Contextually it also appeared to me you were sayig California was taking that much out of your pay.

All while there are mandatory minimums for ecucation (as a result of Prop. 98, which Arnie was all for). You can’t have money for schools without taxes, and you can’t get nre taxes when it takes 66 percent of the legislators/public to sign off on it. There are too many people who will say, “It doesn’t affect me”.

People who send their kids to privates schools can say, “I don’t see why I should have to pay for public schools,” etc.

It’s not about tightening belts. It’s about losing our shirts.

No doubt it’s worse now, and will only get worse as time continues. I can guarantee you that the children are being cheated of the education that might help them fix the sins we’ve committed against them financially. Adults get what they pay for: the kids don’t get a say in the matter, and I think their health care, social services and education should stay untouched, even if the voters have to tighten their belts and suffer a few indignities.

The single rate is a bit higher, but not much: The max rate is still 9.3, but it kicks in at 44,000.

For Business, we keep hearing how expensive it is to operate in Calif, well it’s not so.

Corporations other than banks and financials 8.84%
Banks and financials 10.84%
Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) rate 6.65%
S corporation rate 1.5%
S corporation bank and financial rate 3.5%

It is possible that combined federal, state, FICA, and unemployment taxes, combined with costs (bonding, Workman’s comp, licensing) added up to that, but to propose that was all the doing of the state, in the form of “income tax” is, at best confused, and at worst intentionally misleading.

The highest rate in California is 9.3 percent of all income above 61,000. The total rate on an income of 90,000 is actually 2,228.56 on the first 61,000; for an aggregated rate of about 5 percent on the first 61,000 (because each increment is taxed at it’s own rate; hence the description of,”progressive” income tax.

(The complete breakdown of the Calif. income tax is here

To all and sundry: California does consider taxes. As I said, the majority of Californians have almost always approved of temporary tax increases to solve problems. Take, for example, the problem of buses in the Los Angeles area. In the late ’70s the fares were going through the roof, and the service was being cut. A sales tax increase was passed. Residents in the service area of the Los Angeles Rapid Transit Distrtict (RTD, now MTA) voted to increase local sales tax by .25 percent for five years (1979-1984).

This was because the RTD had raised rate from $.50/.10 (base fare, and unlimited transfer for 2-4 hours), to $.85/.25/.25 (Base fare, one tranfer, with option for one more, or confiscation by the driver). That was in 1979. I was paying $10.50 per week to get to/from school (5 times the base fare, plus five transfers).

So we passed a rate limit ($.50/10) and a tax. When the tax expired, the rates went to $.85/15.

The problem isn’t that we aren’t willing to pay. It’s that a minority is able to prevent us from paying.

What’s happene here is this: The lesgislature can’t get the 66 percent it needs to pass the tax directly, because the Republican Caucus won’t have it (mostly because, I think, it would give the lie to huge amounts of their platform).

Which means the legislature has to do nothing, or pass a bill out to the voters for approval. Even that comes with poison pills (because the Republicans insisted on compromise, or they would just torpedo the whole thing and bottle it up in procedural delays.

Then they told the electorate they had to do it. Well we looked at it, and there was no way this was in the long term interests of the state. The spending was something like 3:1 in favor. It died. That’s because it was bad.

They did a good job of selling it, outside the state, to people who won’t have to live with it. But it was a bill of goods.

s: California is a mixed state (or perhaps 3, or 4). There’s the Urban Near Coast (From Point Reyes down to the Mexican Border). That’s mostly liberal leaning; with some mixed pockets in the central area (Monterey to Ventura) where there’s a lot of farming just behind the hills.

Then there is the Rural Central Valley. From Sacramento all the way down to the Border. Very Conservative.

The Desert is also pretty much “Self Sufficient Individualists”, are pretty conservative too.

Then there is the area N. of Pt. Reyes. That’s more like western Oregon, only with trees.

The Eastern side of the Sierras (Owens River Valley, etc.) is more to the temper of of the Central Valley. So the state is, by population, more liberal than not. But it’s only more, not completely. Which means a bit more than 1/3rd of the legislature (and just barely above half of the Congressional Representatives; to include on very Blue Dog senator) are Conservative. And some of them are REALLY conservative (or just whack-a-doodle nutcases like Rorhbacher).

Calif. is the state that gave us David Drier (who it has been my occaisional privelege to vote against, not that it will do any good in Arcadia, which is a mixed enclave of folks who trend to the Conservative side of the fence; despite pocket of Quakers and the like)

It should be noted that Tuesday’s ballot propositions were slammed by both progressives and conservatives – at least that’s what I saw as far as endorsements. Apart from myself (yay on some, nay on others), I don’t know who voted for them.

California is above all a divided state.

Democrats running for Senator have a fairly reliable statewide edge; but in recent years the Governor has been Republican more often than not (and either odious, as in Deukmejian and Wilson, or worthless, as in Schwarzenegger). Our Congressional caucus is even more polarized than the nation at large — we send to the House some of the best liberals (Waxman!) and many of the most recondite reactionaries (Pombo, Doolittle, Duke Cunningham, Dana Rohrabacher, etc.).

The San Francisco Bay area as a whole is strongly Democratic, as is much of the Los Angeles basin.
But wherever the wealthy live, there you find enclaves of strong I’ve-got-mine-Jack-so-fuck-everyone-else Republicanism. And the Central Valley and “Inland Empire” (who could not thrive without sucking on Federal water projects and agricultural subsidies) are all very very Red State, and continually demand that the Federal Government stop taxing and regulating and go away, (except first please build more dams and irrigation and highways and and oh also we need bigger subsidies for our vast agribusinesses).

I know where there’s an unincorporated placer-mining community in a fold of the Sierra Foothills that calls itself a “freehold”: where most of the adult men go armed, and a sign states that the local vigilante posse is “sovereign”, and claims to nullify all other law — sort of a libertarian paradise, except that placer mining is hard work and doesn’t pay much, so you don’t get to live like Dagny Taggart or Reardon.

And as we’ve seen nationally, nearly-equal division of power between strongly polarized parties is a recipe for ineffective government if a small minority has the power to obstruct.

I think an important part of solving California’s problems is to break the iron control that the most extreme elements of the Republican party exercise on Republican nominations. The Republican activists here simply will not nominate anyone to the left of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. I think that open primaries would help a lot. I assume that Democrats will not be happy with the possible effects of open primaries on our own party, but that it must be done because the last fifteen years of California state politics constitute an untenable situation that has now reached crisis proportions.

I sure wish that Hari Seldon would show up soon to tell us how we’ve already figured out the inevitable solution.