I don't know whether to be happy or sad about the failure of the California budget propositions Tuesday.
I didn't vote -- for the most point, I avoid participating in this part of the electoral process -- although if I had voted, I'm pretty sure I would have been against all of them.
You see, there are two men basically responsible for the mess in which the state finds itself, one living and one dead. Both of them for pretty much the same reason.
The dead guy is Howard Jarvis, the leader of the tax revolt and the author of 1978's Proposition 13, which set such stringent limits on property taxes that it pretty much permanently hamstrung the state budget process.
The living guy is our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran in 2003 on the platform of cutting the vehicle tax. That move almost single-handedly created the budget problems we now have when it comes to a shortfall of revenue.
Yes, spending in some areas is too high. Union contracts, particularly in the area of pensions, are killing the state. I'm not sure it's necessary for state employees to have gilt-edged pensions at a time when private companies have all but eliminated them.
Health care hurts too. We've got way too many Californians -- illegal immigrants and otherwise -- without health insurance, seeking care at the state's emergency rooms.
You want to know one thing we don't have, though?
Onerous taxation.
All we ever hear from the right is that we're staggering under some of the highest taxes in the nation. The fact is, though, that our taxes and fees as a percentage of income rank 18th among the 50 states.
We also hear that we can't soak the rich for everything. True, but according to non-profit Citizens for Tax Justice, the rich are barely getting wet. The top 1 percent of wage-earners, who made an average of $2.3 million in 2007, paid 7.4 percent of their income in state taxes last year.
Those earning $20,000 or less paid 10.2 percent.
The main reason for this is the sales tax, the most regressive of all taxes. Since poor people have to spend much more of their income, they pay a lot of sales tax. That's why whenever you hear someone pushing something called a "Fair Tax," where the only tax would be on consumption, you know they're either on the payroll of the rich or they don't understand taxation at all.
So what's wrong in California?
Actually, quite a few things:
-- When it comes to the federal government, California -- like most blue states -- pays in a lot more than it gets back. That's particularly true when it comes to illegal immigrants. We're paying to educate them, heal them and jail them, and we don't even get any say in whether they can be deported. That's federal.
-- We're locked into an archaic tax system because of Prop 13 and the requirement for a two-thirds vote to pass budgets.
-- We are locked into mediocre legislators because of term limits.
-- Our school system is way too top-heavy with administrators, adding billions of dollars in cost.
All that's just scratching the surface. One of the biggest problems is that no one tells the truth to voters about paying for the government they want, and the initiative process has turned into a private game for rich people.
I've lived in California for nearly 20 years, and I'm glad my kids went to good California public schools and excellent public universities. But I'm also glad they're grown and neither is planning to live in the state permanently.
We won't retire here, either. The next 10-20 years are going to be way too painful, and that's if they can straighten all this out.
If not, they could be disastrous.
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4 comments:
Mike, I've been a very quiet reader for almost areader. Blog responses at all, but I have to take issue with your assessment of California's fiscal problems.
It has little or nothing to do with Jarvis or Arnold.
It's very simple: we have -- and probably always have had -- kooks running our state government.
There have been some notable exceptions -- it's hard to fault Reagan's fiscal policies. He brought a surplus into the state coffers.
However Jerry Brown and virtually everyone since has played games with te budget.
The basic problem is we spend far too much money.
It's just like your home budget -- if you spend more than you have, you'll end up broke.
Our taxation scheme (although 18th in tax revenues) has scared away a good part of the type of businesses that were generating money.
It's relatively simple: if you raise the corporate taxation rates too high, companies find more friendly states to relocate.
Add that phenomena to the fact that the aerospace business collapsed and the farming business has done poorly and it's easy to see where the legislators went horribly off the tracks.
California's number one inductsry today is tourism.
For a state as large as ours, we ought to have several other industries topping that, but we don't.
We have a hostile business climate.
And, oh yes, we provide far too much compensation to upper management in all forms of government-run agencies.
