Ted, to address your points one-by-one:
- Prop. 13 was necessary to protect middle-class homeowners from paying more taxes simply because neighboring homes are being speculated upon. Besides, Prop. 13 does nothing to lower the taxes of new home buyers. Hence, Sacramento should still be raking in the dough from the housing boom. Like Ah-nuld pointed out, CA doesn't have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem.
Wrong. Back then, CA was still a relatively conservative [politically] state that was growing fast. For a long time, housing costs were lower than that of the national average. However, in the 70s, as close in land around the cities became scarce, the cost of housing became greater than the national average. Assessors noted the change and began to hike up assessments which, in turn, raised taxes. The GOPers, being good conservatives, were incensed.....they did not like that their good money was going to support the burgeoning gov'ts in the cities, counties and state needed to accommodate the influx of all the new people.
Of course, the big theory pushed at that time........a cut in taxes would generate faster growth and make up for any shortfalls in tax revenues. Reaganian economics? Republican economics? Who knows from what branch of the GOP ideology whence came this theory. In any case, Prop. 13 was born. Growth continued to happen but it never made up for the initial shortfall and CA has been short of tax revenues ever since. The gov'ts are stretched, service poor and everyone fighting to get its fair share. Since 1980, CA has been on the verge of imploding. A newer version of the Prop 13 debacle can be seen in OR..........they had to close schools early last year to make up for shortfalls.
- Corruption is a big factor, I'll agree, but in my opinion, the bigger waste of money is the bureaucracy. Lots of redundant agencies doing the work that half the personnel could accomplish, but of course, the public employee unions always divert attention by pointing to teachers, nurses, and police officers, which we always seem to have a shortage of.
You don't know if the bureaucracy is bad or not. How do you measure such a thing. I've stood in CA DOT lines after they consolidated offices because of budget cutbacks. The DOT employees were working.....could they go faster, maybe but it was hard to tell. They certainly weren't slackers. And the lines were huge. A visit to DOT in LA sometimes took over an hour. A year after I got here I had to go to the local DOT. Dreaded it.....wished I didn't have to go. What a surprise when I got there. There was a line......smaller than the lines you see in CA banks. I was in and out in ten minutes. I really don't believe WA DOT workers are that much more productive than CA DOT.
Having said all that, I will give you that there is a bad attitude in CA. And its worsened in the past ten-fifteen years.
- Yeah, illegal immigration does put a drag on our state services, somewhere on the order of $5B a year in California alone according to one report. Of course, the allies of the unions are also the same ones protecting the rights of illegal immigrants. As usual, it's all about scoring political points and making someone else pick up the tab.
If the monied folks in CA did not want illegal immigration, it would not be happening. However, CA has become addicted to cheap labor and they can't break the addiction. Unfortunately, the gov'ts are paying for the price break that private parties get from cheap labor. Another noose around the public sector's neck it can ill afford.
- As for that "me-first" attitude you talk about, it's not specific to California. I've seen that a lot back in Oregon, especially from people who are quick to blame all of Oregon's recent problems on people moving from California. NIMBYism and the entitlement mentality is alive and well up and down the Left Coast. And probably nationwide as well.
The problem with both OR and WA is that they have the same Prop. 13 kind of butthole of a guy who is pushing to reduce gov't taxes. The OR version has been more successful.......taxes have been reduced; hence, the shortfalls. The guy in WA state has been caught cheating. His credibility has been greatly diminished. Consequently, WA state has not seen the shortfalls that OR has experienced during the latest recession. Its helped considerably that the state legislature enacted a series of budget cutbacks in service making a balanced budget possible each of the recession years. |
