{"id":748,"date":"2012-05-29T23:45:09","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T23:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=748"},"modified":"2013-02-20T23:47:32","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T23:47:32","slug":"can-california-be-fixed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/can-california-be-fixed\/","title":{"rendered":"Can California Be Fixed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n

NRO’s The Corner<\/i><\/p>\n

Recently, I was driving down pot-holed, two-lane, non-freeway 101 near Monterey (unchanged since the 1960s) when the radio blared that on a recent science test administered to public schools, California scored 47th in the nation. As I looked at the congested traffic on the decrepit highway and digested the idea that our public schools are competitive only with Mississippi and Alabama, I wondered \u2014 is that what we get for a more than 10 percent\u00a0income tax<\/a>, 10 percent state and local sales taxes, and the highest gas taxes in the nation?<\/p>\n

To sum up why California has yet another deficit \u2014 this time a $16 billion whopper \u2014 is pretty easy: The number of demonized one-percenters who pay over 10 percent in their salary to the state has been shrinking, as thousands flee with their ideas, energy, business, and capital to nearby no-tax<\/a>\u00a0states, and others make less money due to more and more costs and regulations \u2014 while the number of those receiving all sorts of state housing, food, medical, education, and legal support is soaring. (In crude parlance, California increasingly is seen by some as a very bad deal, in terms of the sort of schools, safety, transportation, and housing per\u00a0taxes paid<\/a>\u00a0in comparison to Reno, Tahoe, or Austin, but by far more people as a very good deal in comparison to the costs versus benefits in, for example, Oaxaca or El Salvador.)<\/p>\n

In the last two decades, the number added to the prison rolls (ca. 115,000) was not that much smaller than the number of new tax-filers (150,000). And of the last 10 million added to the state\u2019s population, 7 million are on Medicaid.<\/p>\n

But California being California, such reductionist thinking is taboo, and we are not allowed to make any suggestion that there is a connection between fleeing entrepreneurs, massive and illegal influxes of undocumented foreign nationals in recent years, and record public salaries and unfunded pensions.<\/p>\n

So that said, are there any out-of-the-box things California might do to save or make a few billion dollars, other than the obvious measures of slashing spending and dismantling burdensome regulations?<\/p>\n

1) Slap a user tax on the some $10\u201315 billion that is estimated to leave the state in remittances to foreign countries, or at least through executive action make foreign cash remittances grounds for disqualification from state public assistance.<\/p>\n

2) Cancel high speed-rail asap.<\/p>\n

3) Open up immediately the estimated now off-limits 35 billion barrels of oil off the central California coast, the vast majority of which can be safely and cleanly exploited by on-shore horizontal drilling.<\/p>\n

4) Cap the amount one can receive from a California public pension, or multiple pensions at $100,000.<\/p>\n

5) Eliminate three-quarters of the thousands of public California board members, who stymie commerce and are mostly costly and unproductive term-limited insider politicians.<\/p>\n

6) Mandate one official language for state publications and office\u00a0business<\/a>.<\/p>\n

7) Cut by 75 percent the number of administrators at the UC and CSU systems (their numbers from 1993 have grown by 212 percent), and pay them at the commensurate twelve-month faculty rate.<\/p>\n

8) Clamp down on the vast underground and untaxed cash economy that has exploded to the point that one can buy tax-free almost anything needed, from a new lawn mower to a four-course meal, at roadside emporia and canteens.<\/p>\n

9) Deport the 20,000 plus illegal-alien felons now in California state prisons to their countries of origin.<\/p>\n

10) Have George Clooney do another $40,000 per head Hollywood fundraiser, but with Sacramento, not Barack Obama, as the beneficiary.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Recently, I was driving down pot-holed, two-lane, non-freeway 101 near Monterey (unchanged since the 1960s) when the radio blared that on a recent science test administered to public schools, California scored 47th in the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[16],"tags":[1014,207,77,94,327,268,257,213,1020,326,242],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-c4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1998,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-california-mordida\/","url_meta":{"origin":748,"position":0},"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":890,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-tuition-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":748,"position":1},"title":"California Tuition Blues","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In so-called March in March protests, thousands of students in California universities recently demonstrated in outrage over spiraling tuition costs. At both the California State University and University of California multi-campus systems, tuition hikes in recent years have far exceeded the national average.\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":6467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-myth-of-a-california-renaissance\/","url_meta":{"origin":748,"position":2},"title":"The Myth of a California Renaissance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Sacramento's strategy for recovery is more taxes, more regulation, and more government. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Are the recent raves about a new California renaissance true? Rolling Stone\u00a0magazine just gushed that California governor Jerry Brown has brought the state back from the brink of \u201cdouble-digit unemployment, a\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":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/SF_From_Marin_Highlands3-300x211.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3836,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/jerry-brown-modern-sisyphus\/","url_meta":{"origin":748,"position":3},"title":"Jerry Brown, Modern Sisyphus","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California Gov. Jerry Brown must rapidly close a $25 billion budgetary shortfall. But right now it seems almost a hopeless task since the state's disastrous budget is a symptom, not the cause, of California's much larger nightmare. Take unemployment. It currently runs 12.6\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":167,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-hard-to-screw-up-california-but-we-try-our-best\/","url_meta":{"origin":748,"position":4},"title":"It’s Hard to Screw Up California–But We Try Our Best","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner There is a sort of upbeat\u00a0New York Timesarticle\u00a0arguing that California \u2014 in part, thanks to passing the highest sales and income taxes in the nation \u2014 might be coming back, a sort of recovery that can guide the rest of the US to a\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":8915,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-leading-from-behind\/","url_meta":{"origin":748,"position":5},"title":"California, Leading from Behind","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online California has given us three new truths about government. One, the higher that taxes rise, the worse\u00a0state services become. Two, the worse a natural disaster hits, the more the state contributes to its havoc. And three, the more existential the problem, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/california-leading-from-behind.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748"}],"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=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}