State of California is broke

Of course this assumes illegals actually pay for the items they walk out of stores with - a huge "if"

 

I have seen houses in the same subdivision in California on Zillow where the tax on one property is $1,200 and basically the same house on the same street is $10,000. If the first house is still with the owner when Prop 13 passed and the houses have appreciated in value from something like 75K to 1M, which has happened some places in Silicon Valley, you would have this kind of discrepancy. And it applies to commercial, also.

If you look at charts of per capita taxation per person by state California is about 10th in the country, comparing to places
Washington. But since property taxes are a relatively low part of the tax base the State must rely on the income tax, which is subject to severe swings depending on how the financial markets are doing.

I think the paradox California has is that it has some of the highest paid government workers in the country. But it is so expensive you need to pay a lot of money to these government workers, aka cops, firemen, teachers, etc. to live there. That highly paid teacher who works in Palos Verdes is probably commuting a long way in and still paying a lot more for less house than he/she would pay in the rest of the country.

 

I know all that about the property tax. I am living it.

Regarding public employee pay and pensions, no you don't have to pay that. Teachers are not well paid, but police, fire and especially the state paper-pushers have extremely and in some cases obscenely generous compensation packages. It used to be that enough people would leave those jobs for higher-paying private sector gigs that it wouldn't take such a bite out of the budget. But now the pay and pensions have gotten so good that nobody would even think about leaving for the private sector.

 

Don't you mean private sector pay and benefits has been so poor, leading people to stay in the public sector?

 

No.

 

No I don't. Public sector pay and benefits raced past it, and that was well before private sector pay and benefits slowed down.

Does it seem reasonable that city employees after 15 years can get full health coverage for life for themselves and their spouses? Or that police and fire are earning, because of cost-of-living increases and final-year "spiking" of their income, more in retirement than they ever earned working?

 

Another problem is the state budget has been micromanaged to death via the initiative process: Education and cops, yeah, but some real esoteric stuff like mountain lion protection. Then there's the latest flustercluck, developing a high-speed rail system, or as I like to think of it, the Springfield Monorail.

 

Public employee unions buy state legislators, lock stock and barrel. State legislators give salary and benefits that would make Goldman Sachs directors blush.

Its California 101, folks.

 

lol

 

No one needs to look up Howard Jarvis to know that you're ripping on a GOP bogeyman from 30 years ago, who, gee, just happened to be raised Mormon.

No, California's not broken because it's horribly gerrymandered, or that the state legislature doesn't have to care, or that there has been a succession of bad governors.

Nope, it's all about Howard freaking Jarvis!

Despite the fact that many politicians of all shapes and sizes have passed through California in the last three decades, Azrael vents his spleen against a religious (in his youth) conservative Republican who initiated a ballot measure that passed with two-thirds of the vote . . . in 1978.

I'm going to say now that if Jimmy Carter had never been president, the United States would have absolutely no problems.

That's not crazy. It's just great political logic.

 

I don't even bother with the Howard Jarvis boogeyman. Prop 13 for California is like a broken pinky finger on a man with cancer of the liver.

 

The fact that so many people want to continue on with the high-speed rail project, as costs have ballooned from $34 billion when it was approved to $98 billion now (and who really thinks that will be all of the cost increases), is a strong argument that giving this particular government more money to work with is a terrible idea.

I pay 9 percent in sales taxes and 9 percent in income taxes, and on my home I bought for $300,000 many years ago I pay about $5,000 in property taxes. That's plenty of contribution from a normal taxpayer.

Sure, Prop 13 probably does need to change, especially for the business side of things; it was sold as a way from keeping grandma in her house but in reality is a way for apartment complex owners and Fortune 500 companies from ever paying more taxes.

But a whole lot needs to change before Prop 13 does.