According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, California's U6 unemployment rate is 19.3%, 2nd worst in the entire country (only Nevada is worse). http://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm Apparently, some people think this is a huge success. Go figure.
during enron, they were the world's 5th largest economy,last i saw,coiuple years maybe, they were 8th,wonder what they are now
Just because this thread got hidden from the new forum roll over, and I had it book marked for hilarity. LINK California's Budget Miracle A Mirage After All Just under a month ago, the mainstream media and blogging coat-tail-riders all hailed the miracle that was a huge windfall rise in California's tax receipts as a sign; a glimpse of what was to come from our centrally planned utopian recovery. Surpluses, taxes up, life is good. Unfortunately, as is always the case in reality, if its too good to be true, then it is! The LA Times reports that the historic $5bn revenue bump appears to have been an accounting anomaly! Just as state accountants were starting to allocate the magical inflow of tax receipts, Governor Brown's administration says the extra money was "likely the result of major tax law changes at the federal and state level having a significant impact in the timing of revenue receipts." Taxpayers were paying a share of their bill early, getting income off their books in the hope of limiting exposure to the tax hikes that recently kicked in. The administration was expecting that money to arrive in April. Now, officials are saying it won't, and that just as January's receipts soared, they'll be offset by a spring plunge. We need another miracle, stat! Via The LA Times,
Californiaâs Balanced Budget: Not as Good as It Looks Remember how a few weeks ago the governor of California, Jerry Brown, was making the media rounds to talk about how he had managed to balance his budget? I heard him on NPR explaining how a mix of tax increases and spending cuts was the secret of his stateâs new fiscal health. The Economist even had an editorial on the governorâs surprising announcement: I am sure that I wasnât the only one not quite buying it. In fact, even The Economist added: Today, the Examinerâs Conn Carroll has a piece exposing some of the reasons why this fiscal health may be just an illusion: Budget projections that seem too good to be true should, obviously, be taken with a grain of salt. This is especially true considering Californiaâs long-term fiscal problems. It means that a balanced budget in the short run wonât be enough to fix the stateâs over-commitment or under-funding of its public employeesâ pension and health care costs . We canât be sure what will happen yet, of course, but California may also provide another example of a balanced approach to deficit reduction that has gone bad. If thatâs the case, we shouldnât be surprised. The academic world has already produced great insights into what can be done to help a country or a state reduce its debt problem. The data show that countries that try to address their debt problems with lots of tax increases and little spending cuts fail. The ones who adopt fiscal-adjustment packages consisting mostly of spending cuts successfully reduce their debt to GDP ratio. LINK
They might,only time will tell.They are doing much better then they were under the last republican governor who left Brown with a fiscal mess similar to what Bush left Obama