With apologies to John Lennon, everybody in California sing along:
Imagine there is no Government,
It’s easy if you try,
Just essential services
No bureaucratic lies
Imagine all the people keeping more of their dough,
You may say I’m a dreamer…
Unfortunately for the people of the former Golden State, the budget just passed. I love how absolutely apoplectic lawmakers get when they run out of money. I think their primal fear is that if the government does shut down people will realize how easily the vast majority of citizens can function without big brother. The really crazy thing is that when the government shuts down, the payroll doesn’t. The State of California passed a budget and state workers avoided being “laid off.” Being laid off for a government employee isn’t the same as being laid off in the real world. When a broke government sends people home, upon their return, government workers receive back pay. If I were a California state employee, I would have been praying for an impasse. In the real world we call that a paid vacation.
California RINO Governor Schwarzenegger has been like a “Star Wars” junkie camping out to be first in line for a handout from the feds. If GM and Chrysler have to submit a plan in order to get my money, then states that take federal bailouts should do the same. The problem with the California deficit is that there is no plan other than to raise taxes in a state that already has some of the highest taxes in the country.
If you make over $44,815, your California state income tax rate is 9.3 percent. Add into that a state and local sales tax that equals almost 10 percent, 63 cents a gallon gas tax, a federal tax rate of 25%, another 9% for social security and Medicare (sixteen percent if you’re self-employed) and suddenly you aren’t even the majority partner in your income anymore. That’s before we even think about property taxes, local income taxes, water district “fees,” sanitation “fees,” license and registration “fees,” and who knows what other hidden taxes and fees you pay.
Illegal aliens eat up about $10 billion a year of the California budget, and while that isn’t the whole problem it would be a start. Maybe everyone on the state payroll could take a five percent pay cut, and if you make over 100 grand make it 10 percent. Even with those two measures, California would still be running about $20 billion short for this budget cycle, which ends in June of 2010.
The California government has been trending towards socialism for twenty years now, so in a way what is happening is a preview of our national problem. So here’s my suggestion: Since we don’t seem to have the political will to make government smaller, let’s make it shorter! All government employees in California now get Fridays off! Close down the state government one day a week and adjust the payroll. If the workers don’t like it they can always go into the private sector and get a real job.