He tripled the car tax, average per person came to $132 I read in the newspaper last week. Thats alotta money.Quote:
Originally Posted by DOVESKI
This is what Arnold plans to do. Stop listening to the hippies in San Francisco and wise up:
Davis enacted a large amount of measures which made the state more "pro-employee" (socialist). Increases in worker compensation taxes, easier to get overtime, shit like that. Very expensive for a business, especially a small one. There is a mention on a business profiled in the Daily Bruin today where the company's worker comp doubled in two years. Very bad, and people aren't taking it. They are leaving the state in droves. I read today that upwards of 600,000 residents have moved out of the state in the past six or seven years because of it.... most of them going to Las Vegas. There was a good article on it on Business 2.0 right around the time of the election (unfortunately I couldnt dig it up just now). Davis did even more of this recently, as he signed a lot of shitty legislation near the end in an effort to get votes from say... unions.
So basically the state's in a situation now where taxpayers are leaving like mad. Obviously, 600,000 tax-paying residents is a lot. It represents a lot of businesses, and a lot of lost revenue. It hurts the state far more than any short-term energy crisis did, because we're talking about like, forever. And the longer these crap laws are on the books... the worse and more permanent the laws will become.
Arnold will most likely spend his time trying to reverse this stuff in an effort to make California more "pro-business" so that people don't leave for Las Vegas and rather stay in California and pay taxes to California. In fact he will probably try to work hard to make it WAY friendlier than any other state nearby to get people to come here.
However, even if this were to be accomplished tomorrow we will still be stuck with its ill effects for some time.
Hence the bond measure.
Basically Arnold wants to put off the debt until a time comes when California can actually pay for it. It can't now. His strategy will be to put the bonds out there and keep things intact for now (or at least as close as you can get), reform the economy and get people back here and back paying taxes, and back generating enough money.
Also he is gonna move for a referendum on spending limits, to cap the size of the government in the future. So when the future generations have to deal with this debt, they will also have a solid, functioning economy and a modestly-sized government with which to deal with it - neither of which California has now.
Look, what we are facing here is a big deficit. If the bond arent gonna be put out then the money is gonna have to made up via taxes... and California taxes are high enough. Tripling the car tax didn't solve everything. Should people just let Davis triple it again for next year? Or how about just double taxes and tuition at universities? Well, no, thats a horrible idea! So you can cut services, which means there wont be new computers or extra curriculur activies for little Jonny anyway.
See, Im getting at the fact that massive changes need to be made at California's core. Simply raising taxes and services is the REAL bandaid to the gunshot wound. Davis was content with doing this, obviously, but changes need to be made.
I mean its easy to look at the surface of it and just say "OH HE WANTS TO ISSUE BONDS!" but if you look at his long-term plans it seems as viable as anything Davis came up with - if Davis did indeed come up with anything.
