What's Wrong With California?

Californians have been described as having “political schizophrenia” – they want to spend without paying the taxes to support it. Then they complain about their elected representatives…

Lately I’ve been thinking about the “starve the beast” concept in reverse. Proposition 13, which made it incredibly difficult to raise taxes, is now forcing the state to cut spending on services across the board. This is the idea behind starving the beast. And now class sizes are through the roof, clinics are closing, tuition is hiking, etc., etc. As people start to see the effects of low levels of spending, will they finally turn around and “put their money where their values are”?

I believe that people want these services. But they have bought into the conservative myth that cutting taxes will solve all of our problems – force government to be more efficient, stimulate the economy, create jobs and ultimately increase government tax revenue. Republicans repeat this over and over – their solution to everything is to cut taxes. And when government goes broke it isn’t because of low taxes, it is because of inefficiencies, unions, or illegal immigrants – that’s a really popular one. The strangest part of this to me is how little taxes end up being for so many of us. Supporting a wife and 2 kids on an income of $45K last year, with no property I paid $147. On a $250,000 home I would have paid a state average of $1500. That’s an average monthly payment of $137, or 3% of yearly income. And that’s for the privilege of living in the beautiful state of California.

Of course many simply don’t want to pay for health care, education, etc. – and although their political views are at least more consistent, they don’t represent anything like a, well, moral majority.

The worst analogy is the macro = micro. You know, the one where government budgets are equated with family budgets. “When our family can’t pay the bills, we have to cut spending”. Of course, no one would ever say, “when our family can’t pay the bills, we stop working and reduce our income”. But this is level at which many people approach economics.

I think in the end it is a fundamental ignorance of the citizenry – not of what they actually believe, but in their understanding of what policies will get them there.