Last week, the state Department of Finance collected 144.8 billion dollars in revenue. This is 2 billion dollars more than the initial estimation of tax revenue for the 2018-19 budget. Along with this, the government collected over 70% more tax revenue than they had 10 years prior, which far outpaces both inflation and job growth. The government has more than enough money to max out reserve funds and provide billions of dollars towards offsetting rising pension costs.
Despite this massive amount of revenue; however, California’s government consistently cries poverty and always seems to be short on cash. Though California’s government receives massive amounts of tax revenue, it seems to want to spend it on new education and welfare programs as opposed to the over 1 trillion dollars of unfunded pensions and increasing debt. The government has no shortage of ideas for creating new taxes, a carbon tax, soda tax, etc. Unfortunately, however, the government has shown that it has no desire to use the revenue for its liabilities and instead chooses to throw it into the money hole of social programs.
California’s financial problems are nothing new to a state that in 2011 lost over 20 billion dollars but it is indicative that once again California is beset by a legion of bureaucrats more interested in spending than keeping the economy afloat. While they complain about not having enough for things like education and roads, they spend enough money and then some to fix them on miscellaneous social programs instead. Maybe Ronald Reagan was referring to California when he said: “We could say the government spends like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors because the sailors are spending their own money.”
Photo by Jp Valery
