Look, you've got to feel bad for University of California system students, who are now facing a staggering 32 percent increase in tuition (or the equivalent thereof) in the next academic year. From the NYT story:
Indeed, many of the long-term demands are beyond the reach of the Santa Cruz administrators, including the impeachment of Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California system; the elimination of the Regents' positions; and an end to all student fees and student debts.
Good luck with that, kids. Like I said, you have to pity them facing that kind of tuition hike, but what is the state university system supposed to do, given that California is close to broke?
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The Stupid Chris:
"These kids are the victims of Reagan-era libertarian fiscal policy. Cutting taxes will both raise tax revenue and make government smaller! The Big Lie was swallowed out here, and the results have been coming ashore for a decade.
I know that in Texas kids would simply understand that their parents screwed them and suck it up without comment, but here the kids are mad."
__________
Righhhht.
"The Golden State Isn't Worth It"
"In America's federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a "package deal" that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.
It's not surprising, then, that there's an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren't being delivered.
California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau's latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. Only three states and the District of Columbia saw higher per capita government outlays than California, while those expenditures in Texas were lower than in all but seven states. California ranked 10th in overall taxes levied by state and local governments, on a per capita basis, while Texas, one of only seven states with no individual income tax, was 38th.
[snip . . ]
These folks pulling up stakes and driving U-Haul trucks across state lines understand a reality the defenders of the high-benefit/high-tax model must confront: All things being equal, everyone would rather pay low taxes than high ones. The high-benefit/high-tax model can work only if things are demonstrably not equal -- if the public goods purchased by the high taxes far surpass the quality, quantity and impact of those available to people who live in states with low taxes.
Today's public benefits fail that test, as urban scholar Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com and Chapman University told the Los Angeles Times in March: "Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California's government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class."
These judgments are not based on drive-by sociology. According to a report issued earlier this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., Texas students "are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age," even though per-pupil expenditures on public school students are 12% higher in California. The details of the Census Bureau data show that Texas not only spends its citizens' dollars more effectively than California but emphasizes priorities that are more broadly beneficial. Per capita spending on transportation was 5.9% lower in California, and highway expenditures in particular were 9.5% lower, a discovery both plausible and infuriating to any Los Angeles commuter losing the will to live while sitting in yet another freeway traffic jam.
In what respects, then, does California "excel"? California's state and local government employees were the best compensated in America, according to the Census Bureau data for 2006. And the latest posting on the website of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility shows 9,223 former civil servants and educators receiving pensions worth more than $100,000 a year from California's public retirement funds. The "dues" paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.
None of this happens by accident. California's interlocking directorate of government employee unions, issue activists, careerists and campaign contributors has become increasingly aggressive and adept at using rhetoric extolling public benefits for all to deliver targeted advantages to itself. As a result, the political reality of the high-benefit/high-tax model is that its public goods are, increasingly, neither public nor good. Instead, the beneficiaries are the providers of the public services, and certain favored or connected constituencies, rather than the general population.
The recession will eventually end, and California's finances will get better. Given its powerful systemic bias against efficient and effective public services, however, the question is whether the state will ever get well. California's public sector has pinned its hopes for avoiding fundamental reform on increased federal aid to replace dollars the state's fed-up taxpayers refuse to surrender. In other words, residents in the other 49 states -- the new 49ers? -- would enjoy the privilege of paying California's taxes. Their one consolation will be not having to endure its lousy public services. . . "
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-voegli1-2009nov01,0,825554.story
Chris is off on a tangent again -- how one can blame a 32 year old law that has been in effect through several booms and busts for California's current woes is beyond me.
What has changed in the last two decades is that California has gone through a demographic change that makes it akin to a third world nation. High gini coefficient, day labor, push carts roaming the streets, carwarsheros -- 30 year old men with 3 kids and a wife at home who wipe the water droplets off the cars of the rich. Sweatshops and a low value added garment industry -- both owners and labor immigrants -- in the middle of one of the most expensive cities in the nation (American Apparel is anything but).
Then we have high achieving Asians that don't give a crap about anyone outside their own extended clans, let alone outside their ethnic group, let alone the 'public' good. The kids and grandkids of the people that built up the system are now squeezed out -- indeed many have been sqeezed by the state.
You can't have first world programs with a third world population -- take a good look non-Californians, its coming for you next.
stari_momak
November 21, 2009 8:56 PM
Chris is off on a tangent again -- how one can blame a 32 year old law that has been in effect through several booms and busts for California's current woes is beyond me
............................................................................................................................................
It's not unreasonable to blame a long-established law for a developing and ongoing pattern of financial crisis, especially when that law did much to bring about said crisis and to perpetuate it. It's not tangential to bring it up. What is tangential is simply to dismiss the law as having any impact, simply because not all times were bad. We are seeing the impact of bad tax policy at the national level more forcibly now because of Bush and his spend-thrift ways - but it was bad tax policy in the first place that did so much to damage the national finances.
Here's the deal: 32% increase is significant, alright. But let's put that in context---thousands of students across the country are attending private colleges where the tuition alone is 3-4 times that! And they seem to be sucking it up and dealing with it without acting like crybabies! But these kids? They don't seem to think they should have to pay much at all to attend college. If it's a choice of the UC system folding or charging a higher, still reasonable, tuition, then what can the UC regents do about it except raise the tuition? It's still a bargain, kids!! You're happy and you don't even know it!
Funny how the Left likes to point their finger at others and shriek "You have to pay your fair share!" But when it comes time for these kids to actually do so (and let's face it---their tuition is still HEAVILY subsidized, even at 10K), they don't want any part of it.
Grow up, kids. Pay YOUR fair share (and it will STILL be too low).
"A line amounts to "let them eat cake."
No, it really doesn't. Starving peasants can't eat cake, for lack of cake. UC students can certainly transfer.
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