I was sitting down pondering why California has the most regulations, highest state taxes, gasoline taxes and overall cost of living of any state outside of Hawaii and New York. I brought up a few pie charts from a variety of state and private sources that show where our tax dollars went for the 2022-23 budget season. Here’s how it looked:
• 40% — Education (K-12, state colleges and universities).
• 30% — Health and human services (includes medical and every social program and service imaginable).
• 7% — Criminal justice system (police, courts, prisons, etc.).
• 3% — Debt servicing (mostly state bond measures for “essentials” like high-speed rail, etc.).
• 19% — Other (includes transportation and general infrastructure).
A simpleton such as myself quickly concludes two things:
One: California has too many programs and regulations.
Two: Notwithstanding, our state mismanages money with profound inefficiency and wastefulness.
Then I asked myself as to why this is so, and I came up with a single conclusion:
Our state is governed by people who are … what’s the word I’m looking for? Morons? No. Imbeciles? No. Actually, most of them are pretty darned intelligent, odd as it may seem. But something odd is going on with THEM for us to be in such a state of affairs.
Oh, I think I’ve got it, and we learned about this in political science class. Our state is governed by people who want to get reelected, THAT’S IT, and they’ve exceeded their “bribery budget”!
Now, how do we get them to stop bribing us with all of these expensive “goodies”?
Arthur Saginian
Santa Clarita
