PROGRESSIVE PARADISE, WITH $14 @ HOUR MINIMUM WAGE
“California, folks, is America fast forward.”
Thus said Governor Gavin "Twosome" Newsom. “What we’re experiencing right here is coming to a community all across the United States of America."
California is “the progressive model of the future".
Back in 2007, total state spending was $146 billion. Last year it was $215 billion.
I know, I know: In real terms California’s GDP increased by nearly a third in the same period. And I know: If it were an independent nation it would be the fifth-largest economy in the world, ahead of India’s. But for how much longer will that be true?
California’s taxes aren’t the highest in the country — for the median household.
But the tax system is one of the most
progressive, with a 13.3% top tax rate on incomes above $1 million — and that’s no longer deductible from the federal tax bill as it used to be.
The top 1% of taxpayers (those earning more than $500,000) now account for half of personal income-tax revenue. And there’s worse to come.
The latest brilliant ideas in Sacramento are to raise the top income rate up to 16.8% and to levy a wealth tax (0.4% on personal fortunes over $30 million) that you couldn’t even avoid paying if you left the state. (The proposal envisages payment for up to 10 years after departure to a lower-tax state.)
It is a strange place that seeks to repel the rich while making itself a magnet for illegal immigrants by establishing no fewer than 20 “sanctuary” cities or counties.
And the results of all this progressive policy?
A poverty boom.
California now has 12% of the nation's population, but over 30% of its welfare recipients.
A Census Bureau report, which takes housing and other costs into account, says
the poverty rate in California is 17.2%, the highest of any state. ("Twosome" Newsom gets one thing right when he says, “We're living in the wealthiest as well as the poorest state in America.”)
About a third of California’s poverty can be attributed to housing and other living costs such as clothing and utilities.
As everyone who resides there knows, there’s a chronic housing shortage in the Bay Area (the median-priced home in San Francisco costs about $1.5 million), mainly because a plethora of regulations make the construction of affordable housing well-nigh impossible.
In blithe disregard of all we know about rent controls — which discourage landlords from providing housing — that is, predictably, the solution the
DEMOCRATS propose.
The state’s public schools rank 37th in the country overall and have the highest pupil-teacher ratio.
“Only half of California students meet English standards and fewer meet math standards, test scores show,” was a headline in the
Los Angeles Times. Health care and pension costs are unsustainable.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-20/california-burnin-a-warning-against-one-party-rule
