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Sure you do.....it's probably hidden in something like your water bill.
Where I live in Texas I pay about $14.00 a month for trash pick up by the city and that's 8 times a month (twice a week) Not hundreds of dollars a year.
Do you have a math problem? I realize you went to a failing Texas school but $14 times 12 is $168 a year even if we accept your numbers. I suspect the real number is slightly higher and you are polishing a turd.
You need to look at all taxes and fees which will showup better in the cost of living indeaes.Its liie sayihng that staes that have no income tax are cheaper. States in the last years have begen to raise alot of money by fees other then outright taxes. Just look at the fact that the budget in california doubled in just eight years;do you think they are not getting it from taxpayers;and even then the budget is not balanced ;so the shortfall we have seen.More left wing propoganda it seems.
That is has vastly better services and public development then Texas?
Do you have information supporting this comment? Or did you just yank it out of a dark place that's hard to reach?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oerdin
That's why we have ... good mass transit, better schools, better public universities (not to mention more), and superior public infrastructure. You get what you pay for.
You live in San Diego, right? The trolly down there is great. Ask the people in Los Angeles about how great the mass transit is. Ask the people in the 95% of the state that isn't comprised of the three metro areas how good the mass transit is.
Are California schools better than Texas schools? I don't know that they are. Again, do you have information to support that, or do you just make the stuff up as you go?
The California universities are pretty good, and you're right - there are a lot of them. UC Davis has the best veterinary school in the country. My uncle, a retired radiologist, graduated from UCLA. A good friend of mine has degrees from UC Berkeley and USC. Coming from CA, I know a bit about the colleges there. I'm sure someone from Texas can post similar positive aspects about TX colleges, and I hope they do. You need to be knocked off your "California is the greatest place in the whole wide world!" pedestal...
As for the infrastructure, that's just a joke. Does the phrase "rolling blackouts" mean anything to you?
Face it, people have voted with their feet and decided Alaska isn't for them. They have decided California is for them
Hello? McFly? I guess you've decided to just completely ignore the fact - which has been posted multiple times in this thread - that California is facing a negative net migration. That's the people "voting with their feet."
Except for the snow and ice 8 months out of the year? Face it, people have voted with their feet and decided Alaska isn't for them. They have decided California is for them though which is why the price of land gets bidded up so high.
Love your delusional discriptions, and keep up your belief of what Alaska is like, hopefully the kooks will take you as factual and not come here.
12 lane highways! You convinced me not to move there!
Nanny State California may not have the nation's highest taxes, but I believe it has more to do with entitlements and the number of people taking from the system versus paying into. Where else is the money going?
Any California residents on the forum that can shed some light?
oerdin it's the artificial economy that creates those situations in the first place. The proximity to manhattan didn't mean suffolk county was offering many jobs that would permit anyone to live there relative to housing costs realtors insisted upon people as keeping up with the joneses. Once that pricetag goes to an extreme, it displaces that middle class to st elsewhere, because no employer can afford to pay $50 hr living wage salaries to a janitor or a pizza delivery guy. Parents selling their homes as if they won the lottery never gave one whit of consequence to the fact that their own children would not be able to afford living in the neighborhoods they were raised.
Suffolk county local govt was overjoyed by over estimates in property valuations because it only meant more revenue for them to play with in budgets. It never dawned on them that once you've choked off so much discretionary income, people start getting underwater exponentially. This was prior to subprime meltdown, which continued exponentially as well.
Corporations do not pay taxes, they only pass those costs onto consumers when they decide how much they want to be paid. Why do you think oil industry made record profits last year? It wasn't all about volume sales. The price went up, they kept their margin the same, and reaped the benefit of inflated prices. 10% of $100 is $10. 10% of $500 is $50. Even when they do less volume they get paid more (to do less). Look at the price of their stocks and their profits now.
Additionally the whole country pays more for oil because the large tax imposed on oil companies drawing oil out of alaska gets handed directly to the consumer, who are essentially paying alaskan resident taxes. A shell game. Govt has no incentive to ease the burden off motorists because when the price of fuel is taxed on the inflated commodity price, they amplify their own revenue without lifting a finger or even needing it. What does that mean to the guy making minimum wage who can't afford to get to work when gas is $5 a gallon?
Have you ever gone to one of these town meetings or legislative public hearings regarding budgets? Do you understand that the strategies and languages they employ are all about 'capturing' money from some mysterious place to finance a goal they arbitrarily decide is important? They think in terms of predators hoping for a dragnet that will get as much money for the coffers without upsetting those who make the campaign contributions. Think of how many levels of government spend their every waking moment trying to figure out how to target you in yet another dragnet, while avoiding their own privileged constituents? This is what has become business as usual within our own government. There are so many legislatures wanting their fair share of citizenry to finance their myriad goals that self serve more than serve the public, that people get pushed to the brink.
My own gross to net taxation level in suffolk county NY reached a level that was socialism, without any benefit of socialism, without any chance of increasing my wages, and with exponentially rising cost of living for bare necessities. Statistically they insisted there was no rise in inflation, but I knew what I was experiencing on the ground. More of that funny math government does.
California is expensive and, like the rest of the US, despite our best efforts the middle class is slowly disappearing. Either you're a highly educated professional who makes six figures (or near to it) or you work in a low paying job like retail or the restaurant industry. That's not true in all places but it is becoming more and more true as the well paying blue collar manufacturing jobs disappear due to free trade. I went and got a master's degree in a hard science so I'm doing well but people who don't have that level of education do struggle.
That said huge numbers of immigrants (mostly from Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia) regularly arrive in California so the over all population keeps going up. There has been a notable excedus of blue collar workers though who realize they can make the same wages in other states but pay a lot less for housing. The good news for the local economy is that lots more people in high paying jobs keep moving here. Lots of lawyers, doctors, scientists, and engineers.
Yes, this does create a bifurcated society of haves and have nots but that's more of an American condition then a California condition. Our current policies promote that and work against your average blue collar person. That said the reason things like land cost so much in California is because so many people want to live here. There is only so much coastal property to go around but there are hordes of people who want to live in the California sunshine. It's a classic supply and demand situation where the well off end up with the scarce resources.
How do the illegal aliens afford to live there? Answer: You pay for them or you would have more money and so would the state.
This isn't an illegal immigration thread but the reason immigration should be controlled is so that taxpayers don't subsidize more poor people than the country/state can afford. "Cheap labor" for business costs you as individuals, a fortune, not because the illegal immigrants don't pay taxes but because they don't pay enough taxes to make up for what they cost in public services (prisons, schools, healthcare, roads, fire, police, etc.). Republicans and Democrats are lame on the issue. Republicans want cheap labor and Democrats want hispanic votes. In 2004, it cost Californians 10 billion annually.
Illegal aliens get virtually no money from the government. They mainly survive by living packed in to small apartments and pooling resources just like most immigrant groups.
Illegal aliens get virtually no money from the government. They mainly survive by living packed in to small apartments and pooling resources just like most immigrant groups.
Unfortunately that's true. They do get money from the government though, in the form of WIC credits, foodstamps and section 8 housing though. If they have a child on US soil, the parents get benefits for the child, since the majority are Catholics, they don't do the bc thing. Then, they work under the table for cash so they qualify for larger benefits, then pack themselves 3 families or more in a small apartment/house. With that many people, trash builds up, cars build up and people build up.
I've seen it happen in my old neighborhood. It's quite sad, really
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