Open Letter to Governor Jerry Brown
January 5, 2012 8 Comments
I just heard your voice on the radio saying, “That’s where the money is!” The reference was to the oft-quoted answer to the question, “Why do you rob banks?”
That little joke, right there, points to the heart of our budget disasters and to the thinking that keeps the disasters in place.
Where is the money? In cuts to public education? In cuts to welfare and childcare? No, the money is in the hands of the super rich. Not in public schools where California’s spending is near the bottom of all the states.
Every single time that you – and all of your colleagues in the huge majority the Democratic Party holds in Sacramento – speak about the budget you have a chance to improve the system, or not. Every time you speak and do not condemn the two-thirds majority required to increase taxes, you are selling out the 99% and pandering to the 1%.
I cannot wait until representatives in Sacramento – the current batch or new ones we will elect – catch up with the rest of us. The social movements have shifted from the plea of “Stop The Cuts” to demanding the solution, “Tax The Rich.”
Statistics are readily available to explain to people who love old Prop 13 and its two-thirds vote requirement that their love is misplaced.
Explain that California has 85 billionaires with a total wealth of $287 billion. Only 3.5% of that wealth would close a state budget gap of $10 billion. And although it would be a hardship for 7 people since they would no longer be billionaires, and would only have $900 million, they would probably get that 3.5% back within a year. And California would not have to cut welfare, childcare, and schools.
Explain facts the California Budget Project gives us every year: when you look at family income, the poorest 20% pay more in state and local taxes than the richest 1%. Those who average $12,600 pay 11.1% and those who average $2.3 million pay 7.8%. That’s where the money is. Wealth like that used to be taxed at higher rates, and in those times people could still get richer.
Explain that a bipartisan budget agreement in favor of the 99% will never be reached when slightly more than 1/3 of California legislators have signed a pledge that they will never vote to raise taxes. The 2/3 requirement gives that 1/3 minority veto power over taxing the rich. The only bipartisan budget agreement operating right now is the silence about the rotten parts of old Proposition 13.
You were Governor in 1978 when Proposition 13, with all of its damaging unintended consequences (unintended by the voters), was voted into law. It is only fitting that you should undo its damage now.
Sincerely,
Laura Wells
Eloquently expressed! Go Laura!
We need a surtax on the wealthiest 0.1% of Californians. We need to drop the 2/3rds threshold of the Legislature regarding raising taxes–I’d settle for 60% or 55% threshold, though 51% was traditional. We need to restore education quality by reducing all class sizes, K-12 to about 20 students. We need to cut UC & SCU tuition/fees to 10% of the amount currently charged. The current tuition/fees are like the Share-Cropper/Jim Crow Laws of the Post Civil War era: shall we shoulder those who can least afford it with crushing debt that outstrips their ability to generate funds from the work offered? This is morally wrong.
We need to drop the State Senate, eliminate it as a wasteful duplication. Instead, fold those members into the Assembly, thus cutting the size of each Assembly district by 1/3rd. The Assembly needs to be elected once every four-to-six years by Proportional Representation. 40% of voters are neither Republican nor Democrat–who represents them? We need publicly financed elections of State officeholders–limited to a few key media formats, and make it mandatory (use unexplained absentee-fines $ &/or voter-rebate $ to encourage compliance) that all citizens capable of voting must take off the General Election Day to sign-in at the polls to prove they showed up to vote.
Dear Laura,
You said it well without “beating around the bush!” If the voters of California don’t support Governor Brown’s tax plan, he said he’d have to cut “education spending” even further. What a legacy to be remembered by!
The two-thirds majority guarantees gridlock in Sacramento, for sure, and that questionable ruling must be overturned just like the ‘Citizens United’ decision by the SCOTUS, two years ago.
Unfortunately, too many American people have been taught to idolize millionaires and billionaires, while their fellow citizens go without.
At this point in time, all we can do is spread the word like you are doing, and hope our fellow citizens start to see the game plan of the super-rich, and of course, support and vote for our qualified Green Party candidates for public office.
Frank Lambert
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Good points and lots of passion. Thanks for sending this out. I appreciate the insight.
While I agree that we need to tax the rich individuals more than we do now my thoughts on taxation have moved towards a revenue tax to prevent corporations from exporting their profits. Right now corporation have great latitude in determining what part of their income is taxable in California and what part elsewhere. This leads to off-shoring production and importing at high costs that leads to lower California taxable income.
Different from a sales tax a revenue tax would capture the more than half of California’s economy that is service based. A 1% revenue tax on our entire $1.9 trillion gross domestic product would raise $19 billion.
We in the 99% receive all of our income from California economic activity. We could run the entire state budget on a 6% revenue tax, a tax on all business income. And we could encourage production in California by letting companies deduct their entire payroll taxes. That would raise our state budget back to $114 billion where we would have near fully funded education and social services.
And finally where consumers pay all of sales taxes and sales tax remedies are very regressive, responsible for lower income folk paying more of their income in state and local taxes than richer folk, a revenue tax is not immediately transferable to consumers. It applies to the cost of production not to the market driven price at time of sale.
Excellent! I agree, and I am sick and tired of the same old lies being regurgitated. Its pathetic that the lowest 20% pays higher taxes than the 1% of Californians. Now, stop the b.s. and get on with the truth. You can’t claim Democrat and not to do the right thing. Enough is enough! The cat is out of the bag, now catch it! I’m sharing this as much as I can! SIck, sick of it!
The rich are already paying most of the taxes received by the state. So, sure, let’s tax the rich even more so that even more of them leave California all together. That way the less wealthy will be required to pay more for their own government.
FACT: Long term, Prop. 13 did NOT reduce property tax revenues. Take a look at San Diego property tax revenues. True, the first two years after Prop. 13 passed there was noticeable reduction in property tax revenues. But after those first two years tax revenues rebounded and since that time have grown faster than inflation so that nowadays property taxes are much higher than they were BEFORE prop. 13, even factoring for inflation. THat’s San Diego County, the only county that I have data, but I presume it’s the same throughout the state. Also, property taxes are now much more stable and so much more predicable than before Prop. 13. The bottom line: Ms. Wells simply does not know what she’s talking about.
FACT: Tax revenue projections are nearly always overstated. Rich people are probably the most mobile people…when taxes go up, they leave the state and take their money (and jobs) with them. California is already either the first or second or third most heavily taxed state. For someone rich who wants to protect their wealth they could go to just about any other state to do that. I personally know of four business owners who started their businesses here in California but then left for other states where there wasn’t any income tax (Nevada for 3 and Florida for the other) and they left because of this state’s taxes. All of Ms. Wells projections presume that the taxpayers she’s targeting are going to stay and not move either themselves or their businesses out of state…again, she simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
FACT: Initiatives like Prop. 13 are passed BY THE VOTERS and not the governor. Everyone who has taken high school civics knows that. Ms. Wells doesn’t have a clue. It wouldn;t have mattered who was in the Governor’s mansion (or sleeping on a futon in a Sacramento apartment)….prop. 13 was passed by the voters and there was NOTHING either the governor could have done about it. In fact, Jerry Brown in his first term of office first OPPOSED Prop. 13…only after it was clearly going do pass did he endorse it.
I could go on, but you get the idea: Ms. Wells is soooo out of touch of reality and so ignorant of the law and the facts it isn’t funny.
Laura, thanks for the Good and Ugly of Prop 13; it energizes me to do more.