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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (231163)	4/30/2005 3:32:02 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571886

As of 2003 CA's taxes where the 6th highest in the country. townhall.com; First let me say.....when comparing taxes you can play all kinds of games and the dude in the article above has done just that. There are so many holes in his story, I don't know where to begin. Let me just say that his 2% limit on CA assessment increases per year is news to me. I am not saying its not true.......I just have never heard it. And it seems to me, that assessments jumped more than 2% each year the first years I got to the state. As for Neb. being the 45th worst tax climate and CA 49th, other studies might make them 10th and 13th respectively. When it comes to taxes, there are so many manipulative games that can be played, a state's ranking can be all over the board. Then he says: "The trouble with California taxes is not that property taxes are too low, but that income and sales taxes are way too high. The personal income tax rates are high enough to provoke an exodus of skilled people -- a "brain drain." Corporate tax rates are high enough to provoke an exodus of business capital -- "capital flight." Sales tax rates are high enough to provoke wholesale tax avoidance" The primary reason that people like myself and others who left CA is because the quality of life had deteriorated badly in a few short years.......from 1987 to 1995, conditions in CA worsened dramatically. Crime had increased significantly, services were badly deteriorated and the infrastructure was falling apart. And when I got to CA in the late 80s, people who had been in CA before Prop. 13 in 1979 told me that the years immediately after the passing of the proposition had shown a similar decline. So for the 2+ decades since prop. 13, CA has witnessed a serious decline in its quality of life. What happens when an area's quality of life deteriorates? Those who can afford to move, move. Often, it has little to do with taxes. The author also says: "In 1991, as State Sen. Tom McClintock recently recalled, "An 18 percent increase in the sales tax and a 15 percent increase in upper brackets of the income tax were supposed to produce a net of $7 billion of new revenues. But they didn't. ... We didn't take in $7 billion more -- we took in $1 billion less. We lost another $1 billion the next year."" Duh? S. CA alone lost 1 1/2 million people between 1991 and 1994 due to the twin disasters of an earthquake and riots. And he wonders why sales tax revenues came in a little short. How stupid does he think we are? Another point he makes: "The assessed value of California property rose 4.8 percent a year from 1990 to 2002, virtually identical to the 4.9 percent annual growth of personal income." I am not buying that one. Assessment dropped for most of S. CA from 1990 til 1996. The average median for LA County did not recover its 1989 peak until some time in 1998. In other words, ten years went by before LA housing become more expensive than it was in 1989. I could go on but I don't have the time. Prop. 13 has given the gov't haters of CA what they wanted........cheap prop. taxes. Unfortunately, along the way, the state could no longer be called the Golden State. Ten is living probably in one of the better areas and even he complains about traffic and other negatives. What has been done to CA is a crime. The state with some of the best weather and coastal beauty in the country is turning into a pit. ted