Why is California in debt?
Think about this. If the 2002 numbers on California are right, then if the federal government merely returned $1 to California for every $1 its citizens put in to the federal tax system, it could eradicate its state debt and deficit in a few short years. Think about it.
Using Census Bureau data, we can conservatively say that there are at least 15,000,000 people employed in California. (This is a gross underestimate.) Using a really boring understanding of the world, we can pretend that they only pay $1000 per year per person in taxes. (This is another really gross underestimate.) That comes out to $15 billion. (It would be a lot more than $15 billion. But let us be ultra-conservative in our estimates.)
Given that California gets back roughly $0.81 on the dollar in federal taxes, that means it would add roughly $3 billion to its coffers if it got all of that dollar back. One year of that, and people will start praising Governor Schwarzenegger for his genius. Two years of that and the state would have a huge surplus and all this talk of California being incompetent with its economics would cease. Schwarzenegger would probably be the next President of the United States.
This is easy math, and it makes one wonder why California has to put up with all those socialist, red state, welfare queens.
[Note: This article was fixed after someone pointed out a typo in one of the numbers. My apologies; it is fixed now.]
Using Census Bureau data, we can conservatively say that there are at least 15,000,000 people employed in California. (This is a gross underestimate.) Using a really boring understanding of the world, we can pretend that they only pay $1000 per year per person in taxes. (This is another really gross underestimate.) That comes out to $15 billion. (It would be a lot more than $15 billion. But let us be ultra-conservative in our estimates.)
Given that California gets back roughly $0.81 on the dollar in federal taxes, that means it would add roughly $3 billion to its coffers if it got all of that dollar back. One year of that, and people will start praising Governor Schwarzenegger for his genius. Two years of that and the state would have a huge surplus and all this talk of California being incompetent with its economics would cease. Schwarzenegger would probably be the next President of the United States.
This is easy math, and it makes one wonder why California has to put up with all those socialist, red state, welfare queens.
[Note: This article was fixed after someone pointed out a typo in one of the numbers. My apologies; it is fixed now.]
posted by Josh Paley at 2:55 PM
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