Massive Revenue Loss Follows California Tax Hike Vote
posted on December 8, 2012 by Tad Cronn
During the recent election, Gov. Jerry Brown and supporters of Prop. 30 assured voters that there was no chance whatsoever that raising taxes again would drive away any of the state’s businesses or millionaires.
Brown even commissioned a study from the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality that found millionaires would rather stay put than let a little thing like government thievery drive them away.
The media backed that up with stories assuring readers that California could choke the rich, no problem.
State Controller John Chiang announced Friday afternoon (the traditional time for not getting stories covered) that the state’s revenue for November came in $806.8 million under projections. That’s more than 10% under budget for the month.
Whoops.
Although Chiang’s office did not comment on the whole “rich flight” issue, the breakdown of the trouble is an $842.5 million plunge in personal income taxes, $187.8 million decrease in corporate taxes, offset by an increase of $99 million in sales taxes. The sales tax rise probably has a lot to do with increasing consumer costs in the not-so-Golden State, although it wouldn’t be surprising if some of it was from happy liberals going on a binge after the election.
Will reality finally soak in to the spending-addicted brains of liberal voters and politicians? Not likely. Liberals’ dogma dies hard.
More likely what will happen is that Sacramento will go through another round of trying to raise taxes; then threatening to fire teachers, cops and firefighters if voters don’t go along; then putting another tax hike on the next available ballot. When that doesn’t work, even the mighty unions probably won’t be able to stop job losses. Meanwhile, revenues will continue to plunge, unemployment begin rising again, politicians still won’t cut the real fat and voters still will be voting Democrat.
Things can get a whole lot worse still before they get better.
With any luck though, California may have reached the tipping point at which even the liberal millionaires who infest the state will begin to leave. All the unemployed workers they leave behind would then have the choice of waking up and finally booting out the leeches from Sacramento or following their former employers out of state.
Either way, California would be likely to wind up a much poorer, though ultimately better off, state. One can only hope as California continues its slow slide into the sea.
Poster Comment:
You know I wonder how much of that $99 million will be spent on the poor??
