Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« The Other Election | The Chicken or the Egg »

Monday, March 31, 2008

It Is what it Is

posted by on March 31 at 8:16 AM

Now that the rich have made their money…
PictureYES%204.jpg
…it’s time to make the poor pay.

California is facing the worst budget crisis, with a $16 billion shortfall, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has proposed a $4.8 billion cut in education services. About 20,000 teachers, counselors, librarians, nurses and other support staff members have received notice of potential layoffs, according to the state’s Education Department.

Schwarzenegger has also proposed $650 million in cuts to the Healthy Families Program and Medi-Cal, which together provide health-care services to more than 7 million senior citizens, disabled people and children in the state. Adults under the Medi-Cal program would lose their dental benefits, as well as optometry and psychology services.

Says Gindy: “It’s all about privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.”


RSS icon Comments

1

Charles, what have you done with the rest of the Stranger staff?

Posted by Levislade | March 31, 2008 8:37 AM
2

all charles all day!

Posted by infrequent | March 31, 2008 8:42 AM
3

This is what happens when your tax base relies on property taxes.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | March 31, 2008 8:47 AM
4

He's actually proposing a 10% cut to all budgets, if I read correctly, which isn't a terrible idea overall.

Posted by egid | March 31, 2008 9:05 AM
5

No Bellevue Ave, this is what happens when your tax base does not rely as much on property taxes. After Prop 13 neutered property taxes, California has become increasingly more reliant on income and sales taxes, which seem to fluctuate a lot more in times of boom or bust.

Posted by Jeff | March 31, 2008 9:07 AM
6

perhaps you're right, but it seems to be that you could attribute much of the shortfall in revenue to the complete lack of property tax income expected due to foreclosure, declining home prices, etc. in California. The new home buyers were going to pay a lot more in property taxes even with prop 13.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | March 31, 2008 9:15 AM
7

Shouldn't Charles be outside with those guys who push the Communist Party on Broadway and Olive way right now?

Posted by Andrew | March 31, 2008 9:19 AM
8

If you look at the revenue chart here http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/FS_DATA/STAT-ABS/documents/M10.pdf, it's amazing to see a 3 fold increase in personal income tax rev and a doubling in the increase in revenue for state sales tax over 13 years

The total revenue for the state almost doubled in 13 years.

I have to think that a lot of people's income taxes got inflated off of the real estate bubble too.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | March 31, 2008 9:22 AM
9

#5 is correct... California has very low property taxes all things considered... unless that was your point.

Posted by Dougsf | March 31, 2008 12:11 PM
10

Remember when Schwarzenegger had Warren Buffett as his economic adviser, and the first words out of his mouth were "fix the property tax, I pay a tenth as much for my Malibu waterfront home as I do for my house in Nebraska, it's criminal" and he was immediately fired? Prop 13 is destroying California.

Posted by Fnarf | March 31, 2008 3:23 PM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).