California has long been a prosperous and the place people go for booming businesses (Google, HP, Apple, Yahoo, Youtube, Facebook (maybe not so much "business"), MySpace... and the list goes on..). But it has recently been discovered that CA may have been taken advantage of by other states due to such a successful economoy. So much so that their "mooching" (coupled with the fact that the Governer has done nothing to stop it) has caused us to slip into a budget deficit that can't be cured by the Federal government, says Michael Hiltzik. Much of this conclusion is drawn from the fact that "we pay more in federal taxes than we get back in federal spending."
Gov. Schwarzenegger claims "that the state receives only 78 cents back for every dollar of federal tax we generate, so somehow we're "subsidizing" the states that get more and incurring red ink in Sacramento in the process.". This is based on the Federal Tax figures from the Fiscal Year of 2005, so in some ways Schwarzenegger's claims are outdated and are not even close to current; especially since the economy has had its short rises and many falls in the last few years.
Bill Ahern, the director of policy at the Tax Foundation said that there are 2 main reasons why some states get more back in federal money than others. The first reason is "the progressive structure of federal tax" and the second reason is "the huge share of federal spending that goes to the poor, elderly and infirm". So in other words, the 2 reasons why are that our taxes never go down, it keeps going up.... and that we spend too much of the federal tax money on the elderly. So what if some old people die right? All that matters is the current generation right? Because we will never die, and just keep enjoying the tax breaks and lavish life that we've always dreamed of right? I mean come on. The federal government is not that bad.
Look back at the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal programs. Wasn't it the Federal government that bailed us out of one of the biggest economic crises in the last century? Okay, it didn't create the BEST living conditions and things could've been better (right?). I still think that the Federal government shouldn't be the only one to take the blame when things go wrong at a national level. Things are never that black and white, especially when it comes to budget crises.
Wednesday News Roundup, A Little Late
4 hours ago
2 comments:
Right. Lets blame this all on the companies that make millions by doing business here and their production overseas. ;) If people decided to take better care of the elderly, instead of sending them to some home when they can still walk, I think that would reduce the amount of tax dollars going there. Its pretty normal the blame everything on the government. I mean who is going to blame themselves? & actually do something about it?
of course. we're always looking for scapegoats when life doesn't end up how we want it to end up. Well, most of us tend to care only for ourselves and our well-being so who cares that the elderly end up at the bottom of our priorities list right? But the Federal government always gets blamed when the economy is bad, and big businesses always get credit for when the economy is good.
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