Jerry Brown’s scorn for wealth creators

◼ California was once a trend-setting state. - B. Daniel Blatt/Gay Patriot

Today, however, it seems only to cling to ideas long since proved worthless. Businesses are fleeing the state. Storefronts on once bustling commercial thoroughfares sit vacant for want of retail tenants. The unemployment rate remains above 10%.

And our governor doesn’t seem to have much respect for those who build enterprises and create jobs. Contending that the passage of Proposition 30 last week marks “the start of a broader movement to increase taxes on the rich“, Jerry Brown said

Revenue means taxes, and certainly those who have been blessed the most, who have disproportionately extracted, by whatever skill, more and more from the national wealth, they’re going to have to share more of that. . . . And everyone is going to have to realize that building roads is important, investing in schools is important, paying for the national defense is important, biomedical research is important, the space program is an indicator of the world leader – all that takes money.

Ah, but Jerry, before that referendum passed, we were already taxed enough to pay for such things. And other states manage to pay for roads, schools and etc., with much lower tax rates than we had before Prop 30 passed. The issue is not the absence of revenue, but the excess of bureaucracy and the superabundance of benefits for government employees.