How could a place with such beautiful weather, huge coastline, great farmland, innovative entrepreneurs, huge tourism industry, huge energy resources, forests, etc. etc. be such a financial basketcase?? What is the root cause of such a screwup?
Their tax base took a huge hit. If you haven't noticed, the whole world is in a financial mess. Since California is just a state, it cannot print money to pay its obligations and it appears it cannot wait for its tax base to recover with the world economy. California will be another federal bailout candidate or the Governator will find a way to finance the state's deficit with private capital.
It's the same as the rest of the country. Huge % of population got involved with services/real estate which produce nothing that earns foreign currency to pay for the expensive taste the population has acquired. Not too much industry left, either. This business pollutes, that one gets sued, all kinds of laws to drive production to China. Most of the population has a certain sense of "entitlement", I deserve this, I'll sue for that, etc. I even see thousands of immigrants who come by and get FREE housing, college education, health care and have little interest in working. Schools are a disaster. Many young people in schools really have little interest in learning/working hard. I don't see an upside anytime soon.
Internet has made things much more dificult for "established" porn. Business has been going everywhere else.
I wonder if such results are inevitable in a democracy. When the vote of someone who pays no taxes and won't work counts the same as a hard working, responsible person, how can we expect anything else? It is similar to two wolves and a chicken voting over what to have for dinner. Stosh
A big reason is many of today's politicians are corrupt. Look at Obama's recent nominees...a bunch of admitted tax cheats! Oh, yeah, they were honest mistakes, I forgot. Why not just raise their pay to say...$500,00/year but keep them honest by kicking out all the asswipes who take bribes, speaking fees, etc, etc. Another reason is consumption. Look at this country's rate of consumer spending to GDP vs other nations... A HIGH consumption/sales tax needs to be in place to cut out as much as possible on unnecassary imported crap. It just keeps draining $$$ away. And then education. Last week I got a call from a Comcast saleswoman offering cable TV, internet, phone service in 1 package. I don't subscibe to their phone service. I told her most of my long distance calls are made to Europe. So, she goes look up Europe on her 'menu' of countries to give me their rates. She goes, hmmm, Europe, I don't see Europe on the list....how do you spell it?!!!!!
Part of California's problem comes from the many ballot initiatives that get voted in. The problem is that the ballot measure doesn't allocate the funds from any tax revenue. They are typically financed by debt.