Californians are Taxed Enough Already
Barely a month has passed since voters established a mandate opposing tax increases enacted by the Democratic State Legislature. The message was clear: we are tired of bank bailouts, GM bailouts, Chrysler bailouts and now a California bailout.
Not known for listening to the people, my very liberal colleagues in Sacramento are dead set on more tax increases.
Never mind that Californians pay some of the heftiest taxes in the nation. Our top-bracket earners have the second highest income tax rate in the country. Our middle income earners are also near the top of the list, and our gas taxes are the third highest in the nation. Californians are taxed enough already, and they will not accept any further tax increases.
Losing Interest in Homebuying
Poor L.A.’s housing market, prostrate for so long. Just when it looked as if it were ready to stand again, it’s getting kicked.
It was only last week when the Los Angeles Business Journal reported that the median price of homes that sold in Los Angeles County in May actually went up for the first time in a year and a half. Now that may or may not have marked the bottom in prices locally, but the bottom must be getting near.
Besides that, we had several other signals that the housing market here may be ready to start stirring: an economy that seems to have stabilized. A stock market that’s firmed up a bit. Incentive programs to help homebuyers. And, of course, low interest rates.
Oops. Strike that.
Budget Solution: Cut and Restructure
The California Journal of Politics and Policy, published electronically by the Berkeley Electronic Press, is out with its edition on California’s Budget Crisis. The editors asked experts and insiders from many different perspectives to write a short essay on how to deal with the budget crisis.
My solution was summarized in the title of my article: Cut Spending and Restructure. You can read my essay here.
To read other ideas and perspectives go to the contents page here and click on the title and author you want.
Letting the Foxes Guard the Henhouse
As one wag put it, the Obama Administration’s new regulatory scheme to avoid future threats of financial system meltdowns which will be overseen by the Fed is like giving your teenaged son a new Corvette to drive right after he wrecked the family station wagon. Yes, the same Fed who presided over the early 2000’s era of easy NINJA (no income; no job; no assets) loan money and super-low interest rates, which helped bring about the near destruction of the US and indeed the World’s financial system last Fall, will now protect us against – what else? – future destruction of the US and World financial system.
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, there will be some kind of Consumer Protection oversight agency and/or Czar. Also, the sham of letting the woefully understaffed, underfunded, and grossly out-gunned Office of Thrift Supervision pretend to oversee global giants like AIG while they merrily traded absurdly risky incredibly overly-leverage, exotic financial instruments (yes, the ones that nobody understands but that sold like hotcakes in the mad frenzy of just a few years ago) will be no more. But, is this the kind of regulation that we need to stop the nonsense of the last 18 months from ever happening again?