Let’s say you paid top dollar to go to a fancy, five-star restaurant, and the waiter served you warmed-over McDonald’s. Would you ever go back?
Maybe, if you didn’t know any better.
I started thinking about that after I recently changed my residency from Virginia to California (for reasons I won’t go into) and noticed that my state income taxes had gone up by more than 33%.
Over the course of the year, I will pay California $2,115 more than I’d been paying in Virginia, which is hardly a low-tax state (Virginia has the 14th highest income tax burden in the country). Not only are income taxes higher, California’s sales tax is 66% higher, and the gasoline tax is almost double Virginia’s. Those are just the ones I know about.
So, I decided to look into what exactly I’m getting for the five-star cost of California’s government for basic services governments are expected to provide.
It’s infuriating. California is ripping off its taxpayers big time. Consider:
Crime: Despite having roughly the same number of police officers per capita, California has a “crime index” that is 47% higher than Virginia’s, and California has the sixth-highest rate of violent crime of all 50 states. Virginia has the 14th lowest.
Education: If you’re a teacher, California is a great place to live. They are the highest paid in the nation and have the fourth-lowest student-to-teacher ratio. But if you’re a parent? Your children are getting screwed. Eighth-grade reading, math, science, and writing scores are significantly below the national average, while Virginia’s are significantly higher. Virginia ranks 7 in average SAT scores, and California comes in 23rd.
Infrastructure: Despite having the nation’s highest gasoline taxes, California ranks in the bottom three when it comes to road conditions, with more than 25% of its roads in serious need of repair. In Virginia, just 9% of its roads are in poor shape.
Opportunity: How much economic opportunity are California’s sky-high taxes buying? None. The state ranks dead last in U.S. News and World Report’s “opportunity” ranking. And it ranks 47th in the Rich States, Poor States ranking of economic outlook.
It has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.5%, the most people on welfare, and the most homeless people.
It has the most progressive income tax yet is the fifth-worst state when it comes to income inequality. (Virginia comes in 29th on tax progressivity and 22nd on income inequality.)
It is the least affordable state for housing. Virginia is 35th.
Fiscal responsibility. Incredibly, despite the fact that California is one of the highest-tax states in the nation, it ranks No. 42 in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking for fiscal stability.
And it’s getting worse as out-of-control costs and the flight of hundreds of thousands out of the state have left yawning budget gaps. A new Reason Foundation study finds that California is almost half a trillion dollars in debt, which is more than twice New York’s. (Virginia is $35 billion in debt.)
And then there is the criminal amount of waste and fraud.
Gov. Gavin Newsom spent $37 billion to fight homelessness only to see the number of homeless climb from 151,000 in 2019 to about 187,000 today—prompting a federal criminal investigation.
The state’s Medicaid spending nearly doubled in six years, and almost one-half of that was due to free health care given to illegal immigrants.
The state lost $20 billion in COVID-19-related federal unemployment money—the most of any state.
In 2014, California voters overwhelmingly approved a $7.5 billion water bond proposal, nearly $3 billion of which was set aside to build new reservoirs. More than a decade later, not a single new reservoir has been built.
In 2018, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a $1 billion bill that was supposed to improve land management to “prevent catastrophic wildfires and protect Californians.” In 2019, Newsom’s wildfire “strike force” said, “Over the next five years, the state will commit over $1 billion for critical fuel-reduction projects to support prescribed fire crews, forest thinning, and other forest health projects.”
Apparently, that money was completely wasted, as anyone looking at the burned-out Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods can attest.
And just this year, the state decided to dump $282 million it doesn’t have for a special election to gerrymander its congressional districts—a completely pointless exercise that will disenfranchise California voters and have no impact on the control of Congress. And then it spent another $2 million to correct a typo in its original voter guide.
So, the question I have for every Californian is: “What is wrong with you? Why do you put up with this? Why are you content to let California be a one-party state?”
Most of your leaders should be in jail, not winning reelection.
It’s true that over the past four years, more than a million more people moved out of the state than moved in. But what about those who can’t or don’t want to leave?
Why do you keep electing the same class of criminals to steal your money?
I think part of the problem is that Californians don’t know how badly they’re getting screwed, because, while everyone knows which restaurants are worth the price, it’s not easy for average citizens to make direct comparisons between life in one state and another.
I can leave the state just as easily as I came. But most can’t pick up and move. Nor should they have to. California is a beautiful state with enormous potential. Its citizens just need to refuse to pay Wolfgang Puck prices for Hamburglar-quality service.
John Merline, a senior editor at The Heritage Foundation, is a veteran journalist who has written editorials and commentary for Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, AOL News, and other outlets.
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By John Merline
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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