4 ms·

Ok, here's something from the state itself. Down the page there's a chart showing how it will be paid back over time: https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/454

Ok, here's something from the state itself. Down the page there's a chart showing how it will be paid back over time: https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4543 https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4543 Either way this is going to get paid back by CA taxpayers. So it seems like the main question here is whether the tax burden should fall on employers specifically or on the general fund. It looks like corporate taxes run around 10% of CA tax revenues normally: https://ebudget.ca.gov/2022-23/pdf/BudgetSummary/RevenueEstimates.pdf https://ebudget.ca.gov/2022-23/pdf/BudgetSummary/RevenueEsti... Given that, I think I'm ok with unemployment insurance costs falling mainly on employers.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> So it seems like the main question here is whether the tax burden should fall on employers specifically or on the general fund. I’m not even sure the state could pay it back directly, and if it could, it might require either cutting programs by large multiples of the amount needed or raising taxes by an amount significantly greater than the amount of the debt: Constitutional programmed baseline funding plus maintenance of effort requirements tied to federal funding plus Constitutionally programmed use of incremental revenue means that: (1) the state (by this, I mean the executive and legislature working together; the people, of course, as the ultimate authority in the state can do what they want through initiative) can’t arbitrarily cut some large categories of spending, (2) the cost of cutting other large categories of spending is greater than a $1 of federal funding dedicated to the same purpose for each dollar cut, (3) even if the 2/3 majority necessary to raise taxes is marshalled, a substantial share of any new revenue from taxes would need to go to specified programs that get a share of incremental revenues, and (4) total state spending (irrespective of revenue, and getting the required supermajority to raise taxes, etc.) is capped by the Gann Limit. Letting the Fed tax employers directly avoids all of those constraints, even if it doesn’t optimally distribute the costs.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> So it seems like the main question here is whether the tax burden should fall on employers specifically or on the general fund. I’m not even sure the state could pay it back directly, and if it could, it might require either cutting programs by large multiples of the amount needed or raising taxes by an amount significantly greater than the amount of the debt: Constitutional programmed baseline funding plus maintenance of effort requirements tied to federal funding plus Constitutionally programmed use of incremental revenue means that: (1) the state (by this, I mean the executive and legislature working together; the people, of course, as the ultimate authority in the state can do what they want through initiative) can’t arbitrarily cut some large categories of spending, (2) the cost of cutting other large categories of spending is greater than a $1 of federal funding dedicated to the same purpose for each dollar cut, (3) even if the 2/3 majority necessary to raise taxes is marshalled, a substantial share of any new revenue from taxes would need to go to specified programs that get a share of incremental revenues, and (4) total state spending (irrespective of revenue, and getting the required supermajority to raise taxes, etc.) is capped by the Gann Limit. Letting the Fed tax employers directly avoids all of those constraints, even if it doesn’t optimally distribute the costs.