California Bankruptcy

Originally Posted by e1618978

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogsp...sket-case.html

Is Obama trying to push California into bankruptcy?

"One of the biggest stories in politics earlier this year was about California's budget teetering on the edge of a $42-billion deficit abyss. It only staved off insolvency when its legislature ended three months of gridlock to pass a budget with steep tax hikes and spending cuts. Guess what the Obama Administration is doing? It is telling Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that it will revoke nearly $7 billion in federal stimulus money unless the state restores legislated wage cuts for unionized health-care workers."

What is the most likely outcome for the state? The debt rating agencies are a bunch of idiots, granted, but they all lowered the rating on California bonds a couple months ago... How bad could things get?

Originally Posted by e1618978

How do you explain Canada, which is much more socialist and much more successful than California?

Originally Posted by jazzguru

Successful at what?

Originally Posted by screener

Instead of "bite me", you can "tongue" me.

What kind of a retarded question is that?

Originally Posted by jazzguru

My apologies. Allow me to clarify:

In what ways you do think Canada is more successful than California when it comes to socialism and socialist policies? How do you define "success" in this context?

Originally Posted by jazzguru

My apologies. Allow me to clarify:

In what ways you do think Canada is more successful than California when it comes to socialism and socialist policies? How do you define "success" in this context?

Originally Posted by involuntary_serf

The comparisons here are interesting but also probably misleading. No exact ones can be made.

One thing that is interesting (and probably a bit coincidental) is the comparison between Canada and California. Interesting because these two entities are actually about the same size.

Canada has about 33.6 million people
California has about 36.7 million people

Canada's GDP is about $1.5 trillion
California's GDP is about $1.7 trillion

I don't know what the various taxes burdens or government as % of GDP in each is. Probably similar but I don't know for sure. If anyone can find this information it would be interesting to add.

Clearly though there are differences that likely strongly affect the poltiical and economic climate of each.

First, California is much more densely populated and has more, higher population urban settings. Second, California is not it's own country and must live withing the constraints (and benefits) of the United States.

Now the comparisons between Canada and the U.S. as a whole can be made but might become more problematic. The first problem is that the U.S. is about ten times the size of Canada and while certain general principles and analysis apply, when we're dealing with extremely large groups of diverse people, differences of this magnitude can be quite huge.

We can look at measures like size of government relative to the economy as one way to determine "how socialist" a country might be.

In Canada government spending equaled 39.3 percent of GDP. In the U.S. it's about 36.7 percent (but rising more quickly lately). I can't yet find any good numbers on this at the state level for California, but it would be interesting.

There are lots of measures to figure out "how successful" a particular country (or region) is. Everyone has their bias as to which one matters the most in their opinion. Things like the Gini index for example are a favorite for some. Personally I'd want to look at a cross section of things. Gini might be one (but not the only). Per capita GDP, median incomes, immigration/emigration patterns and trends (people tend to vote with their feet), economic and political freedom indexes, etc.

Bottom line though right now, overall, at least from an anecdotal perspective, California is in some trouble. The U.S. is too. Canada is faring better at this time.

Originally Posted by Guybrush Threepwood

Well, it's official.

Arnold laid me off today. Just got my letter via certified mail.

Big jerk.

Originally Posted by e1618978

Financially successful. Their national debt is much lower than ours, income taxes are the same, and corporate taxes are lower, while government services are much better.

Canada is a more efficient country than the US.

Originally Posted by e1618978

For my first 25 years I lived in Canada, I moved to the US in 1993. Taxes and debt have been lowered since I left. Everything I said in that quote is factually correct.

Have you lived in Canada? What do you think is wrong from my post?

Originally Posted by jazzguru

California: proof that socialism doesn't work.

Originally Posted by Northgate

Man, come on! Stop with the "socialism" crap. You guys sound like a lame broken record. And you guys don't even use the friggin' term correctly as it doesn't even apply.

And thanks for derailing a thread about "California's problems" into a debate about Canada versus the U.S.

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Sorry the 'laughing smiley' didn't have it's intended effect... just a joke, my friend.

Originally Posted by Northgate

Man, come on! Stop with the "socialism" crap. You guys sound like a lame broken record. And you guys don't even use the friggin' term correctly as it doesn't even apply.

Originally Posted by e1618978

Can you really blame this in Arnold? Everything he tries gets shot down, it seems.
I think that California really needs to go down in flames, before the voters there start to get a clue.

