11 ms·

Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget rather than adjust their policy to match what they can afford.

Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget rather than adjust their policy to match what they can afford. The same has been happening in New Jersey with its insane taxes that don't really go to pay for services anymore and have diverted from transportation & infrastructure projects for decades now to bail out their severely underfunded pension funds...where the pensioners have almost entirely moved out of New Jersey to avoid the same taxes. There's a point where what you get out is not worth what you put in. I don't blame Musk at all for doing what's best for himself, his company and (probably) his employees.

apcragg 6y ago
Failing budget? I get that it's super popular right-wing talking point but it just hasn't been true for years. Prior to COVID (which has decimated state budgets Red and Blue) California had a huge surplus and massive rainy-day fund.
- busterarm 6y ago
  California has a $54B deficit this year. It's been all over the news, including very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico. The state _projected_ a surplus and was off by an entire order of magnitude into the red. The state has been campaigning to Congress all year for about $14B in bailout money.
  - bosswipe 6y ago
    > very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico. Those are not very left-wing sources. Edit: to the downvoters, this is objectively true. In actual leftist media NYT is considered conservative. The reality is that they are mostly mainstream.
    - chokeartist 6y ago
      > In actual leftist media NYT is considered conservative. The reality is that they are mostly mainstream. "Actual leftist"? Nice No true Scotsman you got there.
  - boringg 6y ago
    Yes, most places in the country have a massive deficit this year because states are spending money to protect their citizens and stimulate the economy. So this year is an odd year for most states... don't try and single out California as this bad actor that can't manage its finances. That narrative is misleading.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      California has historically had budget problems for decades and resolved things 8 years ago through increased taxes. It also increased taxes by about $2B this year. As recently as 2017, the state miscalculated the costs of Medi-Cal and had a 1.6B deficit for the year. The argument that I'm framing is that the state has to continuously dig further into its citizens pockets in order to fund its appetite for spending. It's entirely true.
      - boringg 6y ago
        Listen, CA is a state of big numbers - big deficits and big surplus's (Surplus of $9B in 2018, $7B in 2019). It's a function of being the 5th largest economy of the world Gross State Produce ($3.2 Trillion) larger than India and the UK. It has raised taxes, but mostly in a progressive way targeted at high income earners. At lot of marginal tax revenue comes from IPOs and equity sales. It has intrinsic problems and some pretty bad policies that linger to this day (impacts from prop 13 for example). It's still the best state to live in, has great opportunity for many people and tries to implement long term policies benefitting is citizens and is a global leader. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-sta...
        ghostwriter 6y ago
        > It's still the best state to live in, has great opportunity for many people and tries to implement long term policies benefitting is citizens and is a global leader. This is all good, until we put another element into the equation. How about stability of the system? It turns out it's predicated on your current- and future- (especially future) citizens' productiveness and willingness to cope with ever growing appetites of the state government. It's been accumulating debt since 1990s, and all the growth that you attribute with a "success" tag is predicated on the expectation that the future generations will figure the solution to the ever growing debt problem. What happens in fact is that the government is stealing the future from the generations to come - it's they who will have to pay for the debt of the current government. And they may just rightfully refuse to do it by moving elsewhere.
  - jlmorton 6y ago
    Did you miss the part where there's been a massive pandemic and sky-high unemployment for the past year? California had the nation's healthiest budget prior to the pandemic, with the highest per-capita surplus, largest rainy day fund. It's true that California relies heavily on income taxes, which include capital gains, both of which are much more strongly impacted by the business cycle than states primarily funded by property taxes. You can make an argument about that, but California's budget was extremely healthy prior to the pandemic.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - busterarm 6y ago
      From 2019: https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2019/04/16/no-californias-finances-are-not-back-in-black/?sh=3d9f445337b5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2019/04/16/no-ca... Where do you expect California to get the money for $1T in unfunded pension liabilities? California's budget is "healthy" only for as long as they ignore their long-term liabilities. California's "healthy" finances was a lie that the state told you in order to have a hope of meeting future obligations. The legislation they keep trying to pass where they're going to chase after money of people leaving the state shows you the true picture. They wouldn't have a need for such games otherwise.
      - jlmorton 6y ago
        First of all, it's not 1T. The figure cited in that article includes not just unfunded pension liabilities, but all state and local debt. We're talking about California's State finances here, so the figure you're citing is absurd on its face. I don't want to sugar coat the unfunded pension liabilities, but they are much smaller than you suggest. The official figure for the unfunded liability for CalPERS is about $140 billion and about $100 billion for CalSTRS. Importantly, this is over a 30 year horizon. And the more we pay now, the less we pay later. Newsom's 2019 budget included $11 billion in pension liability payments. Even if you assume CalPERS and CalSTRS investments return worse than the 7% (or 6.1%) that they calculate, that's still in the ballpark of what is needed to pay the liability. While this is a big deal, the funding levels in the 2019 budget are sufficient to pay the entire liability.
  - baron_harkonnen 6y ago
    > very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico. Not disagreeing with your overall claim that CA does in fact have budget problems, but citing the NYT and Politico as "very left-wing" is a pretty hilarious example of just how far right "center" American thinking has gone. NYT is a classic example of a centrist/liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left. edit: If you think "liberals" are the same as the "left" you are about as confused as someone who thinks that JavaScript is the same as Java.
    - admiralspoo 6y ago
      >90% of the NYT's readers are Democrats: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-main-sources-for-political-news-vary-by-party-and-age/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-m...
      - ecshafer 6y ago
