In the Age of Obama, California under Governor Moonbeam is a reliable predictor of where the nation is headed: Bankruptcy.
On Tuesday, California released a report that revealed state tax revenues have plummeted even further below Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) estimates, even after residents voted to increase taxes via Proposition 30 in November’s elections.
At the end of November, “taxes were 3% short in the fiscal year that started in July,” which is “a gap of $936 million.” The state was 0.7% short a month before.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Finance, spun the poor numbers by saying Facebook’s stock vested earlier than expected, and “boosted October taxes higher, while decreasing November revenue.”
But the report found that tax revenues were below estimates nearly across the board, as total “year-to-date revenues are $936 million below the initial forecast.”
According to the report, personal income tax revenues were “$827 million below the month’s forecast of $4.387 billion.” Sales and use tax receipts “were $9 million below the month’s forecast of $1.601 billion” and the year-to-date sales tax revenue was $8 million below forecast.
Go here to read the rest at Big Government. Shazam! You mean to say that raising taxes, increasing government regulation, driving businesses out of the state and spending like drunken bureaucrats can cause tax “revenues” to decrease? Who would have predicted that? (Other than people with even a cursory knowledge of history, economics and human behavior that is.) Back in the sixties California Dreamin’ was a popular song. An unpopular reality for the next few years will be California Nightmarin’ as the nation experiences what the Fools’ Gold state has been pioneering: a cradle to grave welfare state atop a collapsing tax base.
McClarey, I love you! This is the funniest thing I’ve read all year!
I can’t take credit for finding this, as I was alerted to it by the Limbaugh show. The article is on “exit taxes” for people who move out of state.
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/12/17/when_will_death_spiral_states_impose_taxes_on_fleeing_citizens_100047.html
An honest person, though, might reasonably ask “Hey, why shouldn’t people have to pay exit taxes? They voted for the stuff.” Well, some of them anyway. I remember some years back this girl who came ’round to promote a Big Government Cause during the state elections season. She was refreshingly honest enough to admit she didn’t know much about the issue, didn’t know who was backing it, and didn’t really care. She was being paid to go door to door to destribute campaign info, then she was moving out of state soon to be “with [her] man.”
It makes me think that maybe the “secret ballot” idea isn’t always so great, because we don’t know who voted to raise whose taxes, increase regulations, promote abotion, etc.
It is interesting to me that you blast “Governor Moonbeam” for his bad economics and yet you don’t understand the simple difference between a currency user and a currency issuer.
Don’t be a hypocrite. Learn the difference. Know that a currency issuer cannot go bankrupt in its own currency.
“Don’t be a hypocrite. Learn the difference. Know that a currency issuer cannot go bankrupt in its own currency.”
Don’t be a fool Alex, and please learn the meaning of the term “hypocrite”. I spend a fair amount of my time dealing with bankruptcy cases. Neither California, unless Congress amends the Bankruptcy Code, nor the nation are going to be filing a bankruptcy petition and going through formal bankrupty. If a State cannot pay its debts however in any realistic fashion over any conceivable timescale, it is bankrupt whether a formal bankruptcy petition can be filed or not. If a nation cannot conceivably pay its debts it really doesn’t matter if it can print endless amounts of what will eventually be worthless currency (think Zimbabwe). The idea that the Federal government can endlessly conjure money out of thin air forever at the rate we are currently doing so is a fable that is coming to a close. Reality always catches up with moonbeamism.
There are 11-or-so states including CA, IL, NY, NJ and CT on the fiscal death spiral (unlike Uncle Sam: states can’t print money, monkey with interest rates, or borrow without limit) where tax-takers outnumber taxpayers; and the accrued public pension liabilities are unfunded. Sane people would consider evacuating such economic disaster areas.
We are going to live to see if the MIT/Princeton PhD’s (better people than the rest of us! or credentialed cretins) are correct in their dreamt-up/death planet-sized economic plots.
Regarding the US path: think Weimar inflation and schusssss.
New York is not on a fiscal death spiral and is one of the few states with a fully funded system of public employee pensions. It has problems with budgeting for several reasons, chief among them that it has a split legislature.
Art,
I love you, man. I live in NYS, too. But, not for long: Machine-gun Kelly and Midget Mike Bulmbung are turning it into a police state.
Hey, I should be grateful.
They gave me another opportunity to observe how I react amid sudden death – 23 Aug outside the Empire State Bldg., but that’s another topic.
According to the November 2012 Forbes magazine, the NY ratio of tax-takers to taxpayers is 1.07. Ergo, NYS in on the death spiral list.
“Fully funded” public pension fund is in the “eye of the beholder.”
I don’t want to bore anyone with the details.
“The article is on “exit taxes” for people who move out of state.”
I’d almost suspect the author of the article is trying to “plant” the idea as a way of getting back at blue state residents for reelecting Obama, even though a lot of them (myself included) didn’t vote for him. If the state of Illinois is ever crazy enough to attempt this, I’ll just have to take up do-it-yourself rafting or hot air ballooning (like people used to do to escape communist countries).