What are California's problems that lead to this debt? I have never lived there, so these are guesses:

- the proposition system lets voters tie the system up in knots, where they have very few options

- people there protest nuclear reactors, and don't want more air pollution, so they spend more money importing energy from neighboring states. (15c/kWh, vs 9.45 in NC and 9.25 in CO).

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri...able5_6_a.html

- high cost of living due to it being a desirable place to live, so a high percentage of the population is on government assistance
(is this true)?

- anything else?

Originally Posted by jazzguru

Government imposed redistribution of wealth is not socialist?

I wasn't the one who brought up Canada.

Originally Posted by e1618978

Can you really blame this in Arnold? Everything he tries gets shot down, it seems.
I think that California really needs to go down in flames, before the voters there start to get a clue.

What are California's problems that lead to this debt? I have never lived there, so these are guesses:

- the proposition system lets voters tie the system up in knots, where they have very few options

- people there protest nuclear reactors, and don't want more air pollution, so they spend more money importing energy from neighboring states. (15c/kWh, vs 9.45 in NC and 9.25 in CO).

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri...able5_6_a.html

- high cost of living due to it being a desirable place to live, so a high percentage of the population is on government assistance
(is this true)?

- anything else?

Originally Posted by Northgate

Californians. They want everything. And they don't want to pay for it.

Originally Posted by Northgate

Then we've been "socialists" since the invention of the income tax. Certainly not new now or ever.

Originally Posted by Northgate

The Party of No has basically gummed up the works so that NOTHING gets done in the state legislature. NOTHING!!!!

And then you have a "fuck you" attitude from the general teabagging population here and they vote "no" on EVERYTHING! So Californian's should be surprised when their favorite schools gets shut down, teachers get fired, fire houses closed, pot holes in streets don't get fixed.

Californians. They want everything. And they don't want to pay for it.

Originally Posted by involuntary_serf

Pretty much, yeah.

Originally Posted by Northgate

Then you are in agreement with me that the recent effort to pin the "socialism" label on Democrats is simply a lame marketing effort by the GOP, talk radio and Fox News?

I mean, if we've been "socialists" ever since the creation of the federal income tax, then this term could be applied to EVERY administration since the 1930's. Right? Including Reagan's. And Bush's. And Eisenhower's. Etc.

Originally Posted by Northgate

Then you are in agreement with me that the recent effort to pin the "socialism" label on Democrats is simply a lame marketing effort by the GOP, talk radio and Fox News?

I mean, if we've been "socialists" ever since the creation of the federal income tax, then this term could be applied to EVERY administration since the 1930's. Right? Including Reagan's. And Bush's. And Eisenhower's. Etc.

Originally Posted by Northgate

The Party of No has basically gummed up the works so that NOTHING gets done in the state legislature. NOTHING!!!!

And then you have a "fuck you" attitude from the general teabagging population here and they vote "no" on EVERYTHING! So Californian's should be surprised when their favorite schools gets shut down, teachers get fired, fire houses closed, pot holes in streets don't get fixed.

Californians. They want everything. And they don't want to pay for it.

Originally Posted by Northgate

Then you are in agreement with me that the recent effort to pin the "socialism" label on Democrats is simply a lame marketing effort by the GOP, talk radio and Fox News?

I mean, if we've been "socialists" ever since the creation of the federal income tax, then this term could be applied to EVERY administration since the 1930's. Right? Including Reagan's. And Bush's. And Eisenhower's. Etc.

Originally Posted by e1618978

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogsp...sket-case.html

Is Obama trying to push California into bankruptcy?

"One of the biggest stories in politics earlier this year was about California's budget teetering on the edge of a $42-billion deficit abyss. It only staved off insolvency when its legislature ended three months of gridlock to pass a budget with steep tax hikes and spending cuts. Guess what the Obama Administration is doing? It is telling Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that it will revoke nearly $7 billion in federal stimulus money unless the state restores legislated wage cuts for unionized health-care workers."

What is the most likely outcome for the state? The debt rating agencies are a bunch of idiots, granted, but they all lowered the rating on California bonds a couple months ago... How bad could things get?

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

"That government is best which governs least." Henry David Thoreau

Originally Posted by Tauron

It means when the country is going well, governments do well in leaving things alone. Which means: when things are screwed up they must act.