[quote=livinincali][quote=CA renter]
From the Tax Foundation (hardly a hotbed of liberal politics), you’ll see that the govt share of per-capita income was around 11.8% in 1977, and it’s 11.24% in 2010. That’s the total going to CA and local municipalities AND what’s going to other states (we also subsidize those in the “red” states who fight against paying their share of the tax burden). If you look just at the local/state burden, it was ~9.08% in 1977, and 9.0% in 2010. So, considering the fact that we have expanded services, as I’ve mentioned above, the government is actually working more efficiently than they were in 1977.
Good government should work more effectively than it did 30+ years ago. The problem remains that taxes come from GDP. Based on your linked article taxes as a percentage of income are relatively high. You argue that we’ve expanded services compared to then so we should raise taxes. I argue that we should reduce service to those that we can afford. It’s also pretty obvious that over time government budgets have deferred mainteance and other costs in order to expand the percentage dedicated to salaries and benefits for employees. Just look at the San Diego unified school district where salaries and benefits over the past 10 years have expanded faster than revenues.
My major point is public sector workers have maxed out the expansion of wages and benefits without harder political choices. They already take 90+% of most public sector budgets. They’ve already increased taxes to the high end of the historical average. They’ve already made the most painful public layoffs. They are really out of options to continue to expand wages and benefits at a rate greater than the economic growth.
Is it that you can’t see that fact or you chose not to believe it. You really think the current crop of college kids that have been screwed by the bankers and screwed by debt are going to think they have a moral obligation to pay those public sector pensions? That’s the question that matters isn’t it.[/quote]
Once again, not all taxes come from GDP, and I am NOT talking about raising new taxes; I’m talking about eliminating the subsidies we give to real estate “investors.” And taxes, as a percentage of per-capita income, have been STABLE even though we have greatly expanded services and taken on more debt in order to build more extravagant alters to the corrupt politicians who are in the developers’ pockets. If you want to get angry, look at the incomes and lifestyles of the private sector contractors and developers who’ve become incredibly wealthy off the backs of taxpayers — in many cases, ALL of their wealth came from taxpayers…and these are the people who are trying to rile worker against worker by attacking public sector workers.
Public sector workers have NOT been expanding total compensation over the years. Most municipalities have eliminated retiree healthcare for those who were hired after the mid-90s, and more employees have been paying more and more for their healthcare benefits. Since the stock market bubble of ~2000, more employees are paying a greater share of their pension costs. Most of the public employees that I know (and I know quite a few of them from multiple public agencies) have been taking pay and benefit cuts for YEARS. So, where are you getting the information that the **compensation per employee** is rising faster than population growth/productivity/inflation? And I want to see data that goes back decades, well before 2000, for the reasons stated in my post above (no cherry picking the top of the stock market when public employers were paying little to NOTHING toward their employees pension costs because the funds were OVER-funded).
Regarding the increased employee costs vs. revenues for San Diego over the past 10 years, look back another 15 and then another 20 years to see what happens to those numbers when you back out the bubbles and bursts of the housing and stock markets. In all fairness, I’m not as familiar with SD’s specific finances, so am anxiously waiting for you to provide the data to back up what you’re saying. I do know that many other public agencies are not paying more today for employee costs, as a percentage of their budgets, than they were decades ago.
BTW, why in the world do you think that we should sacrifice public workers (or bondholders, or new/improved infrastructure, etc.) for the sake of these real estate investors? That’s what I really want to know.
