Posted on 07/07/2009 9:17:06 AM PDT by lonewacko_dot_com
Right now California's economy is moribund, and the prospects for a quick turnaround are not good. Unable to pay its bills, the state is issuing IOUs; its once strong credit rating has collapsed. The state that once boasted the seventh-largest gross domestic product in the world is looking less like a celebrated global innovator and more like a fiscal basket case along the lines of Argentina or Latvia.
It took some amazing incompetence to toss this best-endowed of places down into the dustbin of history. Yet conventional wisdom views the crisis largely as a legacy of Proposition 13, which in effect capped only taxes.
This lets too many malefactors off the hook. I covered the Proposition 13 campaign for the Washington Post and examined its aftermath up close. It passed because California was running huge surpluses at the time, even as soaring property taxes were driving people from their homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Here's the comment I left:
This article is beyond dishonest: it completely fails to note the role that massive illegal immigration played in CA's problems. That lead to increased spending and to a large part of the middle class fleeing the state. Not only that, but it built up a power base for the far-left legislators, and they used that to push for more spending.
Without the massive immigration that hacks like Joel Kotkin support, the far-left wouldn't have as much power as they do.
Kotkin misleads about the problem the CA GOP has. It isn't because they're seen as "anti-tax and anti-immigration zealots", but because a) they tend to be socially conservative in a state that generally isn't, and b) they're generally stupid and have a habit of making unforced errors.
Kotkin fails to note that a good portion of the farm-related unemployed are here illegally, and the situation could be lessened if we enforced our laws.
You just can't trust what Joel Kotkin tells you. For a discussion of something else he wrote earlier this year, see this:
http://tinyurl.com/l9mkz7
The libs of course. Who else?
They are just like the unions which used to control Britain until Margaret Thatcher came along. And, like Britain, California won't get better until a California Thatcher gets elected to take the public unions on and break their power.
California Legislature rejects $11 billion of cuts
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090624/us_nm/us_economy_california_budget
“Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich”
Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies — old and new — have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.
Martin Feldstein, Harvard economist and former president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, co-authored a famous study in 1998 called “Can State Taxes Redistribute Income?” This should be required reading for today’s state legislators. It concludes: “Since individuals can avoid unfavorable taxes by migrating to jurisdictions that offer more favorable tax conditions, a relatively unfavorable tax will cause gross wages to adjust. . . . A more progressive tax thus induces firms to hire fewer high skilled employees and to hire more low skilled employees.”
More recently, Barry W. Poulson of the University of Colorado last year examined many factors that explain why some states grew richer than others from 1964 to 2004 and found “a significant negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on state economic growth.” In other words, soaking the rich doesn’t work. To the contrary, middle-class workers end up taking the hit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html
silly libtards...
how about kicking out the mexicans and importing chinese ?
it would improve the economy but then, your views are not entirely about the economy is it.
I suspect your answer is no which merely shows hypocrisy on both sides of the debate.
It’s always the fault of insufficient tax rates. As if increasing the pile of dough in the democrat piggy bank would have made them more responsible spenders. This is a difficult sell when one considers they’re wildly irresponsible spenders even when the piggy bank isn’t full; just the thought of increasing revenue is enough the make them plow through money like Michelle in Paris with her personal staff of 20 or more.
Most of the homeowners who have benefitted from Prop 13 are approaching elder status. That the democrats see them as likely sheep to be totally shorn is telling about their predatory lack of conscience.
He doesn't identify immigration as the biggest problem, which is arguable, but that certainly doesn't vitiate the truth of what he does say. I am sure that even the most anti-immigration (illegal) folks here would say that true conservative leadership would have left california in much less of a mess than it is now -- No?
How ‘bout “Gee, do you think the problem might be that the PRK’s budget increased at many times the rate of inflation and economic growth, until it completely outran the taxpayer’s willingness and/or ability to pay for it?”
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