you can forgive florida for having budget problems because they're consistently in the bottom 5 lowest tax burden per capita. compared to california which is consistently top 10
California has the highest state income tax rate in the nation and collects far more revenue from income taxes than any state in the U.S.
Florida's budget "problems" don't even compare to California and the unionized North-and as you say that's WITHOUT an income tax. Cigarette taxes are only like .27 cents a pack here too.
I've lived in CA for five years. I was born and raised in Virginia and I'll be moving back this summer, probably for good. CA has historically been a national leading indicator, and in many ways I think the state offers us a window into America's rather grim future, if we're not careful to avoid it. Immigration, erosion of the middle class, the emergence of a rentier elite and high taxes are all hammering California in a major way. The middle classes are being squeezed by rising taxes and costs, a teeming and in many ways "foreign" underclass on one side, and the dictates of wealthy liberal elites on the other. I've been a lifelong Democrat and it pains me to characterize things in this way, but I call it how I see it. The net result of all this is that rich kids can go to Stanford and get $40-$80k/year jobs in the Bay Area, or strike it lucky and become a Hollywood actor/producer, Entourage style, but every year the state loses hundreds of thousands of people to Colorado and points east. Unemployment in the state is over 10%; Silicon Valley, biotech startups, and Hollywood are not large-scale job producers. I know a guy who recently got a $40k/year job as an accounts manager at an Internet retailer in San Francisco. This is an entry level position paying a modest salary, but in order to even be considered you needed to have a degree from Stanford or one of the Ivies. California isn't exactly an engine of working-class opportunity. Another guy I know went to Cal, taught high school for some years in LA until finally getting fed up by the rot in the school system, and now makes a decent living as a mover - and almost all his clients are moving far, far away. Like everybody else, to save money he hires immigrant day-labor to help him load the truck. The other major problem is rotten politics. The state legislative districts are gerrymandered to hell, so nothing ever gets done unless it satisfies the demands of some radical faction. Public sector unions and benefits are a lead weight around taxpayers' necks, and a staggering amount of state spending is either simply wasted, or pre-committed to fund outrageously generous salaries, benefits, and pensions that most middle-class private-sector workers could only dream about. It might not come to pass, but I'm afraid that ethnic/racial issues will become increasingly prominent in state-level politics, creating yet more waste, political distractions, and governmental paralysis. What else can I say? Californians have a lot of work to do.
State schools in the South are VASTLY more egalitarian than California universities. UCLA-a PUBLIC institution-admits less than one hundred African-Americans in a typical year. The majority of course being scholarship athletes. Cal has been coping with ways to limit Asian admittances for a generation. You never wondered why a state with such a puny black population suffers magnified racial problems?
I'm with you 110% little guy! Why don't they reduce the Capital Gains Tax to say 2%. Lets get this economy going with a truly free market and not TAXES for entitlements.