California - a role model for the rest of us
I think not. Peter Robinson at
Forbes Magazine does an excellent analysis:
The Problem With California
The state of California employs some two-and-a-quarter million people, includes almost 400 state agencies, oversees 29 different legal codes, administers a tax code that runs to more than 60,000 clauses or sections and spends more than $100 billion a year.
You'll hear it said these days that all this complexity makes California ungovernable, and I suppose that even when the economy is booming, not gasping, California will always prove more of a trick to run than the tiniest state, Rhode Island, or the least populous, Wyoming.
Yet the central problem in the Golden State--the disorder that affects every aspect of state government--can be described very simply: The political class in Sacramento believes the people of California exist for the state government, not the other way around.
The two words to bear in mind here are "public sector unions" and "lobbyists." Hundreds of thousands of Californians belong to public sector unions such as the California Teachers Association or the California State Firefighters' Association. They use the hundreds of lobbyists in Sacramento--registered lobbyists number more than 1,200--to petition the state government, redistributing wealth from other Californians to themselves.
How successful is the political class at getting what it wants? Here the telling figure is "35%." That's the proportion by which the state budget has expanded since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office in 2003. Note that Schwarzenegger has repeatedly expressed his opposition to new spending. Note further that he even seems to have meant it.
Everyone recognizes that there is a problem. Everyone recognizes that serious cuts need to be made. Nobody wants to be the first person to blink and loose their share of the pie so everybody gets to share in the mess...
Posted by DaveH at May 29, 2009 7:13 PM
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