No way to fix a ‘fiscal disconnect'

The Orange County Register ^ | 5-14-2012 | The Orange County Register Editorial Boarad

[Mark Landsbaum]

Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday unveiled his revised budget for the coming fiscal year with twin pleas. He pleaded poverty and pleaded with voters to approve more taxes on the November ballot. Both pleas are curious. . .

[GeronL]

The disconnect is the brains of liberals.

[Kellis91789]

The real “disconnect” in CA is that Jerry Brown and his big-government cohort obviously think government services are worth the money they are spending, but not valuable enough for the recipients of those services to actually pay for.

They insist on the high income earners picking up the tab for everything with high taxes on “disposable” income, even though they use virtually none of the “services” Brown considers so valuable. At the same time, the “necessities of life” remain untaxed. What is the message here ? Those who can afford to pay for groceries, rents, and services are not expected to pay for government — otherwise those goods and services would not be exempt from SALES TAX. This creates a magnet for people living at subsistence level to come to CA and be recipients of government services they are not expected to pay for.

Lowering the SALES TAX rate to 4% but extending it to all goods and services would actually double the tax revenue, by taxing a much broader cross section of consumption at a much lower rate. And by reducing the incentive to shop out of state, residents would shop closer to home, and CA wouldn’t need to pursue sales taxes from online sales.