In Jan 2012 Ca. projected a $9 billion deficit for this year. This is after Gov. Moonbeam raised taxes to cut the deficit. However it seems that instead of more money coming IN, more people moved OUT of Ca. and now they discover that the deficit is now projected at $16 billion. Jan, $9 billion, May $16 billion. Too bad they don't have a computer in Ca. to figure these things out. Now Moonbeam wants more taxes on the rich, and says if that doesn't work [hasn't it already proved it doesn't work?] then he will have to cut $6 billion in services. And they complained about Walker in WI. Walker, that had a plan that HAS worked, has cut the deficit, and HAS lowered taxes. WHERE is the "RECALL" hysteria for Gov Moonbeam's recall?
You cannot understand California's financial problems without understanding the very high levels of immigration it has seen in the last 3 decades, mostly illegal migration from Mexico. The large number of low income people overwhelmed the eductional institutions, and put severe strain on infrastructure and the legal system. California's population grew from 23,600,000 in 1980, to 37,600,000 in 2011. To help understand what was going on, all of this population growth was from non-whites, or in other words, the growth was fueled entirely by immigration from outside countries. Proposition 13 did not help either, which basically exempted old people from paying property taxes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978)
I moved my company out of Ca. in 1985. The liberal insanity was obvious and had become intolerable by then. Immigration was barely a factor then. The problem WAS and remains unsustainable liberal nonsense.
No government is ever so poor or broke that it won't increase the welfare subsidy giveaway to landowners.
Garbage. Proposition 13 passed in 1978, so CA only became unsustainable in 1979. "Liberal nonsense" had nothing to do with it. Canada has about as many people as CA, has had more immigration than CA, and is far more liberal than CA. It is also an island of economic health and financial prudence and sanity in a sea of tax-cutting, service-cutting, race-to-the-bottom insanity. CA is not particularly out of step with many other "liberal" states in its policies or finances, with one glaring exception: it has the lowest overall property tax rates (total property taxes as a fraction of total property value) of any state but that economic powerhouse, LA.
Oh, really? Then why hasn't comparably high illegal immigration from Mexico destroyed TX? Oh, wait a minute, that's right: TX has nearly the highest property tax rates in the country, CA nearly the lowest. How is that significantly different from TX? If only it were that innocent. Old people sometimes sell their property (resetting the tax basis), and in any case soon die. Corporations don't. The real -- and intended -- effect of Prop 13 was gradually to eliminate corporate property tax liabilities, which have fallen by an order of magnitude relative to market value since 1978. Prop 13 -- the greatest public policy blunder committed by any US state since the Civil War -- was sold to voters as a way to save a few dozen retired seniors a year from suffering the intolerable inconvenience of selling their houses for a large, unearned, and untaxed capital gain (courtesy of the community that increased their land's value for them), and buying accommodation better suited to their needs and means in less exclusive neighborhoods. But what has its ACTUAL EFFECT been? MILLIONS of Californians have now LOST their homes, their jobs, their life savings, and everything else. For the sake of a relative handful of greedy landowners, millions of human sacrifices have been laid on the altar of the idol, "homeownership." Until you understand that, you will have no hope whatever of understanding how CA has been destroyed. And make no mistake: CA has been destroyed. It committed suicide the day it passed Prop 13. It is just going to take a little more time for it to die.
Millions have lost their homes???? Didn't that make them landowners too? And buying homes they couldn't afford makes them greedy landowners too. Liberalistic idiocy is blatantly obvious to everyone but liberals. When property changes hands under 13, the property value is updated, so property taxes are not Ca's main problem. Liberal idiocy is.
Yep. The system of landowner privilege forces everyone to choose between staying on the treadmill of the landless, or buying a ticket on the landowners' escalator that the treadmill powers. The desperation of the landless to escape the treadmill that powers the landowners' escalator often drives them to undertake debts they can't repay in order to buy a ticket on the escalator. It's just another way for evil, greedy filth to shear the sheep. Landowners are greedy whether or not they buy homes they can't afford; but one can at least understand the despair that leads the landless into debt to buy land. It certainly makes more sense than lottery tickets. <yawn> Stupid, meaningless garbage with no factual or logical content is blatantly obvious to everyone but right-wing ninnies. Already disproved. First, Prop 13 makes property so much more valuable to the current owner than to a prospective buyer that the market is made relentlessly less liquid: longtime owners simply hold onto their all-but-untaxed property and rent it out. So it is increasingly rare for property -- especially corporate-owned property -- to change hands. Indeed, the systematic falsification of assessments mandated under Prop 13 has given rise to a thriving industry of lawyers and accountants who structure property deals to make them look like corporate mergers or acquisitions, which do not trigger assessment updates. Second, even the assessment update following (increasingly rare) sales is accurate for only the first year; then the cap on assessments kicks in, and the assessment starts sinking farther and farther below market again. There is no other way that CA's property taxes could have declined so rapidly as a fraction both of market value and of public revenue. ROTFL!! Speaking of idiocy, I guess that explains why liberal but high-property-tax states are doing just fine....
