<p>I took 5 minutes (it’s all I have) and tried to “Google” state taxes comparisons. There are literally hundreds -> thousands of studies, graphs, rankings that use differing figures & data. CA has relatively a low property tax rate but inflated property prices. Our “state” taxes put us at #6 on CNN Money. I am sure every person could find a different ranking using different data and say CA is not one of the most taxed, but it is.</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks CA isn’t a high-tax state is in denial. “Yep, California and Delaware … same, same.” </p>
<p>It’s going to be hard to fix the educational system until we can agree on some mix of inclusionary and exclusionary policies. The current set of policies is inclusion-oriented, which is very costly both economically and socially. Exclusionary policies are considerably less expensive … economically.</p>
<p>Perhaps an interim step would be to restrict the educational system to those who show the desire and ability to be educated.</p>
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It’d make sense that states with high home values should have the lower property tax ‘rates’ since the amount of tax revenue shouldn’t be proportional to the cost of homes - it should be enough to cover the services the government is offering the citizens. Ex: 1% of a $500K home is $5K which is the equivalent of 2% of a $250K home or 4% of a $125K home.</p>
<p>When looking at taxes one needs to look at income tax, property tax, sales tax, gasoline tax, etc. and on that basis California is among the highest taxed states.</p>
<p>Not to interrupt this debate about state taxes, which is certainly food for retirement thoughts, but does anyone know which of the UC’s engineering programs is on the chopping block?</p>
<p>In general, degree programs on the chopping block tend to be those where student interest has declined to be too low.</p>
<p>For example, Berkeley is phasing out an interdisciplinary major in computational engineering science, but is adding an interdisciplinary major in energy engineering. Other engineering majors that have been dropped in the past were mineral engineering, naval architecture and offshore engineering, and an interdisciplinary major in petroleum engineering.</p>
<p>^^ I assume that popularity, or lack thereof, would be the driver in which programs to cut. When it comes to engineering in general it makes sense to switch priorities around as needed with changes in the business world (ex: maybe there’s more demand for ‘energy engineering’ than ‘naval architecture’ in California - especially the bay area).</p>
<p>There used to be a large shipbuilding industry in the San Francisco bay area (this included a Navy shipyard and some civilian shipyards, some of which produced Liberty ships at rapid pace during World War II). Presumably there was student demand for a naval architecture and offshore engineering major back when shipbuilding was a large industry.</p>
<p>Today, electrical engineering and computer science is the largest engineering major at Berkeley.</p>
<p>One of my BILs in the Bay Area worked in ship-building and lost his job when the industry downsized many years ago. He retrained for IT and has been working in that area since. It doesn’t pay very much but he has had steady work for quite some time.</p>
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UCSB just got a $50 million commitment for their engineering school and UCR engineering got $10 million recently for renewable energy research. UCSC and UCM also got a few 1 million endowments (the minimum to have something named after you). It could get awfully sticky for development offices if programs are closed and namesake buildings shuttered.</p>
<p>^^ A number of the engineering grads/profs at some of the UCs have made a pile of money and have made large donations (multi-million - sometimes tens of millions) to the engineering schools at some of the UCs (ex: Jacobs School of Enginnering at UCSD - Qualcomm founder, Henry Samueli School of engineering at UCLA and at UCI - Broadcom founder, etc.). In addition are other grants for other reasons. The financial equation isn’t as simple as tuition and taxes.</p>