You can start with legislators, but they're gardly the sole problem. You have indeed been correct citing Michael Taylor Gatto and others that our education system is flawed. What's more, we throw money at problems without any true accountability.
Roy T. Valley Village
PART ONE (your blog response limits my response length)
Roy T. PART TWO BLOG RESPONSE
Our state government is hopelessly corrupt. Willie Brown may have been very effective running the legislature, but he was hopelessly corrupt. The term-limit actions were a sad and desperate act for cotizens to get out from under powerful machines keeping folks in government.
It appears you disdain the propistions referendums, but that whole system grew out of disgust for and frustration with a state government system as corrupt as anything Huey Long conjured up in Louisiana.
Even Howard Jarvis and his movement were justified because state legisltors, drunk with power and reeling from illegal and unethical profits and jerrymandering, kept the average joes and janes from ever being served properly.
I truly enjoy your writing -- and most of the time, your logic.
But this time, you've missed the mark. I chalk it up to your relative youth (you are not yet sixty, but you pontificate sometimes as if you were the wise old fount) and a total misunderstanding of the history of the problems in our state.
We do need a cleaning broom of reform in our state, starting in Sacramento, but continuing up and down the state, starting with state and local agencies and governments and continuing on to the banking, insurance, real estate, and tourism industries.
Less than twenty years ago, the Los Angeles City Council, seeking more revenue, decided to revoke insurance companies' not-for-profit status (an in-between category not non-profit, but also but dividend-paying shares).
The result was utter chaos.
Every major insurance company in Los Angeles left -- and took employees and their taxable salaries with them. Also lost were revenues those 50,000+ people gerenated in parking lot fees, rsturant, stores, etc.
Stupid decisions have crippled the state and its major cities.
I'm not advocating giving away the store to coprorations, but a fair system that recognizes what good corporations and whole industries bring to the state is needed.
You have obviously lived elsewhere, so I challenge you -- what is our state's reputation around the country? Is it a godo one?
Let me answer my own question -- it's not. WE're laughed at and mocked.
This wasn't always the case.
When we had high employment, good solid business revenues from a diverse economy and the best schools in the country, we were admired if not envied.
We have brought this on ourselves.
We need to put the "rascals" out of office -- state and private.
We need to start applying logic and common sense.
That's when things will turn around.
Roy T., Valley Village
Roy, I agree with a lot of what you say and will address some of it in future posts.
As for the "pontificating," well, I was a newspaper columnist for five years and I think it goes with the territory.
Thanks so much for your intelligent and cogent comments.
Mike, thank YOU for the compliments.
Now, let me return one -- I've known and read some of the best columnists America has ever produced.
Herb Caen was a personal friend -- and a Pulitzer Prize winner.
I also knew Jimmy Breslin personally and professionally. And Art Buchwald. All three won Pulitzer Prizes as columnists -- so please understand, I think you're gifted in this type of writing.
While they were all different and wonderful in so many ways, I think you can (at times) write as well as they did.
You have a tendency to be dismissive of people or views that conflict with yours. So be wary of pride, my friend, because even the most talented can fall. Still, I enjoy your persona and often your turn-of-phrase.
You're probably most like Herb, particularly if Herb didn't like someone or something. He could become insufferably "snarky" as you wrote in a earlier blog about your own tendencies.
I've read over the last year about the terrible way you lost your job and folks in San Francisco know all too well the same fate may await their best newspaper columnists.
The business has changed for you newspaper people -- and not for the best. Our largely barely literate society is becoming more dependent on radio and TV for their information and all that is decidedly biased and distorted. ratings seem to rule and I'll bet your newspaper replaced you with an ill-informed novice straight out of school.
So that's my compliment and here's my encouragement: keep writing and try to stay objective and fair -- even toward views that you don't share or even dislike. You'll be a better man and writer for it.
As it is, you are one of the best internet writers with a blog. Keep it up.
Roy T.
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