# Will California get its financial act together? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 8, 2010, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893 "2010-11-08T10:05:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893/21 "2010-11-09T02:05:26Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > Exactly. If a majority of voters WANT higher taxes and more government spending, then that’s the policy that should prevail. I think what the majority wants is lower taxes and more government spending. This is why the initiative process sucks. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893/22 "2010-11-09T04:30:18Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Ah, the good old “blame it on the brown people” routine. _We_ are the ones exploiting _them_, no matter how hard you try to blame the victim. That’s why I suggested penalising employers. The problem is the educational underachievement documented in the article. That will lead to a fall in economic wellbeing across the state. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893/23 "2010-11-09T07:17:16Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > That’s why I suggested penalising employers. The problem is the educational underachievement documented in the article. That will lead to a fall in economic wellbeing across the state. Good. We can start with Meg Whitman. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![AmunRa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AmunRa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AmunRa)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893/24 "2010-11-09T07:20:50Z")
> [@Yookeroo](#): > > I think what the majority wants is lower taxes and more government spending. This is why the initiative process sucks. This is precisely the problem with California’s voters. No one wants higher taxes, and yet everyone has some part of the budget that is absolutely sacred and cannot be cut under any circumstances whatsoever. California’s voters need to wise up and realize that they can’t have it both ways. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893/25 "2010-11-09T20:11:28Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Spending will not go down unless there is a realistic possibility of taxes going very high. That’s how representative democracy works. Take away the possibility of skyrocketing taxes, and you break the system. [my underlining] Two points in reply to this assertion: First, as I understand it, California is not a pure representative democracy - it has a substantial component of direct democracy, and the voters appear to have a tendency to freeze taxes while increasing spending, via referendums. That’s not a flaw in representative democracy, but of the particular mixture of representative and direct democracy in California. Second, you shouldn’t assume that the US model is the only type of representative democracy. Around the world, other representative democracies have shown a much greater tendency to keep government finances under control, through both tax increases and spending cuts. For a recent example, see the [budget](http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/10/21/britain-budget-cuts.html) introduced by the coalition government in Britain last month: > [@](#): > > Treasury chief George Osborne has announced 81 billion pounds, or roughly $130 billion Cdn, in spending cuts through 2015 that will cost as many as half a million public sector jobs and trim welfare payments to families and the disabled. > > Government departments will, on average, have their budgets cut by about 19 per cent, forcing them to lay off staff and limit the scope of their work. > > It means Britain will have fewer police, pay less to those without jobs and send fewer criminals to prison. Embassies will be shuttered, as will courts and military bases. Britons will lose billions in benefit payments, retire later and pay more for day-to-day items like train tickets. For another example, just look north to Canada, where the Liberal government in the 1990s raised taxes, cut government spending, balanced the budget and started paying down the national debt. At the same time, the provincial governments were taking similar efforts to bring their spending under control. When the Conservatives took power federally in 2006, they continued that trend until quite recently, when they went into a deficit position as part of the stimulus package to counter the recession. See this article from a few years ago, just before the recession: [Economists praise Canada’s debt reduction record](http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2006/09/27/debt.html). > [@](#): > > Many economists say Canadians should congratulate themselves for the steady progress in reducing the country’s national debt. > > At a time when many industrialized countries are still running deficits, the federal government announced this week that Canada’s national debt will drop by another $13.2 billion when last year’s fiscal surplus is applied to debt repayment. > > Canada is the only G-7 country with a budget surplus. > > The move will reduce Canada’s debt, as a proportion of the country’s gross domestic product, to 35.1 per cent — its lowest level in 24 years. > > That’s a far cry from the situation in the early 1990s, when Canada was spending more than it took in — something it had done for the better part of two decades. > > “For 20 years, they ran continually high deficits and continually growing debt, and Canada was skyrocketing out of control,” recalled University of Toronto economist Jack Carr. > > But Paul Martin, then the Liberal finance minister, embarked on a steady campaign of deficit-cutting and debt payments — a mission continued by the federal Conservatives. > > Since the mid-1990s, the national debt has been cut from a peak of $562.9 billion to $481.5 billion. So, you can’t say that unbalanced budgets and high spending are inherent in representative democracy - they may be inherent in the US system, that does not give anyone the power to create that sort of fiscal discipline, given the constitutional entrenchment of divided government. By contrast, the parliamentary system of responsible government ensures that if the political will exists to impose fiscal discipline on the government, the government can do so. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893/26 "2010-11-09T20:24:04Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Two points in reply to this assertion: > > First, as I understand it, California is not a pure representative democracy - it has a substantial component of direct democracy I think that’s the point. It is a representative democracy system that has been broken by introduction of elements of direct democracy. > [@](#): > > That’s not a flaw in representative democracy I didn’t claim it as a “flaw in representative democracy” but rather a representative democracy that has been hobbled by: > [@](#): > > … the particular mixture of representative and direct democracy in California. > [@](#): > > Second, you shouldn’t assume that the US model is the only type of representative democracy. I don’t. And, in fact, the examples you offer – Canada and Britain – are, as you say, parliamentary democracies, which is a governmental system without the elements of division of powers that our system already incorporates. > [@](#): > > So, you can’t say that unbalanced budgets and high spending are inherent in representative democracy I said nothing of the kind. I said that the system in California – which allows a referendum system to bind the legislature with expenditures and at the same time removes from the legislature the power to increase taxes in order to match increasing spending – is a system that will not work. The California legislature is an artifact of a representative democratic system that does not have the powers necessary to operate in any reasonable manner. ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893/27 "2010-11-11T12:45:25Z")
> [@Algher](#): > > Nor should it. We are in the top ranks of states when it comes to taxation (ranked 6th in 2008 according to the data on this site): > > [http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/336.html](http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/336.html) > > We collect plenty of money - we need to learn to spend less. If we were down in the lowest areas, I might agree that we need more taxes. However - collections is not our issue, spending is. > > As for a Federal bailout - yes, we get 78 cents back for every dollar we send to Washington. I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask for help, since everyone else seems to be helping themselves to the money. > > [http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/266.html](http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/266.html) re getting only 78 cents back for every dollar sent to the Federal coffers… Are the assumptions underlying those stats agreed upon by all or do some argue that there are other ways to look at the issue? Even if they are “accurate”, in real dollars how do the amounts compare to California’s annual defecit? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-california-get-its-financial-act-together/559893.md?page=1)