by Jack Lee
(Remember the Everly brothers singing, “Bye bye, love, bye bye, happiness, hello, loneliness, I think I’m a-gonna cry-y. I think this should be adopted as our new State song.).
We all know about the big deficit in our fair state…15 billion and climbing. This is what happens when you bet on tax revenues to keep up with gluttonous spending. In the real world business ebbs and flows and families live on real income, not on what they think they will earn next year. So naturally when California businesses stumble and real estate taxes take a dive tax revenues are going to drop…uh, does this shock any of you? No, because you live in the real world, unlike those in Sacramento.
So what do democrats in the legislature propose doing about the budget shortfall?
Surely not cutting back on spending??? Nay! They are proposing a time tested method for certain failure with real bad side effects. They are going to do the most unenlightened, unimaginative thing once again….raise taxes.
First, they are going to raise 9.7 billion with a tax hike on business aka the rich. This will increase the top marginal rate from 10.3% to 12% and that would make us #1 in the nation for high state income tax, twice the average state’s rate. Now that is a plan sure to encourage more of our rich (aka business) to seek out more friendly states! Then they follow this up with a 9 billion dollar water bond and a 14 billion dollar state run health insurance plan along with the most expensive anti-global warming plan in the country.
Right now no state in the nation is more dependent on those with 6 figure incomes to keep us afloat. Taxpayers earning over $100k a year pay 83% of the costs! And every time we chase away a big wage earners we really feel it in the pocket book. Toyota decided not build a plant near SF, too expensive; we missed out on 2500 jobs with that one and AAA says it’s too costly to operate their call center here…there goes another 900 jobs. And just wait till the taxes get raised, then you are really going to see an exodus fazter than you can you say, “Hasta la vista baby!”
I’m begining to think Californians must be keeping themselves deliberately ignorant about the overspending in this state because that spending is too obvious, yet they keep re-electing the same old tax and spenders. So here we go again punishing the rich and chasing them off like that is going to fix our fiscal problems when the real problem is right in Sacratomato and it’s fixed with the ballot box, not a strong box.