I was born in Michigan. I now live in California. Those two states are currently the biggest screwups on the economic landscape. Was it something I did?
No, probably not. In Michigan, it was something that was done by the car companies, the Auto Workers union, and the welfare-queen management of the state’s largest city. In California, it was something done by the state governors, Republican and Democratic, and the state legislature, solidly Democratic. Specifically: in five years, state revenues rose 25%, but state expenditures rose 40%. Hence, California is broke.
Now what do the prestigious, but soon themselves to be bankrupt, big media have to say about this? They are mounting an unremitting campaign to repeal Proposition 13, the measure that California voters approved in 1978 to limit the size of property taxes.
Let me say this in another way. California has astronomical state income taxes. It has astronomical sales taxes. It has astronomical business taxes and business regulation. And it still bankrupted itself by overspending its income. So along come all the modern and institutional liberals, and some post- modem and institutional conservatives, and propose that the way out of the problem is to raise another tax that the government can then outspend.
Now, precisely how will that solve the budget problem?
