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Originally Posted by UncleBob But this is all through quick Google searches (can link, if you'd like)

Please do. And offer percentages, not comparative rates (which are not particularly useful). Are they the highest in percentage of income tax, or in their revenue? You simply say they're #6, which doesn't do anything for this discussion.

Doesn't California have a unique form of ballot initiatives?

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Originally Posted by docvinh Stupid governors?

Stupid economy, California was more entrenched in the housing bubble than most other states and we are in trouble thanks to the collapse.

Originally Posted by UncleBob California has the highest state sales tax and one of the highest gasoline sales taxes. They ranked #6 for state income tax (in 2008). For comparison, Texas ranked #43. As of 2007, Californa had some of the highest Capital Gains tax rates. But this is all through quick Google searches (can link, if you'd like), so if you have information that differs from this, please share.

Good job, you focused on certain Californian taxes and failed to look the per capita total tax rate. In this respect California ranks somewhere in the middle nationally last time I checked. Secondly all those fancy tax rates you listed are a holdover of conservative tax revolt or prop 13. The prop pretty much limited the cities and counties to only a couple of sources of income, sales and income and capital gains tax in order to float their budget (which prop 13 slashed in some areas by as much as 80 percent when implemented). Crappy tax cuts got us those high as hell taxes. I find it funny that Brown is the governor in charge now and speaking against the prop which was passed when he was originally in office as governor.

Why did you capitalize Capital Gains?

Originally Posted by mykevermin Hmm. That's not just contrary to what I've read, but highly contrary. There are undoubtedly some profitable programs - I should have specified that. While I can't provide a literature review for you, I have to be exceptionally skeptical of that claim, especially for Texas. I don't doubt UT sports are profitable, I don't believe the $65M profit claim. In my searches, I didn't find anything confirming my skepticism, and little reaffirming what you're posted, FtA - aside from other reports of the same data. But! I did find this amazing government website: http://www.ope.ed.gov/athletics/Index.aspx You can look up financials on dang near any school's athletics program. Click through to the "revenues and expenses" tab. Which I did a cursory glance of. I looked up the University of Cincinnati, where I earned my grad degrees, and Ohio University, my first employer. Cincinnati did not turn a profit on athletics this year. But they didn't turn a loss, either. Their accounting says they broke completely even, and revenues minus expenses were -$0-. I find that extraordinarily difficult to believe. Ohio turned a $1.7m profit, which is another claim I am highly skeptical of - given insider knowledge to those institutions. It smacks of creative accounting. First, I see nothing that accounts for the cost of travel for the teams, which is odd. It must be in there - nobody's foolish enough to overlook that. There are plenty of additional expenditures which are indirect and not included, in particular students who are paid by the university to tutor many athletes (and this is irrespective of many student athletes scholarships being a waste of funds, given dismal graduation/completion rates). But the most insidious thing, to me, is the revenue category "not allocated by gender/sport." It says to me "we're counting every shirt, hoodie, shot glass, stuffed mascot toy of our college as revenue for sports." If you take that away, Ohio lost over $5 million last year. Cincinnati lost $10 million that year. UT Austin, by these data, turned a profit of $29 million ($8.5 if you omit the "not allocated" category). Remarkably less than football altogether. The $68 million was simply the difference between the sum football revenues less football expenses, and you can confirm that for yourself looking at those numbers. Man, this site is fun. I mean it. At any rate, perhaps the answer is to eliminate all collegiate sports except for football and perhaps basketball? I dunno. If nothing else, these numbers reek of highly falsified data that the government should spend a better job auditing. Unless you believe that TCU's football expenses and revenues were *precisely* $20,609,361. For both.

I wouldn't doubt some creative accounting is in play.

I'm also fine with eliminating any collegiate sports programs that aren't self-sustainable. You'd piss off every women's activist group in America doing that (pretty much every women's college sports program is a drain), but there'd be quite a few men's programs on the block, too.

Originally Posted by mykevermin Please do. And offer percentages, not comparative rates (which are not particularly useful). Are they the highest in percentage of income tax, or in their revenue? You simply say they're #6, which doesn't do anything for this discussion.

Here's the capital gains rate by state: http://www.thereibrain.com/realestat...tate-by-state/

Here's the information where California is at "#6" - http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr163.pdf . It's not directly tied to the income tax alone, it refers to the overall state/local tax burden. Now, I'm not saying that California is too high/too low - just saying that they're quite the opposite of Texas on the scale of taxes.

