Gavin Newsom admits that the California system is unsustainable
Opinion by Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner, 5/15/23
California’s financial system, which is propped up by Democrats as the model the rest of the country should be following, is completely unsustainable. Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom is now acknowledging that fact.
California’s budget deficit has risen another $10 billion, bringing the shortfall to almost $31.5 billion. Newsom’s updated budget proposal makes cuts almost across the board, with only public schools and healthcare agencies receiving increases. In his previous plan, the state would be making cuts to climate change programs, despite it being such a dire crisis, according to Newsom himself. This new plan would also cut funding for water storage, which will almost certainly lead to yet another man-made drought down the line.
Why is California facing cutbacks in the face of crises both real (water storage) and imagined (“climate emergency”)? Just ask Newsom: “We have one of the most volatile tax structures because of the overreliance, or the disproportionate reliance, on a very small subset of tax filers,” Newsom said.
That is what makes California fair and “equitable,” but it also means that the state operates at the whims of wealthy residents. When those residents leave, California’s tax pool begins to dry up. In 2021, the state lost nearly $30 billion in taxable revenue.
The kicker, though, is that this supposedly fair system does not make the state more equitable. In fact, California has one of the largest gaps between high- and low-income families in the country. California has the highest poverty rate in the country, a disproportionate amount of the country’s homeless population, and the lowest literacy rate in the country.
All the while, Newsom spends his time boasting about how high the state’s gross domestic product is. California is a great place if you’re a celebrity or one of Newsom’s lobbyist friends who are allowed to break COVID protocols with him. It is also an incredibly unequal state where residents have to shoulder high taxes and a high cost of living and still see programs get cut because the state can’t live up to its spending promises if a couple of rich people decide to move.
Simply put, California’s system does not work for most Californians. Newsom himself admits that it is not a sustainable, reliable way to run a state. California is a state run by liberal elites for liberal elites and no one else. Its deficiencies are a feature, not a bug, which is why Newsom hasn’t bothered even to pretend there are any problems as he lobbies for the country to adopt California’s unsustainable, unequal model.