Another terrible progressive idea: government subsidized day care loans

[fskimospy]

Looks like total tourist visitors, and tourist dollars spent, in NYC increased every year except one from 1991 to 2011 (no data in this article for 2012 and 2013 yet.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_New_York_City

Are we supposed to see a sudden catastrophic drying up of tourism there, or would we expect it to erode over time? If it's going to start eroding, we might at least expect to see it, oh, level off first?

This reminds me of the apocalypse and hyper-inflation - always and forever in the future.

Once people can only get 16oz sodas at restaurants everyone will decide to go to Des Moines instead.

 

[woolfe9998]

Once people can only get 16oz sodas at restaurants everyone will decide to go to Des Moines instead.

Will people start to leave California too? 50 years of progressive rule and people just keep coming here. Can't afford a house. Too much demand.

 

[palehorse]

Will people start to leave California too? 50 years of progressive rule and people just keep coming here. Can't afford a house. Too much demand.

Think positive. Once your state taxes double again, in a last ditch effort to pay off your never-ending and ever-increasing state debt, I'm sure the demand will go down and you'll be able to find empty houses everywhere!

 

[piasabird]

In Illinois to run a daycare of a certain size you have to have a degree for a certificate to run a day care center. The center also has to pass State inspections, and the instructors also have to have special training.

Africa also has the highest deathrate by aids for children. Add to that Malaria and other diseases. Some african countries also train their children to be soldiers and send them off to die.

 

[fskimospy]

Think positive. Once your state taxes double again, in a last ditch effort to pay off your never-ending and ever-increasing state debt, I'm sure the demand will go down and you'll be able to find empty houses everywhere!

Once some magical policies I just invented happen you will be DOOMED. DOOMED I SAY.

Do you ever stop and wonder why the places you label as liberal hellscapes have so many millions of people desperately fighting to live there?

 

[Lithium381]

Once some magical policies I just invented happen you will be DOOMED. DOOMED I SAY.

Do you ever stop and wonder why the places you label as liberal hellscapes have so many millions of people desperately fighting to live there?

Free stuff?

 

[palehorse]

Once some magical policies I just invented happen you will be DOOMED. DOOMED I SAY.

Do you ever stop and wonder why the places you label as liberal hellscapes have so many millions of people desperately fighting to live there?

California happens to be physically beautiful.

I wouldn't say the same about Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, NYC, downtown Washington DC, etc...

 

[marincounty]

Think positive. Once your state taxes double again, in a last ditch effort to pay off your never-ending and ever-increasing state debt, I'm sure the demand will go down and you'll be able to find empty houses everywhere!

Actually the state has paid off a lot of the debt run up by the previous Republican administration. And the budget is expected to be balanced or a surplus.
Democrats always have to come in and clean up the mess left by Republicans.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Actually the state has paid off a lot of the debt run up by the previous Republican administration. And the budget is expected to be balanced or a surplus.
Democrats always have to come in and clean up the mess left by Republicans.

Paid off a lot of debt? The state still has billions in pension and medical liabilities which were not included by Brown's proclamation of "turning around the budget". And yet, even though the assumed surplus has not even materialized this state's dem dominated legislators have already begun the process of making plans to increase spending to match up with these fanciful projections.

http://spectator.org/blog/2013/06/26/browns-balancing-act-californi

What do Discovery Channel’s daredevil Nik Wallenda, the man who crossed the Grand Canyon on a tightrope this weekend, and California Governor Jerry Brown have in common? The success of their continued careers rely on one word: balance.

Brown giddily projected a budget surplus of $1.2 billion in May, much to the delight of the New York Times, which released a story last month titled “California Faces a New Quandary, Too Much Money.” But a short-term surplus may still mean a long-term loss for the state, which faces hidden obligations, unfunded liabilities, and an extreme vulnerability to market uncertainty.
This month, California agreed on a budget that did not include spending cuts for the first time in years. In fact, the budget introduced new spending on Obamacare requirements, and increased spending on dental programs for the poor, mental health services, assistance for veterans, and education spending for impoverished areas with high percentages of English-learners. It also includes a $1 billion reserve fund.

