Government Spending
Business & Economics
Grading California’s Tax System
Every April California workers square up with the federal and state governments. This April deadline is a good time to grade the Golden State on its tax policy, which not only takes a lot of money from workers but manages to do so in a relatively counterproductive way. On the ...
Business & Economics
Taxifornia
California’s tax system, comparisons with other states, and the path to reform in the Golden State San FranciscoThe Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in San Francisco, found that California ranked dead last in a combined measure of the state’s tax burden and tax structure according to ...
Business & Economics
California Ranks Last in Combination Measure of Tax Burden and Tax Structure
Read the PDF study San Francisco—The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in San Francisco, found that California ranked dead last in a combined measure of the state’s tax burden and tax structure according to the newly released study, Taxifornia. It is the second study in the ...
Business & Economics
A bone to pick with Bartlett on federal spending
Reps. Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence recently called for a constitutional amendment limiting federal spending “to one-fifth of the economy.” Bruce Bartlett, a former official in the George H.W. Bush administration, promptly denounced the idea as “dopey,” one “terrible… on so many levels that it is hard to know where ...
Commentary
High-Risk Pools v. Community Rating and the Individual Mandate
Here’s a little intra-mural squabble that I haven’t gotten into much on this site: Is support for an individual insurance mandate compatible with consumer-driven health care? I’ve periodically linked to Who Killed Health Care?, a book by Regina Herzlinger, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and professor at the Harvard ...
Business & Economics
Taxes pay government to lobby itself
The Sacramento Bee , March 13, 2010 California has the largest state economy, and the state Capitol jostles with players seeking a piece of the action. The biggest single lobbyist, however, is not Wal-Mart, Apple, Toyota, the entertainment industry or some fat-cat Jack Abramoff figure. The biggest lobbyist is government ...
Business & Economics
Who could blame us for cussing?
SACRAMENTO California’s union-dominated, Democratic-controlled Legislature is temperamentally incapable of fixing the state’s structural budget deficit, given that such a fix would require reduced government spending and the granting of fewer benefits to the state’s class of government workers. As Rome burned, legislators last week debated a meaningless “no-cussing” measure, which ...
Business & Economics
‘Jobs’ bills: Why they fizzle
California’s unemployment rate is more than 12 percent, prompting state Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s new plan to create some 140,000 jobs. The plan, unfortunately, has a problem. Steinberg’s plan consists of several measures, each expected to create a specific number of jobs. Yet when tallying up the number ...
Business & Economics
Greetings from California
I simply noted that California has very high tax rates, a bloated and expensive government bureaucracy, and one of the largest public sectors (as measured by government spending as a share of state economic output) in the country. This excellent report from the Pacific Research Institute has plenty of details.
Business & Economics
Obama Takes Deficits To New Frontier
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said that “families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions,” so the “federal government should do the same.” The following week, the president presented his new budget, which contains $1.267 trillion in new deficit spending. So ...
Grading California’s Tax System
Every April California workers square up with the federal and state governments. This April deadline is a good time to grade the Golden State on its tax policy, which not only takes a lot of money from workers but manages to do so in a relatively counterproductive way. On the ...
Taxifornia
California’s tax system, comparisons with other states, and the path to reform in the Golden State San FranciscoThe Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in San Francisco, found that California ranked dead last in a combined measure of the state’s tax burden and tax structure according to ...
California Ranks Last in Combination Measure of Tax Burden and Tax Structure
Read the PDF study San Francisco—The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in San Francisco, found that California ranked dead last in a combined measure of the state’s tax burden and tax structure according to the newly released study, Taxifornia. It is the second study in the ...
A bone to pick with Bartlett on federal spending
Reps. Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence recently called for a constitutional amendment limiting federal spending “to one-fifth of the economy.” Bruce Bartlett, a former official in the George H.W. Bush administration, promptly denounced the idea as “dopey,” one “terrible… on so many levels that it is hard to know where ...
High-Risk Pools v. Community Rating and the Individual Mandate
Here’s a little intra-mural squabble that I haven’t gotten into much on this site: Is support for an individual insurance mandate compatible with consumer-driven health care? I’ve periodically linked to Who Killed Health Care?, a book by Regina Herzlinger, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and professor at the Harvard ...
Taxes pay government to lobby itself
The Sacramento Bee , March 13, 2010 California has the largest state economy, and the state Capitol jostles with players seeking a piece of the action. The biggest single lobbyist, however, is not Wal-Mart, Apple, Toyota, the entertainment industry or some fat-cat Jack Abramoff figure. The biggest lobbyist is government ...
Who could blame us for cussing?
SACRAMENTO California’s union-dominated, Democratic-controlled Legislature is temperamentally incapable of fixing the state’s structural budget deficit, given that such a fix would require reduced government spending and the granting of fewer benefits to the state’s class of government workers. As Rome burned, legislators last week debated a meaningless “no-cussing” measure, which ...
‘Jobs’ bills: Why they fizzle
California’s unemployment rate is more than 12 percent, prompting state Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s new plan to create some 140,000 jobs. The plan, unfortunately, has a problem. Steinberg’s plan consists of several measures, each expected to create a specific number of jobs. Yet when tallying up the number ...
Greetings from California
I simply noted that California has very high tax rates, a bloated and expensive government bureaucracy, and one of the largest public sectors (as measured by government spending as a share of state economic output) in the country. This excellent report from the Pacific Research Institute has plenty of details.
Obama Takes Deficits To New Frontier
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said that “families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions,” so the “federal government should do the same.” The following week, the president presented his new budget, which contains $1.267 trillion in new deficit spending. So ...
