In a record-setting year, California has set a new record. First it was the biggest tax increase in the state’s history. Then the longest budget delay ever. Today we have the highest unemployment rate since we started keeping records: 12.2%. And that rate only includes active job-seekers; the “discouraged” are left out. One in five Californians could currently be jobless. I don’t know, but maybe these three things are connected.
The state raised taxes in February in a foolish attempt to keep up government spending: The result? We got a deficit of $26 billion, a stalled legislature and hundreds of thousands of IOUs for taxpayers who were already just scraping by.
Now our sales tax and income tax are higher, the auto registration fee is doubled, and state revenues keep going down. Do the policymakers think twice about a tax cut? No. Instead A special session is prepared to hear how the Commission on the 21st Century Economy plans to raise taxes even more with their stealth business tax proposal.
When you jumped on the bed, your parents would tell you to stop or you’d fall and hurt yourself. Sacramento has already fallen and broken its legs, but it keeps getting back up to jump again.
Over 700,000 have lost their jobs in 2009 and counting. It seems like the policymakers won’t learn until California becomes a scene from Oliver Twist, with every citizen in a soup kitchen asking “can I have some more.”
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