California -- America's first failed state?

The cost of shoring up Calpers, the troubled $200 billion pension fund for California public employees, will ultimately fall on the state's 38 million residents, who are already dealing with tax increases and reduced public services.....

Ontario's annual payments of $8.2 million to Calpers are expected to increase by another $6 million, or 75%, by 2015 to help cover the investment losses....

for some employees, pension benefits as a percentage of employee compensation have soared from 14% to 40% over the years....

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB125556625187286301.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular

Keep telling yourselves that this is a prop 13 problem, boys.

 

It's not the problem, Poin, but it is a problem...as are the pension funds, the misuse of ballot initiatives, the unfriendly business climate and about 15 other things. I don't know that anyone is trying to hold Prop 13 out as the silver bullet here...and if they are, I agree with you that they're dead wrong.

But it is a problem.

 

I respectfully disagree. We've had probably 3 or 4 of these California threads. Go back. Prop 13 is repeated as the problem, like some sort of gospel.

Lets look at the numbers from this thread. CA is 10th highest in property taxes. At the top of the 50 states in income taxes. Business taxes. Sales taxes. Gasoline taxes. This state doesn't have a revenue problem, its got a spending problem.

The pension mess is going to take this state down. Legislators and the unions have sucked each others' dicks for so long. You just cannot offer hundreds of thousands of state employees 60%-90% of their highest yearly salary in retirement. For life. Thousands are double dipping ('retiring', then taking another state job for two pensions). With people living longer and longer (not to mention the Calpers losses) the numbers just don't make it.

Sit back and grab the popcorn when the cities and municipalities start going BK. Vallejo was just the start.

 

Except these other tax rates likely would not be as high as they are without Prop 13. It didn't reduce tax revenue, it just induced legislators to raise other taxes to compensate for what Prop 13 took away. I'd say two of the biggest impediments to new investment in California right now are the outlandish real estate prices and high corporate tax rates, and prop 13 indirectly contributed to both problems.

I think you're right that spending is the primary problems, but Prop 13 deserves some blame too. It gave California a screwy taxation system compared to other states and had a lot of negative unintended consequences that the typical referendum voter never considers.

 

Getting back to the original question:

That's be Georgia, once Atlanta, sick of all the Rep. Bubba Jethros from our 6,000 Jeff Davis County equivalents attempting to de-fund everything Atlanta-related, secedes from the state and puts up a giant wall.

 

Couldn't possibly be the spending. :

 

I would think that the idea you shouldn't spend way more than you have would be universally accepted. Apparently not.

 

Fixed.

 

This thread was just fine til you fucked it up Star.

 

Here's a novel idea. Instead of being the self-appointed "no politics" avenger, how about letting the mods do their job? If they have a problem, they can handle it.

 

All these red/blue, Repub/Dem, conservative/liberal asshats seeking refuge from the now-closed politics shithouse can fuck themselves right in the ass.

As to the problems of this state, dig on this. In five years, the potential exists that 1 in every 3 California tax dollars receipts will be going to fund pensions alone.

http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2009/10/calpers-california-pension-plan-too-big.html

One out of every three dollars to fund those platinum-gilded pensions.

Our legislatures, and the unions, have boned this state but good.

 

More fun facts from that same link:
Here is a great story from the LA Times showing the complete disassociation between reality and what is going on in the public sector. As I noted last week, public and pseudo public jobs (of which healthcare has now become with the massive subsidies - you can also include education here) are now 1/3rd of our entire workforce... and it's growing like a weed. So 2/3rds are subsidizing 1/3rd ... today. And it will only grow from here. When is the breaking point? 50/50? When 1/3rd outside government is supporting 2/3rds inside government / healthcare? I don't know. But it will end badly.

(LA specific) Collecting nearly $318,000 a year, the former head of Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power tops a list of 841 city pension recipients paid six-figure benefits, according to newly obtained records.

"We should never, ever design a pension formula that provides more for a person when they retire than when they are working. It defies any common sense," said Marcia Fritz, vice president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, a nonprofit pension reform group headed by former GOP Assemblyman Keith Richman.

"But that's what we're finding" in some school systems and public safety agencies, Fritz said.

(in greater California) The group has publicized more than 5,000 names of state and local government pension recipients across the state collecting more than $100,000.

5,000 people alone are collecting a half a billion dollars a year in pensions. Every year. Hell, its much more than a half billion. It'd be a half billion if these 5,000 were only collecting $100k a year in pensions, but many of these are collecting much more per year than 100k.

Yeah, thats sustainable long-term.