California become unsustainable

Forbes:
California is a place unlike any other on the Globe. It boasts perhaps the greatest natural resources of any state along with shining high-tech industries. However, like many good economic stories, government policies threaten its future.

Indeed, its government has made California unsustainable.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. As the 1960s came to a close in California, it had a population of nearly twenty million. In the decade before, its economic strength afforded the construction of a vast State Water Project and higher education system that was the envy of the world. Matched with a majestic and trade friendly coastline, along with visionary business leaders, California’s future seemed secured.

No more – and here are the four major reasons California is at such great risk.

4. California’s Infrastructure Deficit.

That vast State Water Project was designed for a population not much greater than 25 million. Today, on any one day, California verges on nearly 40 million people within its borders and is projected to reach 50 million if not higher.
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3. Government Debt.
How much in debt are the California governments? That’s hard to know too. According to a January 2017 study, “California state and local governments owe $1.3 trillion as of June 30, 2015.” The study was based on “a review of federal, state and local financial disclosures.”

In other words, that $1.3 trillion in debt is the amount to which California governments admit. Other studies believe it to be more. Indeed, one study says it is actually $2.3 trillion and a recent Hoover Institute stated that there is over $1 trillion in pension liability alone, or $76,884 per household. Incredibly, there are 4 million current pension beneficiaries, a number that continues to grow and which exceeds the total population of 22 states.
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2. California’s Taxes and Regulations.
When you consider the California legal system and its regulatory system, inclusive of the world’s most comprehensive global warming law, California is likely the most regulated state in the Country, if not the World.

California also is among the highest taxed states in the nation. California has the highest income tax rates. The top rate is 13.3%. The next closest top tax rate is in Oregon at 9.9%. However, Oregon does not have a sales tax. California has the 10th highest sales tax.
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1. The California Governments.
You would think all of the above would have government officials deeply worried. So much so that they would cut back everywhere they could. If you thought that, you would be wrong – very wrong.

California spends nearly $200 billion a year on budget and even more off-budget in the form of programs paid with bonds, i.e. debt financing. As for the pension debt, of that nearly $200 billion, in the most recent budget less than $2 billion was allocated to paying down that pension debt. More than that was spent this year on a high-speed rail project currently estimated to cost $70 billion and which no one seems to want.
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There is more.

California is a spendthrift state already deeply in debt whose politicians want to provide healthcare to illegal aliens while their infrastructure crumbles.  It has become a dirty place where people live in tents and cars and poop in the streets.  It is infested with druggies who discard their needles in the streets.  It is starting to have problems with the spread of third world diseases such as typhus.  There is a serious breakdown of law and order in many parts of the state.  In Los Angeles hit and run accidents have become commonplace.

What California politicians are doing to the state should be criminal.  That any of them would want to bring these disastrous policies to the nation should be rejected out of hand.

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