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Jerry Moonbeam says that income tax collected was short by $3 billion and he spent $2 billion more than anticipated. His plan to fix the problem- increase the state sales tax and increase income tax rate for those making over $250,000 by 3%
I was imagining Jerry at the big Clooney shindig saying 'Not to worry, I have plans to fix the budget gap. Your guest of honor wants to increase your federal income tax rate by 5% and I want to increase your state income tax rate by 3%. But don't let this stop you from writing your check for $40,000'
It is not going to increase by 25%. In LA the sales tax is around 9% which is on par with many other places, including red states and cities, in the country. One of the reasons income, sales and gas taxes are high here is because the property tax is limited by law to be cheap (the max is 1% of home value).
Also very expensive fines and fees.
The fiscal structure of California is the height of economic insanity.
There is more justification for high property taxes than high taxes of any other kind. Proposition 13 not only hurts state finances but encourages real estate bubbles and has created a landed aristocracy in California.
And the article clearly says that more cuts will be made to deal with the problem. What the F do you haters want? Oh wait, I know. You either want everyone in California to die, or you just want to complain about California until YOU die.
Works for me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by malamute
Why shouldn't higher taxes be on a volunteer basis? In California, tax loving democrats outnumber republicans and you would think the democrats wouldn't need to wait for the government to raise their taxes but would submit them voluntarily to keep their beloved welfare programs going and all the rest.
They keep saying the rich should pay more, but so far, not a single one has put money where mouth is.
it is the same all over the country-people want services but they don't actually want to pay for them. california is only representative of the problems that the whole country faces, although their problems are a little more acute.
they have increasing pension costs, increasing social service costs, are increasing their borrowing, and have higher unemployment than the rest of the US. (only 2 states have higher unemployment).
from vanity fair:
The pensions of state employees ate up twice as much of the budget when Schwarzenegger left office as they had when he arrived, for instance. The officially recognized gap between what the state would owe its workers and what it had on hand to pay them was roughly $105 billion, but that, thanks to accounting gimmicks, was probably only about half the real number. “This year the state will directly spend $32 billion on employee pay and benefits, up 65 percent over the past 10 years,” says Crane later.
“Compare that to state spending on higher education [down 5 percent], health and human services [up just 5 percent], and parks and recreation [flat], all crowded out in large part by fast-rising employment costs.” Crane is a lifelong Democrat with no particular hostility to government. But the more he looked into the details, the more shocking he found them to be. In 2010, for instance, the state spent $6 billion on fewer than 30,000 guards and other prison-system employees. A prison guard who started his career at the age of 45 could retire after five years with a pension that very nearly equaled his former salary. The head parole psychiatrist for the California prison system was the state’s highest-paid public employee; in 2010 he’d made $838,706. The same fiscal year that the state spent $6 billion on prisons, it had invested just $4.7 billion in its higher education—that is, 33 campuses with 670,000 students. Over the past 30 years the state’s share of the budget for the University of California has fallen from 30 percent to 11 percent, and it is about to fall a lot more. In 1980 a Cal student paid $776 a year in tuition; in 2011 he pays $13,218. Everywhere you turn, the long-term future of the state is being sacrificed.
California cities and counties have seen pension costs rise 11.4% per year since 1999-and you know that wages aren't keeping up with that.
What can you expect when you have over 25% of the illegal alien population in one state only and they cost the state billions of dollars a year?
I actually wrote a paper on the subject so I am gonna paste a couple paragraphs here and you can decide for yourself where cuts should be made...
"California is home to an estimated 2 million illegal aliens who are also a drain to the state. In 2004 alone, it was reported that illegal aliens cost the taxpayers of California $10.5 billion a year for education, health care, and incarceration. There are about 19,000 illegal aliens behind bars in that state. Out of that, $7.7 billion were spent on K-12 education for children of illegal aliens who at the time constituted 15% of the student body in the state. Healthcare costs for illegal aliens and their families
topped $1.4 billion.
In a more recent report, it was reported that over $640 million dollars in welfare and food stamps benefits were issued to illegal alien parents on behalf of their native born children, just in LA county alone. The amount consisted of over $250 million in welfare and $388 million in food stamps which represents a $21 million dollar increase over the previous year. The total cost for public safety and healthcare and public safety exceeded $1.6 billion."
Hey California residents, open your wallets a bit more. The illegal aliens in your state
need you!
Last edited by KickAssArmyChick; 05-14-2012 at 07:25 AM..
Taxes here are not that high on people who make less than $125K a year. You people make it sound much worse than it is. But please keep telling people how horrible things are here. We are all starving and cannot find a job! We don't need anymore "dreamers" moving out here. In fact, I hope this becomes a HIT again SOON:
BTW, the writer of that song .... YES he lives HERE!
It would make sense if we did away with Prop 13. The ridiculously low taxes paid on primo commercial and residential properties is hurting revenue. Not only does it limit the amount of tax revenue, but it also truly lines the pockets of the rich. It creates a barrier to new home owners (most of whom are minorities) and adds fuel to the gap that currently exists. Also the whole 3 strikes law is absurd. We pay such a huge percentage of our budget on the prison industrial complex. We have neglected the state's best asset, its universities.
One large contributor to the problem is the proposition system. It essentially lends itself to a ballooning budget (from the left and right) and a lack of wanting to pay for it (mostly the right, but some on the left).
I agree that some cutbacks must occur in social programs. I just think that the discussion should not just be about which social programs to cut. It should involve on tax collection and how taxes are voted on.
I think all Californians must pitch in to help the golden state shine again, not just the poor, students, and the middle/upper middle class.
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