The left wing, big government group Next
10 has for some time touted their clever online survey – "The California Budget Challenge — How will YOU balance the
budget?" It is a sophisticated
scam.
It is based on a logical
fallacy – in this case, what logicians call a "false dilemma." According to Wikipedia, a
false dilemma is also known as a "false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice,
black and white thinking or the fallacy of exhaustive
hypotheses."
While the Next 10 online survey is sophisticated in format – replete with
interactive pie charts and a bit dazzling to the layman – when all is said and done,
essentially only two major choices are offered:
1. Raise taxes
2. Cut services
But the truth is that there are many other options –
without even going for the more radical solutions. Essentially they
revolve around how to more efficiently DELIVER needed and/or desired services.
The Next 10 goal is clear – to trick
people into thinking that our California state government is running at peak
efficiency. They want to convince us that if we want our state services,
the only option is to vote for higher taxes.
Granted, this latest version of Next
10’s grand propaganda effort is the most sophisticated version yet. Contrary to
the heavy-handed previous versions of their survey, in this iteration they do
indeed allow the player to select a tiny reduction in the cost of government
employees – $200 million. That’s about 00.21% of the 2010-2011 state
budgeted spending of $92.8 billion. Chump change – and it is based on the
absurd notion that this amount is the maximum possible compensation reduction.
One option is to go nose-to-nose
with the public employees, demanding "parity" in pay and benefits
with the private sector. Clearly, government compensation today is
excessive – and unnecessary to get the job done.
Consider this example. We have
about 300,000 K-12 California public school teachers. CA public school teachers
are the 2nd highest paid in the nation, behind NY. The
average 2008-09 CA educator salary was $68,093 – 5.7% higher than the previous
year’s $64,424 average. The national median average teacher salary is
(including CA in the average) is $50,777.
Now, CA residents average about 6%
more income than the national average.
If we set teachers’ average salaries
at a comparable level (6% above the current national average teacher salary –
counting the inflated CA educator salaries), that would come to $53,824. Hence
we could save $14,269 per teacher. Total savings = $4.28 billion. Not exactly
chump change.
And the savings don’t end there. Lower teacher salaries would mean lower
pensions, which would mean lower taxpayer pension cost. Currently the districts
owe over 15% of salary to STRS to pay for the pensions, and to start dealing
with the $40 billion teacher pension unfunded liability. 15% pension
contribution savings on a $14,269 salary deduction for 300,000 teachers comes
to a taxpayer annual savings of $642 million.
Even bigger per employee savings are
available for prison guards (excuse me – "corrections officers").
California prison guards are the highest paid
in the nation.
An even better option is to contract
out every possible government service – not police and perhaps not
firefighting, but everything else should be considered for competitive bidding.
Libraries, welfare, the DMV, prisons (a big one), education (a far bigger one),
CALTRANS, parks and many, many other "government" functions can be
done far less expensively by private sector firms. For instance, private
prisons (common around the country but now essentially illegal in CA) humanely
house prisoners for over 60% less cost per prisoner than CA prisons.
Education vouchers or tax credits could provide quality schools for less than
half the current total per student taxpayer cost.
There are literally hundreds of other efficiencies waiting to be implemented,
but blocked by the public employee labor unions that literally profit from
costly, inefficient government. In the city of San Diego, Carl DeMaio led
a budget reform group where we found over 220 such inefficiencies – many
recommended by the city employees themselves. Of course, almost all
recommendations were summarily dismissed by the City Manager and the labor
union-controlled city council – they didn’t even read the study.
The purveyors of this false dilemma –
the most powerful group in California politics, affecting both state and local
governments – don’t want to seriously consider these real world
alternatives. Deception to get higher taxes (and "fees") is
their game, and taxpayers are the pigeons in the con. Voters beware.