Big California Tax Hike, Spending Cuts

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: Evan
A budget deficit is easily solved with tax increases

Who is going to stay to pay them? Only the poor. The vast majority of people with a dime to their name has already left or is leaving. The more you raise taxes, the fewer people you will have to tax.

You actually think anyone here is going to buy the BS that you're selling, that people are going to leave the state? rofl, yeah, so many people are leaving CA that every projection has their population increasing at a faster rate than any other state by 2050. Good call. :roll:

You think illegals from south of the border are going to pay your taxes? Good luck with that.

You want to make up lies that we aren't fleeing the state? I call BS on it. New York Times calls BS as well. It's a fact you're going to have to deal with. This has been happening for years now, your only population increase is in illegal aliens.

SFGate

The Seattle Times

LA Times

Maybe you need a reality check.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Jaskalas

Who is going to stay to pay them? Only the poor. The vast majority of people with a dime to their name has already left or is leaving. The more you raise taxes, the fewer people you will have to tax.

How many times does your hand have to be held before you get it through your head; CA's population grows at a faster rate than any other comparably large state in the U.S. They currently have by far the largest population in the country and have horrid traffic in nearly all their big cities. How can rich people be leaving when salaries in CA have on average been increasing ahead of inflation since they were state in the 19th century? If anything it's just the opposite, the poor and lower middle class are leaving.

You think illegals from south of the border are going to pay your taxes? Good luck with that.

Illegals make up less than 5% of the population at absolute worst. Sorry, you lose again.

You want to make up lies that we aren't fleeing the state? I call BS on it. New York Times calls BS as well. It's a fact you're going to have to deal with. This has been happening for years now, your only population increase is in illegal aliens.

SFGate

The Seattle Times

LA Times

Maybe you need a reality check.

Sorry, you fail at research again. Your own damn article (NY Times) states "The number of people leaving Boston, New York and Washington is also rising, and skyrocketing house prices appear to be a major reason..." and "Far more Californians are staying - for the weather, the landscape, the culture and other reasons - than are moving, but it is also clear that California is losing some of its attraction".

In other words, because these articles were written in the last couple yeasrs when the housing bubble was nearly at its peak, it's now clear that ridiculous housing prices and a slow economy, which always force less financially secure people to migrate out of a state regardless of the location in question, was likely the cause. This happens frequently when real estate prices hit enormous levels in highly populated big cities, and your own damn article states a similar trend was seen in CA in the mid-90's, when net population growth was in fact slower then than it has been the last couple years due to aerospace cuts. Now eventually the population may plateau, but it won't be because of the asinine bullshit you spouted before.

And I like how you don't count 200,000 legal immigrants who come to CA as if that's not a legitimate part of CA's growth.

 

[Toasthead]

Originally posted by: Craig234
Before Arnold, Californians elected democrat Gray Davis. Davis was the first democrat elected in a long time, following a bunch of not too good Republicans.

IMO, David did a lot of good things, but he wasn't too well known, despite being re-elected to a second term.

But early in Bush's presidency, after 9/11, Republicans sensed a political momentum and went aftrer a recall campaign.

The campaign had two main issues. One was the broad dissatisfaction with energy outages, now known to have been largely manipulated by Enron, and the other was a populist appeal to the tax haters because after the dot com crash, Davis had ended a temporary suspension of a DMV licensing fee because it was needed again to balance the state budget.

California has a bad culture on taxes - it passed Prop 13, a Republican measure to get rid of business property taxes which devastated state income, adding in residential property tax slashing to get votes. There was a legitimate issue with high property taxes as property values shot up, but Prop 13 was a hammer instead of a scalpel.

So, Davis faced some dissatisfaction because the companythat was Bush's biggest donor targetted democratic California, and because the right-wing noise machine screamed over the DMV licensing fee. It worke, the voters recalled the little-known Davis, and elected Arnold, who had been a close friend to Enron, one of a few invitees to meet with them on their 'California strategy'. Of course, he repealed the DMV fee.

The punch line to he story is that the FMC fee had revenue that matched closely the later deficits Arnold is dealing with. Had Davis remained in office with the fee - no deficits.

Of course, this s a big political embarrassment for Arnold if he just reinstated the fee, but I heard a report today some increase there is now part of his plan.

There was a third campaign issue, accusations that Davis took too much money from special interest donations. Arnold pledge he would take zero, since he was 'rich'.

On that issue as well, Davis wins. Arnold quickly defined special interests to only include donors to democrats like Unions, not business, and took more money than Davis had.

In short, IMO Californias screwed up by recalling Gray Davis. Arnold could be worse, but Davis was better. Once again, Republicans pursued power recklessly and harmed CA.

One other impact - CA would have gay marriage today had Davis been governor. The legislature courageously passed it, but Arnold vetoed it.

umm gray davis shortsightedly signed us into BILLIONS of dollars worth of energy related debt. He got what he deserved.

 

[GenHoth]

I would vote for Arnie as governor of my state!