Brown, who campaigned on a platform of fiscal pragmatism, orchestrated his balancing act with two years of spending cuts and increased taxes. Propositions 30 and 39 retroactively raised the income tax on the wealthy, increased the sales tax, and closed a corporate-tax loophole. Yet despite The Golden State’s sunny prospects, a debt wall is looming.

A report by CBS revealed actual debt numbers for California between $848 billion and $1.1 trillion. The report accounted for debt from K-12 public schools, city government, county government and special districts debt, unfunded pension and retiree healthcare liabilities, and the interest on those liabilities. Furthermore, California owes the federal government over $10 billion in unemployment-insurance payments.

According to Moody’s Investors Service, California’s long-term debt is still well above the national median by all indicators considered. Per capita debt is over double the national average of $1,074. Debt as a percentage of personal income and debt as a percentage of GDP are both above five percent, also double the national average.
California is particularly vulnerable to downturns in the business cycle because a large percentage of the state income relies on income and capital gains tax revenue from the wealthy. Sixty-three percent of general-fund revenues come from the richest one percent of Californians. The income-tax rise has exacerbated this dependency on the one percent.
The private sector will continue to have to pay for the bloated public sector as the gnarly wave of promised pensions crashes onto the shore. The shrinking birth rate and the increase in the population of retired baby boomers means that the pension problem is the real “quandary” facing California. For example, the pension fund of the teacher’s union alone requires $4.5 billion more a year. That’s the entire budget surplus right there.

Furthermore, the Prop 30 sales tax hike and income tax increase are set to expire in 2016 and 2018 respectively. The federal payroll-tax cut is also scheduled to expire soon, which will hinder consumer spending and shrink the projected sales-tax revenues.

Long-term debt projections show that while California is temporarily back in the black, they are still on the highway to fiscal hell.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasd...s-atop-californias-collapsing-house-of-cards/

Jerry Brown Stands Atop California's Collapsing House Of Cards

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JULY 11: California Gover...
California Governor Jerry Brown. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Jerry Brown, soon to be California’s longest-serving Governor, is obsessed with his legacy. Legacies, however, are judged retrospectively. For now, Brown has been receiving much credit nationally for “balancing” the budget. In truth, the budget is not really balanced and Brown is setting California up to fall like a house of cards.

Jerry Brown certainly is having a good year in the media. This year, PBS told us: “Gov. Jerry Brown Makes Tough Choices to Balance State Budget.” The Atlantic recently heralded: “California’s New ‘Problem’: Jerry Brown on the Sudden Surplus.” Even BusinessWeek proclaimed that Jerry Brown had “Scared California Straight” and that “Jerry Brown Stays Stern on California’s Budget Surplus.”

Brown has received such praise in connection with the California budget process this year, and the ruling Democrats’ self-proclaimed budget balancing. The real score in California, however, demonstrates that the budget is not really balanced and there is nothing but trouble ahead.

First, to use Jerry Brown’s own words, California has a “wall of debt,” which doesn’t include unfunded pension and medical liability – and that wall of debt is NOT included in the budget. The total amount of that debt is somewhere in the $27 billion range and includes over $10 billion owed to the federal government. That money was used to fund California’s Unemployment Insurance Fund, and California seems to have no plan to pay it back – a sort of “reverse” unfunded mandate, if you will.

The fact that California began borrowing that money in 2009 demonstrates the fallacy of the prior claims of balanced budgets. The fact that it is kept off budget, like the other debt mentioned above, demonstrates the fallacy of the 2013-14 budget.

Of course, California has far greater debts than that. One study showed that California governments are over $1 trillion in debt. Most of that is in the form of unfunded pension and medical liabilities owed to state employees. California’s Legislative Analyst told Brown and the Democrat-run legislature to increase the contributions to the state’s teacher’s pension fund by a paltry $4.5 billion to address its announced $73 billion short fall.

The new budget, which includes a call for an increase in spending of 26.2% over the next four years, ignores the Legislative Analyst’s advice.

