Well I am glad you think prop 13 should be repealed as many of your ideology are too set in their way to admit what a disaster it is.
I don't know what "many of your ideology" means. I follow the tune of my own drummer.
Part of the problem in recent years has been this idea that we can fund government based on the backs of the insanely rich. It can't work long-term and since the long-term is now, it won't work now either.
Besides, the incomes of the insanely rich are going to be (and are) declining at a rapid pace. There was a recent article about this that I'm not going to look for, but basically it said that, well, we've lost a ton of income over the past year, but the giant drops were among the insanely rich. It's not exactly surprising, but you need to keep in mind what these means for tax receipts.
However, I'll go on the record and say that I've never opposed a surtax on those who make over $1 million a year (with increases in the underlying taxed amount over time). Just keep in mind that rich people often move and often have the means to do so.
Maybe so, maybe not. Certainly the rich weren't going to leave when times were good, but now... Don't make the same assumption that these same presumptions that applied in the past are going to applynow.
And if we have tax cuts it should be for the middle class and small businesses, although I doubt we can afford any.
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California can't. For now. But they should be kept in mind.
Of course the jobs will be there, in some form or another, probably lessened. Problem is, when things get bad enough, which is right around the corner, if not here already, the high and minded folks looking for service sector jobs will eventually move down to that level. That's what happens when you have to eat.
Right now, we are facing massive, massive oversupplies of everything. It's one of the classic symptoms of a debt-deflation. This problem hasn't exactly trickled down to everything just yet, and employment is usually the last place to be hit, but it's there.
It's there in housing, cars, CRE. And it's there in labor too. It's the reason why wages will decline heavily, why full-time workers will be pushed to part-time work, and why those people will, in the end, be laid off.
In such an over-supply of labor as we have and will have (i.e. it'll get worse, much worse), we should try and eliminate the supply as much as possible. An easy first step is going after the illegals, many of whom can only perform menial work anyway.
Times change and so should our policies. We need to limit immigration and emphasize allowing immigration mainly from those more highly educated immigrants (regardless of where they come from). We did the same thing in the 1920s and 1930s during similar times.
The amount they pay in taxes in no way makes up for the amount they take up in state services.
Because, even though I said menial work will still exist, it will dry up in a great part. And other folks from higher income levels will start to trickle down to take up those jobs (it takes time - be patient). So, the illegals will either go back to Mexico (questionable, since I think Mexico will probably fare much worse) or be unemployed. Unemployed non-citizens sucking off the government tit are giant problems in terms of civil unrest, especially when these benefits are cut back (which they will be - they have to be).
