I believe your "top 5 highest taxing states" is inaccurate. In 2000, at least, California ranked 19th in combined state + local tax burden according to the U.S.

I believe your "top 5 highest taxing states" is inaccurate. In 2000, at least, California ranked 19th in combined state + local tax burden according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which is decidedly middle of the pack. Is that burden in dollars-per-capita or burden in percentage-of-GDP? Since California has a higher GDP per capita than most states you could both be right. * Note that though the ranking of 19th does factor in our larger economy, it doesn't account for the reality that more highly advanced economies require a better trained and more specialized bureaucracy. So just as we shouldn't be surprised when Sweden has a better compensated civil service than Namibia, all things being equal we should expect for California government to account for a larger portion of the economy than Mississippi's or Oklahoma's* Sweden vs Namibia ain't exactly California vs Oklahoma. In particular, Oklahoma's state government provides pretty much exactly the same services as California's... it just provides them much cheaper. The point remains, I think, that it's fairly disingenuous when folks (almost always folks whose own personal ox is unlikely to be gored in this case) suggest that Prop 19 is responsible for the California budget woes. California's state government is rolling in money, it's just that they're incredibly bad at spending it.