California

[dragoneggs]

Dunno but that never prevented me from expressing an opinion. To make a guess, per capita is total income reported on State income tax returns divided by population. While earnings per person is average annual wage paid to employed people. Or something like that. It's probably explained in the footnotes to those charts. Gross income in the state is distorted by the huge incomes made by the mega-rich. (from post#1 in this thread "four of the world's 10 largest companies are headquartered in California, including tech heavyweights Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB). " This concentration of new tech wealth got us in trouble 15 years ago. The legislature allocated all the new dot-com tax revenue to permanent programs then the dot-com bubble burst and the new dedicated expenditures couldn't be downsized fast enough to avoid budget shortfalls. Governor Jerry Brown may seem like a nut, he's rightfully earned that reputation, but he really does understand state budgeting. After he took office, Brown got everything back to running smoothly and the state budget has finally left that crisis era behind. The overall picture is that the state's economy is growing faster than the nation as a whole, in fact you could say that California is pulling up the numbers for the national economy because this performance is such a large component of the national economy. Added - The fishpond model above isn't applicable to economics. As people mine, farm, manufacture, sell stuff to one another, write computer programs or whole new computer cultures (Facebook etc) new wealth is created and the economy grows. In terms of that fishpond, the dimensions of the pond are increasing.

No disrespect to Gov Brown but I still think there will be a day of reckoning with regard to water supply. The state on its own cannot survive its current growth and consumption.

 

[MossRoad]

Added - The fishpond model above isn't applicable to economics. As people mine, farm, manufacture, sell stuff to one another, write computer programs or whole new computer cultures (Facebook etc) new wealth is created and the economy grows. In terms of that fishpond, the dimensions of the pond are increasing.

I don't think so.

The dimensions are staying the same. The nutrients in the watershed are being increased. Call it fertilizer! :laughing:

In all seriousness, if you increase the nutrients in the watershed that drains into the pond, you can increase the amount of fish, as long as the fish can consume the nutrients, the fish added crap doesn't pollute the water, the weeds are balanced, etc...

 

[MossRoad]

.....
This concentration of new tech wealth got us in trouble 15 years ago. The legislature allocated all the new dot-com tax revenue to permanent programs then the dot-com bubble burst and the new dedicated expenditures couldn't be downsized fast enough to avoid budget shortfalls.
.....

We run into similar problems with cigarette and gas taxes.... fewer people smoke and cars get better gas mileage now, so it generates less tax revenue than they thought it was going to.

 

[California]

No disrespect to Gov Brown but I still think there will be a day of reckoning with regard to water supply. The state on its own cannot survive its current growth and consumption.

Very true. While I admire Brown's skill in straightening out the budget mess he inherited, I don't like the water plan he is pushing - a big tunnel to divert water from the San Francisco delta and send it south. Purportedly for urban Los Angeles, actually much of it destined for the huge commercial farming corporations halfway to Los Angeles who are spending millions lobbing for this project. Those guys will make far more than recovering their cost of lobbying if this project goes through.

 

[ultrarunner]

The pay by the mile driven or annual fee pilot program has started...

Not sure how it'll affect me if it becomes the norm as I own many cars... most antique.

The gas tax was so simple but money gets syphoned off for mass transit and other things like bike lanes the State says there is not enough to maintain the highways...

 

[joefromga]

Seems like pay by mile as a REPLACEMENT for 9/10 tax would be good for low mileage vehicles because they use the roads less.

I don't like forms to fill out though. And I'm sure there's a newer one in the works to report your mileage on.

 

[Gunny]

I think the pay by mile system would penalize rural folks and benefit city folks that had access to public transportation, since public entities are tax exempt for most things. I have a friend that has a gravel lane (owned and maintained by him) just to get out to the nearest public road, which is a county owned two lane gravel road. Its another two miles on that road before he even sees blacktop, so everyday, he'd be paying taxes for at least four miles of driving on gravel.

 

[Gunny]

I think the pay by mile system would penalize rural folks and benefit city folks that had access to public transportation, since public entities are tax exempt for most things. I have a friend that has a gravel lane (owned and maintained by him) just to get out to the nearest public road, which is a county owned two lane gravel road. Its another two miles on that road before he even sees blacktop, so everyday, he'd be paying taxes for at least four miles of driving on gravel.

What really needs to happen is a way to keep the states from dipping into the road tax money to use for other things they want to spend money on

 

[Gunny]

I think the pay by mile system would penalize rural folks and benefit city folks that had access to public transportation, since public entities are tax exempt for most things. I have a friend that has a gravel lane (owned and maintained by him) just to get out to the nearest public road, which is a county owned two lane gravel road. Its another two miles on that road before he even sees blacktop, so everyday, he'd be paying taxes for at least four miles of driving on gravel.

What really needs to happen is a way to keep the states from dipping into the road tax money to use for other things they want to spend money on.

Louisville, Ky used those funds to pay for WiFi on the city buses, using the claim that ridership would increase because people would then ride the buses more rather than driving their vehicles, again, not an option for us that live out in the country

 

[buickanddeere]

Social engineers live in downtown condos, take public transportation or charge a cab to thier Governemt department or their tax free protest groups.
Social engineers don't care about suburban and rural dwellers and in fact see the non urbanites as the wild uncontrolled problem causing pollution .