Though it may defy belief, Californians voted to let the state tax them more to 13.3% and they gave Democrats a supermajority in both houses while killing a ballot initiative that would have barred unions from automatically withholding money from worker paychecks for political spending. The public service and other unions own California. Add that to a history of progressive politics and you have a recipe for the total disaster that confronts the state and the nation these days.
Laer calls it a laboratory for liberals. "California has become tax-crazy, imposing the nation's highest unemployment tax and personal capital gains tax rates. And it's near the top on income taxes, corporate tax rates, and corporate capital gains tax rates." If this sounds like where America is heading if the Bush tax cuts are not extended and as the many hidden Obamacare taxes kick in, you're right. And the only thing the President keeps talking about is taxing the rich who he defines as anyone earning $250,000 or more. For the record, $250,000 is only one quarter of a million, despite his blather about millionaires and billionaires.
Laer points out that California's taxes are currently causing 150,000 residents to flee the state each year. "In fact, Los Angeles alone has lost more households than New York, Miami, and, incredibly, the economically decimated city of Detroit...combined."
How crazy are Californians? They have amended California's constitution 513 times in 130 years or almost four constitutional amendments each year, year in and year out, since the state was founded. By contrast, the U.S. Constitution has been amended 28 times since it was ratified. That includes the ten Bill of Rights amendments introduced in 1789 by James Madison and included in 1791.
What do the Californians get for their taxes? Not much. It ranks 48th among the states in elementary school rankings in reading and 49th in science. Not much value for the high rate of per-pupil spending. Its teachers are the highest paid in the nation.
California's public workers are the second highest paid in the nation. The unfunded liability of their pensions and health-care benefits is estimated by Stanford University to be $500 billion — a half trillion dollars. If you love bloated bureaucracy, you will love California.
California's obsession with spending on every liberal program proposed is such that, by 2009, the government was so much in debt it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate had risen to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Currently, the state has $73 billion in outstanding bonds for capital projects and $33 billion in voter-authorized bonds that the state hasn't sold because it cannot afford higher debt payments.
The result of this fiscal insanity is that "In 2010, at least 204 companies said goodbye to the state, exactly four times more than fled in 2009. The exodus surged to more than 280 companies in 2011, when they left the state at a clip of 5.4 companies per week." This just leaves joblessness and economic stagnation in its wake....
As the nation faces a "fiscal cliff," Laer wrote that "The state's education and fiscal systems and its economy all have collapsed, yet in the face of these serial calamities, the state hasn't fixed anything."