        You are making the gp point. Democratic party is a centrist-liberal party. Not a leftist party. They are a publicly trades corporation owned by wealthy individuals. They are not a worker co-op, they are not a mutual aid-organization, they are not seeking to overthrow the capital class, they are not socialist, maoist, communist, anarchist, etc. therefore they are not left.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    I haven't seen that all over the news myself. The 54B seems to be a projection from May? I saw stuff like https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-29/california-new-state-budget-signed-gavin-newsom-overview https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-29/californ... and https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article247265579.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler... which seems like there will be a surplus this year but people aren't sure they're out of the woods just yet, which seems reasonable.
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    > very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico These are center-right sources by any reasonable standard
    - Darmody 6y ago
      The far-left managed to create an "amazing" (and terrifying) perspective. If you're a leftist but not as leftist as them, you're a centrist, maybe even center-right which makes everybody on the right to be automatically far-right.
      - skrtskrt 6y ago
        It's not a purity test. To be more clear, the New York Times is left for the media, but (like our entire government-corporate-media complex) center-right of public opinion. They beat the drums of war for Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as every other imperialist act of war that the US dreams up, breathlessly reports the opinions of the NSA, CIA, and FBI as fact, and generally shills for the corporate-backed opinions of both political parties. Poll after poll after poll shows these positions to be out of touch with the average American. The fact that the NYTimes sides more with rich, hypercorporate big-govt Dems more than rich, hypercorporate big-govt Republicans is all part of the charade of choice between the two sides.
        Darmody 6y ago
        Keep the elites outside as they don't fit into the left-right political spectrum. They side with an elite that gets its power from the left, which is turning very radical.
        Apocryphon 6y ago
        The left wants to dismember corporate power and redistribute wealth, and there are those who want to defund law enforcement and scale back the military, all of which are actual power structures that elites depend upon. The culturally leftist policies that elites adopt are not where they derive their power from.
  - bosswipe 6y ago
    It's always amazing when I talk to conservatives about california how they know so many little negative details about my state. A lot of times I'll ask them about the budget of their own state and they won't have any idea.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      I'm center-left. NY has many of the same budget woes that CA does.
itsoktocry 6y ago
>Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget rather than adjust their policy to match what they can afford. You mean the budget that included tax abatement and subsidies for his factories and the people who buy his cars?
- beambot 6y ago
  You mean abatements & subsidies required to push "clean" vehicle policies that are among the most aggressive in the world? Without Tesla & CA's policies, auto electrification would be at least a decade behind what it is today... Being at the forefront of environmental policy has real costs.
  - yxwvut 6y ago
    Perhaps the private beneficiaries of those subsidies should bear some responsibility for covering the costs?
    - darawk 6y ago
      Why? The purpose of those subsidies is to benefit all of us. Not to benefit Elon Musk. He's just the only one who stepped up to solve the problems for us.
    - kobayashi 6y ago
      That would drastically undermine the point of those, and any future, subsidies. I would also find it to be immoral.
    - elindbe2 6y ago
      California would've had to make that responsibility known up front. They chose not to do that. And California directly benefitted from the money they spent. That benefit is electric vehicles in the hands of its population, which improves the state's pollution levels long-term.
      - 6y ago
o-__-o 6y ago
> where the pensioners have almost entirely moved out of New Jersey to avoid the same taxes. (Income) Tax free Texas sounds good right about now!
- WillPostForFood 6y ago
  Texas is a no income tax, but moderately high property tax state. That's good when you are making money, but can be hard when you retire: low income, high tax on your house.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nrmitchi 6y ago
    It also disproportionately impacts mid-tier earners. Ie, those who earn enough to own their home, but still have it make up a significant portion of their net worth. Someone making 100k/year, and making 1M/year, both living in 400k houses (not uncommon in the Austin area), will be paying the dollar-amount in tax. Ie, a high property tax and low income tax is very regressive.
    - jdbernard 6y ago
      Wait a minute, where are all these $400k homes you're finding in Austin? I thought those disappeared about 5 years ago... Joking aside, it wouldn't surprise me if $400k was close to the median price for homes within the city limits.
      - nrmitchi 6y ago
        Within the city currently I believe 400k is actually on the low end. Originally I wrote 500k, but changed it to avoid "no one should be complaining if they life in a half a million dollar home, that can buy so much in Ohio!!" type comments.
      - yao420 6y ago
dmode 6y ago
California has been running budget surpluses for many years. And will run a surplus again this year, despite the pandemic
- chokeartist 6y ago
  In reality, California has a $54B deficit this year.
- dschuler 6y ago
  It currently looks like CA will face a 54B budget deficit for 2020 [0], and "could see" a "one-time surplus" of $26B for 2021 [1,2], followed by projected deficits in 2022-25 [2]. [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost-a-greater-share-of-revenue-than-most-states-due-to-covid-19?t=1607544921417 https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost... [1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article247265579.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler... [2] https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2020/4297/fiscal-outlook-111820.pdf https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2020/4297/fiscal-outlook-111820.p...
  - dmode 6y ago
    California budgets from mid year. So 2020-2021 and that is projected to have a $26b surplus. There is projected deficits beyond that, but not sure anyone can say for certainty how fast the economy will recover
- hed 6y ago
  No, it will not: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost-a-greater-share-of-revenue-than-most-states-due-to-covid-19 https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost...
  - dmode 6y ago
    Yes, it will: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article247265579.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...
ranman 6y ago
> Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget They certainly waste money but... they also make a lot of it... why is the budget failing? This is a common refrain I hear but I've never really understood it.
jxramos 6y ago
There is something incredibly ironic about that, unfunded pension liabilities for pensioners who no longer reside in the locale that gave them their pension.
- busterarm 6y ago
  Well, pensions are taxable just like regular income. Minus some exclusions usually. People are just trying to extend their retirement as far as possible. It might just be that income tax isn't the best/fairest tax.

