I wish we could do a sort of free state project focusing on blacks, Asians and Latinos who are social conservatives. Do some promotion to attract them here. To counter the "Tribe of SWPL*." That would be sweeeeeet!

TAKE BACK CALIFORNIA!

* Stuff White People Like

What surprises me is that most Blacks, Asians, and Latinos are actually more socially conservative than whites. But that doesn't seem to drive their voting.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

What surprises me is that most Blacks, Asians, and Latinos are actually more socially conservative than whites. But that doesn't seem to drive their voting.

'cep'n Prop 8 ...

BTW, further on the free state thing, need to get these cats to relo out here:

Dust and Rust - A photo blog by Sean Unruh » The Ebony Hillbillies

[majoun]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

What surprises me is that most Blacks, Asians, and Latinos are actually more socially conservative than whites. But that doesn't seem to drive their voting.

The GOP in California has not done enough to nurture Latino political talent as it has done in Texas, Arizona, and Florida.

BayAreaHillbilly seems to be talking about the Prop 8 coalition ; however, a few caveats are in order. Latino and Asian votes were virtually split on 8 and a majority of Latinos under 30 voted against 8. I suspect the same is true amongst Asians.

[majoun]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

Socially speaking I am a minority in my own state. Race has nothing to do with it. In fact, I wish we could do a sort of free state project focusing on blacks, Asians and Latinos who are social conservatives. Do some promotion to attract them here. To counter the "Tribe of SWPL*." That would be sweeeeeet!

TAKE BACK CALIFORNIA!

* Stuff White People Like

You do realize there are blacks, Asians, and Latinos in that "tribe". Albeit the dimunition of the middle class in CA would seem to work against social liberalism at the polls.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by aaa12345

my solution is weird but:
1. get loan or bailout from Fed to get thru the immediate trouble
2. extend spending (yes, not cut back) to create more jobs so unemployment will be lower
3. collect taxes; since unemployment is lower, more taxes comes in...and because people are no longer unemployed, they no longer cut back on their spending..thus more sale tax...and also more income tax...and because the economy is better in CA, more business

Issues I have with this argument:

As far as statement #1 goes...CA has been in that mode of "bail us out just this once" in one form or another for more than 20 years now. Just this one tax increase, just this one Federal bailout, etc. It's kind of like the relative who lives his/her whole life "borrowing money" and never paying it back and making people feel guilty for asking to be paid back.

As far as the government spending more money to create jobs. I don't believe it is done very efficiently. The private sector, while not perfectly efficient, does a better job creating jobs. So, I think a lot of the money will be wasted.

And the CA state government has proven over and over that the more money it gets, the more it spends. How many more times do we need to see this before we believe it?

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by ndfmnlf

Weren't you a government employee for most of those 35 years? And so, weren't you part of the problem as you define it - a government bureaucrat sucking off the taxpayers' teat? And now that you are retired - now that the gravy train has ended for you - you decide to badmouth California? How convenient.

You kind of put Curmudgeon in a "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" situation.

If you work in the public sector and criticize its inefficiency, then someone like you will come along and say "hey you lived off the government teat, how dare you say that?".

And if Curmudgeon keeps his mouth shut and goes with the typical liberal philosophy, he would say "If the state would just increase taxes, then it would solve all our problems". Of course, that's a classic conflict of interest. I mean, what state worker wants to bite off the hand that feeds them?

If he had never gone into state government, then your answer probably would have been something along the lines of "Oh, these greedy businessmen. They exploit the underprivileged and then the state has to help them."

So you've created a no-win situation here.