Keep in mind that the main public employee retirement fund is said to be underfunded by $329 billion and that the unfunded medical benefit deficit is said to be $64 billion in the red. The latter figure, according to Brown, is expected to grow 59% in the next four years.

If you ignore all that, then California has close to a balanced budget. I say “close” because, in fact, the so-called balanced budget steals (sorry – “borrows&#8221😉 $500 million from the State’s cap-and-trade environmental emission reduction program. Brown’s budget does that even with the recently passed, retroactive tax increase that produced higher-than-expected revenues.

Add it up and you find that the budget really isn’t balanced and Brown hasn’t really made any “tough choices.” Brown isn’t alone in that distinction. His predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, promised to “blow up boxes” of government waste and, if I recall correctly, there were no such explosions. Of course, it could be worse. The Democrats in the legislature actually wanted to increase spending more than 26.2% over the next four years.

While we are looking at numbers, consider these: California has the highest income taxes in the country, the highest gas taxes, the most regulations of any state and – surprise – the fourth-highest unemployment rate (which, as every serious person knows, is understated). The latter is a real feat when you consider California’s natural resources – including oil reserves which could easily be a big part of the answer to many of California’s economic and budget problem. See my Forbes article: California’s Anti-Fracking Ideologues Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth.

In the final analysis, instead of addressing those runaway deficit freight trains headed California’s way, Jerry Brown is bent on funding High-Speed Rail in the Golden State to establish his legacy. Interestingly, the yearly budget for high-speed rail is larger than the amount California Democrats appropriated for the California State University system – which tells you a lot about Brown’s priorities. Speaking of legacies, the one of Brown’s father, Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., was the improvement to the state’s educational system made under his tenure. Jerry Brown’s legacy will be the gamble he took with our budgets and high-speed rail – both of which more accurately represent a California house of cards.

 

[palehorse]

Paid off a lot of debt? The state still has billions in pension and medical liabilities which were not included by Brown's proclamation of "turning around the budget". And yet, even though the assumed surplus has not even materialized this state's dem dominated legislators have already begun the process of making plans to increase spending to match up with these fanciful projections.

http://spectator.org/blog/2013/06/26/browns-balancing-act-californi

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasd...s-atop-californias-collapsing-house-of-cards/

LOL... ya just gotta love the California democrats' definition of "balanced budget."

 

[Bowfinger]

Once people can only get 16oz sodas at restaurants everyone will decide to go to Des Moines instead.

Back off, dude. Don't be hatin' on Des Moines. We've got the butter cow and we're not afraid to milk it. Or maybe smear it on home-grown sweet corn and enjoy it with a hot bacon-wrapped riblet on a stick and a funnel cake the size of your head. We can make Bloomberg's head explode. (And his ass.) 16 ounce drinks. Amateurs!

 

[buckshot24]

Then I fail to see how your point is even remotely relevant.

You don't have to be progressive to propose progressive proposals. (those are a lot of pro-s lol)

 

[fskimospy]

You don't have to be progressive to propose progressive proposals. (those are a lot of pro-s lol)

Right. So if the question was someone's overall political ideology, what does that have to do with anything?

 

[buckshot24]

Right. So if the question was someone's overall political ideology, what does that have to do with anything?

Quinn wasn't really the topic of the thread.

 

[fskimospy]

Quinn wasn't really the topic of the thread.

But she was explicitly the topic of the post you replied to?

 

[glenn1]

Will people start to leave California too? 50 years of progressive rule and people just keep coming here. Can't afford a house. Too much demand.

Are you claiming high real estate prices as a point of pride for California? Lots of people live other places too without the insane house prices. Dallas has half again as many people as San Francisco and average home prices is something like $115k. You couldn't even buy a tool shed in someone's back yard for that amount in Pacific Heights.

Besides, there's lots of places in California to get a house for cheap. The desirable parts of any large city tend to be expensive, whether California or anywhere else. Also, not every large city faces the physical limits of geography like San Francisco, or exacerbates high prices with restricive development planning to drive average home prices into the high six or seven figure range. Reasonable people can differ over whether Palo Alto or Portersville represent the more accurate view of CA real estate.