apcragg 6y ago

Failing budget? I get that it's super popular right-wing talking point but it just hasn't been true for years. Prior to COVID (which has decimated state budgets Red and Blue) California had a huge surplus and massive rainy-day fund.

busterarm 6y ago
California has a $54B deficit this year. It's been all over the news, including very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico. The state _projected_ a surplus and was off by an entire order of magnitude into the red. The state has been campaigning to Congress all year for about $14B in bailout money.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  > very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico. Those are not very left-wing sources. Edit: to the downvoters, this is objectively true. In actual leftist media NYT is considered conservative. The reality is that they are mostly mainstream.
  - chokeartist 6y ago
    > In actual leftist media NYT is considered conservative. The reality is that they are mostly mainstream. "Actual leftist"? Nice No true Scotsman you got there.
- boringg 6y ago
  Yes, most places in the country have a massive deficit this year because states are spending money to protect their citizens and stimulate the economy. So this year is an odd year for most states... don't try and single out California as this bad actor that can't manage its finances. That narrative is misleading.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    California has historically had budget problems for decades and resolved things 8 years ago through increased taxes. It also increased taxes by about $2B this year. As recently as 2017, the state miscalculated the costs of Medi-Cal and had a 1.6B deficit for the year. The argument that I'm framing is that the state has to continuously dig further into its citizens pockets in order to fund its appetite for spending. It's entirely true.
    - boringg 6y ago
      Listen, CA is a state of big numbers - big deficits and big surplus's (Surplus of $9B in 2018, $7B in 2019). It's a function of being the 5th largest economy of the world Gross State Produce ($3.2 Trillion) larger than India and the UK. It has raised taxes, but mostly in a progressive way targeted at high income earners. At lot of marginal tax revenue comes from IPOs and equity sales. It has intrinsic problems and some pretty bad policies that linger to this day (impacts from prop 13 for example). It's still the best state to live in, has great opportunity for many people and tries to implement long term policies benefitting is citizens and is a global leader. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-sta...
      - ghostwriter 6y ago
        > It's still the best state to live in, has great opportunity for many people and tries to implement long term policies benefitting is citizens and is a global leader. This is all good, until we put another element into the equation. How about stability of the system? It turns out it's predicated on your current- and future- (especially future) citizens' productiveness and willingness to cope with ever growing appetites of the state government. It's been accumulating debt since 1990s, and all the growth that you attribute with a "success" tag is predicated on the expectation that the future generations will figure the solution to the ever growing debt problem. What happens in fact is that the government is stealing the future from the generations to come - it's they who will have to pay for the debt of the current government. And they may just rightfully refuse to do it by moving elsewhere.
- jlmorton 6y ago
  Did you miss the part where there's been a massive pandemic and sky-high unemployment for the past year? California had the nation's healthiest budget prior to the pandemic, with the highest per-capita surplus, largest rainy day fund. It's true that California relies heavily on income taxes, which include capital gains, both of which are much more strongly impacted by the business cycle than states primarily funded by property taxes. You can make an argument about that, but California's budget was extremely healthy prior to the pandemic.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - busterarm 6y ago
    From 2019: https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2019/04/16/no-californias-finances-are-not-back-in-black/?sh=3d9f445337b5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2019/04/16/no-ca... Where do you expect California to get the money for $1T in unfunded pension liabilities? California's budget is "healthy" only for as long as they ignore their long-term liabilities. California's "healthy" finances was a lie that the state told you in order to have a hope of meeting future obligations. The legislation they keep trying to pass where they're going to chase after money of people leaving the state shows you the true picture. They wouldn't have a need for such games otherwise.
