by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n One of the strangest things about the current California meltdown is how no one in state government here ever pauses to ask simple questions like: Why do we have the largest annual deficit with one of the highest sales tax and income tax rates in the country?\u00a0<\/p>\n Anyone who charted the annual state budget increases over the last 10 years and adjusted for population and inflation rises would conclude that the state has decided to take over all sorts of previously private responsibilities and to ensure state employees and various dependents a level of compensation that is not sustainable.<\/p>\n It is not as if California decided about 10 years ago to invest to ensure we had state of the art freeways, university campuses, ports, airports, dams, canals, and power infrastructure. Instead, it was too often redistribution rather than investment. It is not like we can get out of the mess by simply stopping all construction when a vast public work force with pension and salary claims, along with entitlements and welfare, take the lion’s share of the budget.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, tens of thousands whom we used to count on to pay our nearly 10% state income rates continue to flee the state. All the past sleight-of-hand borrowing, reliance on inflated real estate, lotteries, bonds, etc. have already been tried. Now we hit the wall of reality, whose iron-clad law \u2014 when you have no money, you really have no money \u2014 cannot be so easily demagogued away.<\/p>\n California \u2014 by negative example<\/strong><\/p>\n I think the wretched state of California, now looking at a fiscal disaster of roughly a $20-30 billion annual shortfall, should be a wake-up call for the Obama administration. Whatever California is doing \u2014 please don’t follow suit!<\/p>\n With proposed increases, we will have the highest sales taxes (ca. 9%) in the nation, the highest state income taxes (10+%), and probably the lowest thresholds to get into those top brackets \u2014 and yet only about 380,000 Californians pay 40% of the aggregate income tax revenue.<\/p>\n In exchange, our schools, roads, airports, hospitals, and police are, to use a euphemism, not competitive. The CSU campuses make up the largest university system in the world, with the largest unionized faculty, and yet nearly 50% of entering freshman must take mandatory remedial math and English courses. We don’t utilize our ample energy, mineral, and timber resources, but instead depend on other states that do. Such an odd mix \u2014 we have sermons on our own greenness, but stealthy dependence on other less liberal producers to satisfy our insatiable appetites. (Thank god for moose-hunting Sarah Palin’s Alaska and an assortment of Middle East authoritarians).<\/p>\n We have an enormously expensive, but incompetent government at all levels. It has a horrendously expensive bicameral Legislature, hundreds of boards and bureaus that serve as $100,000+ sinecures for political insiders and term-limited ex-politicians. Those with advanced degrees fly to our low- or no-income tax neighboring states, coupled with an influx of tens of thousands without high school diplomas. We have a political discourse that is polarized, self-censored, and completely framed by race, class, and gender agendas \u2014 reflecting the curricula of our high-schools, colleges, and universities. The electorate is as volatile as it is unhinged. One day it will vote billions of dollars in new bonds for massive new projects, the next it will vote to fund massive prison complexes for “3-strikes and you’re out” prisoners, and on yet another it will vote to pass liberal feel-good nostrums that nullify what came before.<\/p>\n In short, the state is the left-wing version of Lehman Brothers.<\/p>\n \u00a92008 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner One of the strangest things about the current California meltdown is how no one in state government here ever pauses to ask simple questions like: Why do we have the largest annual deficit with one of the highest sales tax and income tax rates in the country?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[736],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-OX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11778,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-has-become-americas-cannibal-state\/","url_meta":{"origin":3159,"position":0},"title":"California Has Become America\u2019s Cannibal State","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 11, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax. The state\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2761,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/now-thats-a-higher-education-bubble\/","url_meta":{"origin":3159,"position":1},"title":"Now That’s a Higher Education Bubble","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The CSU system \u2014 California\u2019s multi-campus university system, and indeed the largest in the world \u2014 is once again faced with a $1 billion annual funding shortfall, and might have to raise tuition by 30 percent. The usual accounts of frozen salaries, unfilled positions,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10912,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/will-unfinished-train-overpasses-become-californias-stonehenge\/","url_meta":{"origin":3159,"position":2},"title":"Will Unfinished Train Overpasses Become California\u2019s Stonehenge?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 The misbegotten project, now stalling, should never have been started. \u00a0 Nobody quite knows who built Stonehenge some 5,000 years ago in southern England. The mysterious ring of huge stone monoliths stands mute. \u00a0 Californians may leave behind similarly enigmatic monuments for puzzled\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Transportation"","block_context":{"text":"Transportation","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/transportation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1998,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-california-mordida\/","url_meta":{"origin":3159,"position":3},"title":"The California Mordida","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California now works on the principle of the\u00a0mordida, or \"bite.\" Its government assumes that it can take something extra from residents for the privilege of living in their special state. Gov. Jerry Brown made that assumption explicit in his latest back-and-forth with Texas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1034,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-not-soak-the-rich\/","url_meta":{"origin":3159,"position":4},"title":"Why Not Soak the Rich","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services For the last two years, $250,000 in annual income has been an arbitrary line in the sand of a renewed class war. Those above it must have their income taxes raised. Those below it are deemed more virtuous and so deserving of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2010"","block_context":{"text":"December 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/december-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7022,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/lets-save-california-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":3159,"position":5},"title":"Let’s Save California Now!","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Just a handful of legislative acts might still save California. Here are 12 brief examples: 1.\u00a0The Hetch Hetchy Smelt and Salmon Act This so-called \u201cSkip a Shower, Save a Smelt Act\u201d would transfer control of the\u00a0Hetch Hetchy reservoir\u00a0releases from the San Francisco Public Utilities\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3160,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions\/3160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}