Californians are some of the most taxed people in the country, yet it never seems to be enough for those who want more of other people’s money.
California has among the highest per capita tax burden and some of the highest income, sales and gas tax rates in the country. It’s no surprise the Tax Foundation ranked California’s business tax climate 48th in the country last year.
This extensive system of taxation puts California on track for a state government general fund budget of nearly $132 billion in the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. That’s up from an enacted general fund budget of $102 billion in 2007-08.
Rather than taxing and spending ourselves into prosperity, however, California continues to lead the nation in poverty, finds itself in the grips of a housing crisis, produces some of the most abysmal educational outcomes in the nation and even after pension reforms in 2012 will remain buried in pension obligations for decades to come.
It is a state of affairs which should prompt some reflection on whether continuing to throw more money at government institutions without ensuring those institutions are as efficient and effective as possible makes any sense.
Alas, there are plenty of well-funded special interest groups and public sector unions at the state and local level which would not be well-served by a suddenly critical populace and honest political establishment and which thrive on the continued system of looting from taxpayers.
Now, those special interest groups and public sector unions are looking to get more, billions more, from property owners this year.
Last month, a proposed ballot measure called the California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act of 2018 was submitted to the attorney general. The measure seeks to implement a long-talked about “split roll” system to siphon more property taxes from commercial and industrial properties.
The list of supporters should surprise no one. Among those endorsing the “Make It Fair” proposal includes the SEIU, California Teachers Association, the single-payer obsessed California Nurses Association and the United Teachers Los Angeles.
Proponents estimate the change to Proposition 13 will generate over $11 billion in annual revenues necessary so California “can restore funding to its underfunded schools, invest in local communities, level the playing field for business, and stimulate the economy.”
It isn’t hard to think of several better and more direct ways of restoring funding to schools, investing in communities, leveling the playing field for businesses and stimulating the economy. In reverse order: repealing job-killing regulations will probably do more to stimulate the economy than extracting billions more from property owners.
Rather than permit crony capitalist exercises like offering subsidies to giant corporations like Amazon, or doling out tax credits which don’t produce measurable results, simplifying the state tax code and lowering tax rates overall would probably do a better job of leveling the playing field for businesses.
If restoring funding to schools and investing communities is truly the goal, it’s an admirable one. Unfortunately, given those supporting the proposal, such rhetoric is generally code for “paying for pensions.”
The state, counties, cities and school districts have all felt the impact of rising pension costs and the problem of pension crowd-out, whereby pension costs engulf increasing portions of budgets and crowd-out funding for tangible services.
According to a study released last year by Stanford University Professor Joe Nation, the state’s contribution to CalPERS and CalSTRS took up 2.1 percent of the state’s operating expenditures in 2002-03. This year, they take up 7.1 percent of operating expenditures and by 2029-30, it will be 10.1 percent or more.
The same thing is felt at the level of school districts, including LAUSD, where UTLA has gotten its way on pension and health benefits to the point where by 2031-32 the district will spend more than half of its budget on pensions and health benefits.
If one is serious about investing in communities and schools, more pension and benefit reforms should be demanded.
While the unions will continue to cloak themselves in progressive rhetoric and seek to trick voters into thinking the path to prosperity and justice is to give the government more money, Californians should cast a more critical eye towards such proposals and resist further looting of taxpayers.
Sal Rodriguez is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. He may be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com
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Raising taxes is not a solution to the problem. Who assumes that those who promote that idea truly believe its a solution? Some people that are able to gain power have a grandiose death wish, and desire to takes large numbers of people with them. Its a mental state that they never confronted, and must keep moving ahead in order to remain distracted from the truth they must deny until they have achieved their gross goal. On a smaller and more crude scale, its why Muslims fly planes into buildings, and others blow themselves up in crowds. A death wish that demands they take others with them.
To the idiots in charge of CA< there's NEVER ENOUGH money they can tax from others..
The Dems don’t understand how money works, as evidenced by their complete surprise that the Trump economy is taking off. Most of us here saw it coming because he flipped so many of the right levers.
When all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails.
The Dems only understand raising tax rates. That’s their hammer. They constantly perplexed when this one trick doesn’t work. They are inherently incapable of understanding the concept of tax cuts fixing problems. It baffles them. They think it’s impossible even though it always works, and their tax hikes always fail.
Reagan “got lucky”.
They’re already trying to credit Obama’s failed and discredited policies for somehow fixing the economy under Trump, but they can’t point to any one policy that would do this. Also, they all said the economy would collapse just befor3e the tax cuts were passed, indicating they themselves had no faith in anything Obama did that would cause a late hit economic recovery.
Obama kept the economy broken. Trump passed a first attempt at fixing it. There are more levers for Trump to flip.
Let the Mexifornian politicians raise taxes all they want… The voters get what they vote for…
As someone who grew up in California; but who can no longer afford to live there; keep going with your social-justice rhetoric and your plans for a socialist dystopia. It almost guarantees the majority of your manufacturing businesses and even IT centers will eventually be priced right out of your job market.
While you’re at it, the rest of “fly-over” country wants you to know that we’re fully supportive of any and all efforts in California to secede and form its own country…with the loss of your Congressional and electoral votes–you’ve got zero chance of any foreign aid when you join Venezuela as the next resource-rich socialist country to go bankrupt…we can only say: It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of elitist politicians, celebrities, academic idiot-savants, and anarchists.
PS. We’ll give you a great price to buy-back the 48% of California that is presently federal land…but we’ll want cash as your credit is shot.
PPS, make it in some HARD currency with actual value. Cause if they ceed from the union, what would they have, to back up any currency they create?
Maybe the big one will hit there and send California out to sea. Then, we will be rid of all the sickness there – Hollywood and all the beautiful people, Moonbeam, Maxine , Nancy, Dianne, all the others too numerous to list…
Only solutions to the Fruitcake State problem (no mistake in my use of the singular here, the whole state is a huge problem for the rest of the US):
* draw a border about 50 miles inland from the coast extending from the US-MessSicko border to Sacramento, then the part of the circle of 50-miles-radius using Sacramento as centre to close it off, and 100′ wall on that border with all land-accesses to the rest-of-US plugged!
* swap out CA, MA, NY and IL for MB, SK, AB and BC (I like this one better — energy-security guaranteed, contiguity of lower-48 with AK)