California just announced that it has large tax surpluses It is time to party with espresso rather than tea @MaMoi77 I think you made the right choice
I could be wrong about this but my impression was that LA does not get a lot of the oil revenue benefits from off-shore drilling so they have less in-state production to tax than one might think. It also doesn’t help to have governor who had (has?) national aspirations because many choices seem to be made based on what it will look like from the outside in the short term rather than the benefit to the state and residents in the long term.
Ohio’s governor is doing the same thing. I don’t know how it’s affecting colleges but it is decimating local school districts. We have won a short reprieve for now, but crippling cuts will come. I live in one of the better districts I can’t imagine what this will do to other districts.
Oil & gas make up 15% of Louisiana’s general fund tax revenue
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/12/19/why-low-oil-prices-could-be-bad-for-some-states/
About $400 million of the $1.6B shortfall is due to falling energy prices.
That $4.2B surplus (out of a $155B state budget), is a start, but CA has a ways to go…
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/us/with-surplus-in-hand-california-eyes-debt.html?_r=0
Good Luck to Gov. Brown, who’s trying to bring some self-control to the budgeting process. The legislature see’s a surplus, and they want to spend it…he wants to spend some of it, and use the rest to deal with the mountain of debt CA is facing…
If Calif received from the federal govt what it pays to the federal govt…
Calif’s budget would be awesome! Then Calif could cut the cost of going to the UCs.
Calif needs to stop subsidizing other states.
No surprise about the general tendency for surpluses to be spent immediately (either in regular spending or in tax cuts), with no thought to dealing with accumulated liabilities or saving some for the inevitable future economic downturn that will result in a smaller tax base and hence smaller tax revenues and budget deficits.
Louisiana, unlike California, needs federal assistance.
http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/
I was talking to parents of high school juniors in Calif yesterday. They are angry that The UCs are taking more out of state students.
I think there is a little envy of california going on here. Louisiana is headed towards bankruptcy California is headed towards record surpluses Maybe California is on to something?? Trickle down doesnt work!
maybe California can use their surplus to buy more water
Before you give CA policies too much credit, keep in mind that MANY states have a budget surplus.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/15/after-years-of-cuts-state-budgets-show-surpluses/
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
California is in the bottom (worst) quintile for income inequality, unemployment, cost-of-living. California is also out of water. CA cities also rank 6 out of the top 10 worst cities for air pollution.
http://www.stateoftheair.org/2014/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html
Not exactly a template for success…
Lol! That’s why nobody wants to live here.
Well, it’s raining on Jazz Fest this weekend. Maybe they have the makings of a new resource based economy - lemonade from lemons and all that.
California’s net population migration has been flat to negative for more than a decade. It’s domestic population migration has been negative for quite a long while (see Chart 2 & Table 1)
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/cr_71.pdf
The middle class is leaving. CA’s high Gini coefficient shows it’s increasing becoming a state populated by the poor and the insulated rich.
@GMTplus7 Ha! I was about to post that link :)>-
GMTplus7, You posted a libertarian link about California that runs through 2010? 
California is far from perfect but… California has one of the largest economies in the world.
Income and wealth inequality is a big issue.
Louisiana is projected to run large deficits for years. The state better do something.
The median income in california is 57k in LA it is 39k. LA is fighting Mississippi for the bottom. Income inequality is worse in LA than California. California is out of water. That is obviously due to Obamas policies. Lets not forget covered california is working wonderfully. Louisiana needs to follow Californias model to get out of BK
I wasn’t aware that population figures from the California Dept. of Finance, U.S. Dept of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Bureau of the Census had any political affiliation.
The states have similar Gini coefficients and are both in the bottom quintile. Louisiana is definitely a dysfunctional state. But because LA is dysfuntional, it doesn’t follow that CA is, by default, functional and should serve as a template for governance.
I love visiting CA, just like I love visiting Italy & Greece. But I would want to be a resident in any of those places…
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient
I think a couple of posters are joking. 
I hope they are. 
But in case a couple of posters are really interested in income inequality …you don’t cut funding to schools by $600 million while having a tiny state economy if you really want to cut income inequality. You also make sure people have health care. It is hard to get out of poverty when you don’t qualify for medicaid. You also don’t give tax breaks to the higher earners while cutting government on the backs of the lower and middle class. Tax breaks are government spending and there are quite a few corporate tax breaks in Louisana.
State universities have been a great way for students to move up in economic class. Trashing the schools by cutting the funding of the schools is a bizarre way to help the middle and lower class…because it doesn’t work.