If you want a state-by-state direct comparison of income tax rates, http://www.money-zine.com/Financial-...ome-Tax-Rates/ - California has the third-highest top rate - but, of course, without seeing how those rates fall, it could mean that hardly anyone pays it. However, meanwhile, Texas has no state income tax - the opposite side of the California coin.

http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/sales.pdf gives you the sales tax by state - while they don't tax food (damn, look at TN!), they do have the highest general merchandise sales tax rate on the chart. If you average in the local sales taxes within the state, California comes up at #2 (http://www.taxfoundation.org/UserFil...6-maplarge.jpg).

4. Our taxes are low, and there's no way on God's earth they're raising them. This is Texas after all.

Tough shit. Raise your damn taxes. Texas and every other state in the country is going to have to accept the fact that your taxes will need to be raised AND tax funded services will need to be cut in order to close most state budget deficits in a reasonable amount of time.

If that's too much of a problem for you, just keep listening to politician after politician that keeps spouting the idiocy that they can cut taxes or keep them low and NOT drive your state budget into a ditch.

Just remember, you're listening to someone who spends millions on a campaign to earn a job that only pays a few hundred thousand.

~HotShotX

Speaking of creative accounting, the Tax Foundation is a policy arm of the Republican party. They are an agenda-driven institution, and not to be trusted with data.

You guys are thinking too hard. The real solution is to do nothing and blame the Democrats.

Dude I want a tecate now.

Mmmmm. Tecate.

As for tax rates in Texas, politicians will never raise taxes because they would be voted out. It's a classic case of self-interest trumping responsibility.

So the answer then is to default?

that's the thing: they have to raise revenues somehow, and a $25B deficit isn't something you're going to be able to increase speeding tickets to cover.

There's no fat to cut, but they must cut fat.

So the union boys will be stripped of everything including their dignity, but that's not going to account for much of anything.

Then you'll have to either enter into woah-there-batshit-crazy territory (e.g., privatizing the entire education system, seceding from the United States), or you'll have to raise tax rates. They'll probably go all flat tax or fair tax, however - just shuffle the cards long enough to convince the public that they're accomplishing something, and not simply playing a game of monte carlo - and then the next governor of Texas will encounter a $50B budget deficit when Perry does not run for re-election, seeking instead to move onto national level politics. The entire thing will successfully be blamed on Democrats, despite no more than seven existing in the state by that year. Austin will become its own country.

That's the kicker, isn't it, fair-minded liberal types? That woah-there-ing-insanity is more likely to occur, and will be heralded as more reasonable, than any tax hike. Not just by the public, but the media, too. I can already hear Chris Matthews questioning the need for public education on "Fireball" or whatever his show is.

So we see california, new york, and new jersey have raised spending and raised taxes to bring themselves into a giant deficit. Texas has lowered spending and lowered taxes to bring them into a giant deficit.

Does this mean we all agree that there is a moderate level of spending and taxing to be done here?

Originally Posted by Knoell So we see california, new york, and new jersey have raised spending and raised taxes to bring themselves into a giant deficit. Texas has lowered spending and lowered taxes to bring them into a giant deficit. Does this mean we all agree that there is a moderate level of spending and taxing to be done here?

No. It means that the Party of Fiscal Responsibility doesn't really have an 'effin clue how to balance a budget. When you take that away, what do Republicans stand for? Banning gay marriage, slandering black single mothers, and fighting Roe v Wade?

Originally Posted by mykevermin Speaking of creative accounting, the Tax Foundation is a policy arm of the Republican party. They are an agenda-driven institution, and not to be trusted with data.

Not sure why the Tax Foundation would have an agenda against the state of California, but, again, if you can provide alternative information that shows California on the lower end of the tax scale, that'd be wonderful.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/200...liable-source/

Originally Posted by mykevermin http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/200...liable-source/

Okay, I get that you don't think that the Tax Foundation is a reliable source and that they apparently have some kind of evil agenda against the state of California or something. Can you provide an alternative source that shows that California has a lower tax rate than most other states?

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/89702927.html

Hey, Census data!

Originally Posted by mykevermin http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/89702927.html Hey, Census data!

I'm not sure if the colors are confusing to you, but it appears to me that Texas is near one end of the color chart while California is near the other end.

It's not that simple, hombre.

Do you want to compare it to Texas by itself? Or "most other states" as you requested two posts up? This moving target stuff is irritating.