    - jlmorton 6y ago
      First of all, it's not 1T. The figure cited in that article includes not just unfunded pension liabilities, but all state and local debt. We're talking about California's State finances here, so the figure you're citing is absurd on its face. I don't want to sugar coat the unfunded pension liabilities, but they are much smaller than you suggest. The official figure for the unfunded liability for CalPERS is about $140 billion and about $100 billion for CalSTRS. Importantly, this is over a 30 year horizon. And the more we pay now, the less we pay later. Newsom's 2019 budget included $11 billion in pension liability payments. Even if you assume CalPERS and CalSTRS investments return worse than the 7% (or 6.1%) that they calculate, that's still in the ballpark of what is needed to pay the liability. While this is a big deal, the funding levels in the 2019 budget are sufficient to pay the entire liability.
- baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  > very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico. Not disagreeing with your overall claim that CA does in fact have budget problems, but citing the NYT and Politico as "very left-wing" is a pretty hilarious example of just how far right "center" American thinking has gone. NYT is a classic example of a centrist/liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left. edit: If you think "liberals" are the same as the "left" you are about as confused as someone who thinks that JavaScript is the same as Java.
  - admiralspoo 6y ago
    >90% of the NYT's readers are Democrats: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-main-sources-for-political-news-vary-by-party-and-age/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-m...
    - ecshafer 6y ago
      You are making the gp point. Democratic party is a centrist-liberal party. Not a leftist party. They are a publicly trades corporation owned by wealthy individuals. They are not a worker co-op, they are not a mutual aid-organization, they are not seeking to overthrow the capital class, they are not socialist, maoist, communist, anarchist, etc. therefore they are not left.
- majormajor 6y ago
  I haven't seen that all over the news myself. The 54B seems to be a projection from May? I saw stuff like https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-29/california-new-state-budget-signed-gavin-newsom-overview https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-29/californ... and https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article247265579.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler... which seems like there will be a surplus this year but people aren't sure they're out of the woods just yet, which seems reasonable.
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  > very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico These are center-right sources by any reasonable standard
  - Darmody 6y ago
    The far-left managed to create an "amazing" (and terrifying) perspective. If you're a leftist but not as leftist as them, you're a centrist, maybe even center-right which makes everybody on the right to be automatically far-right.
    - skrtskrt 6y ago
      It's not a purity test. To be more clear, the New York Times is left for the media, but (like our entire government-corporate-media complex) center-right of public opinion. They beat the drums of war for Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as every other imperialist act of war that the US dreams up, breathlessly reports the opinions of the NSA, CIA, and FBI as fact, and generally shills for the corporate-backed opinions of both political parties. Poll after poll after poll shows these positions to be out of touch with the average American. The fact that the NYTimes sides more with rich, hypercorporate big-govt Dems more than rich, hypercorporate big-govt Republicans is all part of the charade of choice between the two sides.
      - Darmody 6y ago
        Keep the elites outside as they don't fit into the left-right political spectrum. They side with an elite that gets its power from the left, which is turning very radical.
        Apocryphon 6y ago
        The left wants to dismember corporate power and redistribute wealth, and there are those who want to defund law enforcement and scale back the military, all of which are actual power structures that elites depend upon. The culturally leftist policies that elites adopt are not where they derive their power from.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  It's always amazing when I talk to conservatives about california how they know so many little negative details about my state. A lot of times I'll ask them about the budget of their own state and they won't have any idea.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    I'm center-left. NY has many of the same budget woes that CA does.

