The California paradox of having among the highest taxes and among the worst services is also echoed in state-by-state rankings of public school test scores. California continues to place near the bottom.
An artist’s rendering provided by the Golden State Warriors shows the interior of their proposed new waterfront basketball arena in San Francisco.
Are the recent raves about a new California renaissance true?
Rolling Stone magazine just gushed that California Gov. Jerry Brown has brought the state back from the brink of “double-digit unemployment, a $26 billion deficit and an accumulated ‘wall of debt’ topping $35 billion.”
Unfortunately, California still faces existential crises.
The unemployment rate just went back up in July to 8.7 percent. That is significantly higher than the current national average of 7.3 percent. Such a high rate of joblessness is a bad omen when the Democratic-controlled state legislature is pushing for the mandatory minimum wage to reach $10 an hour within three years.
The “wall of debt” is not $35 billion. According to the State Budget Crisis Task Force report that was issued in January, California debt ranges from a minimum of $167 billion to a staggering $335 billion.
To close the budget deficit, Brown cut expenses, but he also just raised already-high income, sales and gas taxes to the nation’s top levels. We won’t know the full effect of those costs on either businesses or the ongoing exodus of the more affluent for months to come.
Yet why was California ever in a fiscal crisis at all?
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