Typical Reuters fake "reporting." Cut/eliminate the bureaucrats, not teachers and police. AND CUT THE TAXES! These states are all at Point B on the Laffer Curve.
Ping!
Jenny Granholm said we had a “breathtaking” tobacco and lottery revenue decline several months ago. Obviously the only solution is to raise taxes some more. LOL
“It’s crazy. It’s really just unbelievable...”
No, it’s not. It’s by DESIGN, you moron. (Scott, not you TLR!)
They wrote this article as if it was bad news that government is being starved down...
“The act also created a state fiscal stabilization fund and dedicated money to education.”
*SIGH* Yes, we need our kids to be educated...there is going to be an amazing shortage of workers that can read and write and do math in the near future.
What we DON’T need is Government setting aside our tax dollars for more teacher perks...when most of the kids are falling through the cracks as it is!
They don’t have a problem talking about revenue shortfalls, but the outrageous government spending that makes shortfalls a problem doesn’t seem to get much space over at Reuters. I wonder why that is?
And yet all states have tons of money for welfare programs.
What is keeping a lot of states afloat right now is the Stimulus money. Without that, there would be massive layoffs at the state level, in addition to, the secondary effects of those layoffs. However, the money will run out in 2010. That is why, I think, they’ll be forced to do Stimulus II. Many, if not most, of these state jobs are union jobs—the Dems will not allow massive union layoffs. The result will be more debt, more printing of $$, a devalued dollar, and (eventually) hyper-inflation.
In short, we are just pushing our problems off to the future, but increasing their effect with every delay. Our politicians are hell-bent on keeping Americans from feeling any pain whatsoever. When the pain finally comes, instead of a headache, we will get a massive brain embolism.
Government finally joining the ranks of those who starve while being forced to feed it?
The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy--If We Let It Happen, by Laffer, Moore, and Tanous.
See the chapter entiled "Bankruptcy 90210".
The States must do something to get the Federal Govt. out of their business.
They spent like drunken sailors as the housing bubble pushed property taxes ever higher. Now comes the reckoning.
Despite the $3,000 signs all over the place, the ARRA has little to do with economic stimulus and much to do about bailing out states that budget beyond their means.
There is the active Tea Party revolt going on, but there is an even greater passive revolt going on which involves handling personal finances in such a way as to deprive all levels of government of revenue. Much of the passive revolt is voluntary, but some of it is not because it involves people who have lost jobs and have no means to be taxed.
Remain calm! All is well!...and pigs have wings!
Typical Reuters fake "reporting." Cut/eliminate the bureaucrats, not teachers and police. AND CUT THE TAXES! These states are all at Point B on the Laffer Curve.
Mich’s blog post today is about this:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
His comments on Gov. Daniels of Indiana:
“Give Daniels a cigar for multiple consecutive thoughts that make sense, an extreme rarity in politics at any level.
1) It is now very clear that the methods that have been used here, and in other states for that matter, are simply out of date.
2) Americans, including Hoosiers, have shifted in their consumption patterns. They are saving more and spending less.
3) This isn’t a very temporary phenomenon.”
When times were good they spent it all to buy as many votes as possible.
Just about everyone outside of the ‘professional’ economists know what’s happening to this country, and it’s not pretty. Our trajectory will make Japan’s lost decade seem like a cakewalk. But all we hear is great news on jobs (i.e., the loss of jobs slowed again), or how some company is hiring 10 new workers, or how the ‘stimulus’ has saved the economy, or how housing has recovered (prices are climbing [a bit] - yet there are nearly 10 million homes being kept off the market, for various reasons).
But when you get into the guts of it, where the real gears are, and where you simply cannot use puffy statements to deny something that’s obvious...that is when you get to talking to state budget officers who really see the fallout of a crashing economy and cannot paper it over...YOU GET THE TRUTH, finally.