itsoktocry 6y ago

>Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget rather than adjust their policy to match what they can afford. You mean the budget that included tax abatement and subsidies for his factories and the people who buy his cars?

beambot 6y ago
You mean abatements & subsidies required to push "clean" vehicle policies that are among the most aggressive in the world? Without Tesla & CA's policies, auto electrification would be at least a decade behind what it is today... Being at the forefront of environmental policy has real costs.
- yxwvut 6y ago
  Perhaps the private beneficiaries of those subsidies should bear some responsibility for covering the costs?
  - darawk 6y ago
    Why? The purpose of those subsidies is to benefit all of us. Not to benefit Elon Musk. He's just the only one who stepped up to solve the problems for us.
  - kobayashi 6y ago
    That would drastically undermine the point of those, and any future, subsidies. I would also find it to be immoral.
  - elindbe2 6y ago
    California would've had to make that responsibility known up front. They chose not to do that. And California directly benefitted from the money they spent. That benefit is electric vehicles in the hands of its population, which improves the state's pollution levels long-term.
    - 6y ago

o-__-o 6y ago

> where the pensioners have almost entirely moved out of New Jersey to avoid the same taxes. (Income) Tax free Texas sounds good right about now!

WillPostForFood 6y ago
Texas is a no income tax, but moderately high property tax state. That's good when you are making money, but can be hard when you retire: low income, high tax on your house.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  It also disproportionately impacts mid-tier earners. Ie, those who earn enough to own their home, but still have it make up a significant portion of their net worth. Someone making 100k/year, and making 1M/year, both living in 400k houses (not uncommon in the Austin area), will be paying the dollar-amount in tax. Ie, a high property tax and low income tax is very regressive.
  - jdbernard 6y ago
    Wait a minute, where are all these $400k homes you're finding in Austin? I thought those disappeared about 5 years ago... Joking aside, it wouldn't surprise me if $400k was close to the median price for homes within the city limits.
    - nrmitchi 6y ago
      Within the city currently I believe 400k is actually on the low end. Originally I wrote 500k, but changed it to avoid "no one should be complaining if they life in a half a million dollar home, that can buy so much in Ohio!!" type comments.
    - yao420 6y ago

dmode 6y ago

California has been running budget surpluses for many years. And will run a surplus again this year, despite the pandemic

chokeartist 6y ago
In reality, California has a $54B deficit this year.
dschuler 6y ago
It currently looks like CA will face a 54B budget deficit for 2020 [0], and "could see" a "one-time surplus" of $26B for 2021 [1,2], followed by projected deficits in 2022-25 [2]. [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost-a-greater-share-of-revenue-than-most-states-due-to-covid-19?t=1607544921417 https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost... [1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article247265579.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler... [2] https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2020/4297/fiscal-outlook-111820.pdf https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2020/4297/fiscal-outlook-111820.p...
- dmode 6y ago
  California budgets from mid year. So 2020-2021 and that is projected to have a $26b surplus. There is projected deficits beyond that, but not sure anyone can say for certainty how fast the economy will recover
hed 6y ago
No, it will not: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost-a-greater-share-of-revenue-than-most-states-due-to-covid-19 https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost...
- dmode 6y ago
  Yes, it will: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article247265579.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...

ranman 6y ago

> Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget They certainly waste money but... they also make a lot of it... why is the budget failing? This is a common refrain I hear but I've never really understood it.

jxramos 6y ago

There is something incredibly ironic about that, unfunded pension liabilities for pensioners who no longer reside in the locale that gave them their pension.

busterarm 6y ago
Well, pensions are taxable just like regular income. Minus some exclusions usually. People are just trying to extend their retirement as far as possible. It might just be that income tax isn't the best/fairest tax.