Governors do not control the Economy ---The President and the Congress do

[The Lone Liberal]

The state government does not have printing presses that work around the clock printing money. The President and the Congress do possess that power. If you are looking for someone to blame for the state of the economy it is the President and the Congress. They along with the thieves of corporate America are responsible for unemployment, the financial shape of the state governments, the federal deficit, low wages, jobs being shipped overseas. In short the President and the Congress are the ones that should have been recalled.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. Virtually every state in the Union is in the budget hole.

Illinois among them, and we did not get screwed by Enron the way California did.

I love the part where Ah-nuld is calling for a top-to-bottom audit of the state's books. How many millions will the taxpayers have to cough up for that one? And there must be some repuke-connected accounting firms in California who will get the contract for that one. Of course, it won't be Arthur Andersen.

[Yupster]

5. The difference

between California and most other states...

Most states get the biggest part of their budget from property taxes and sales taxes. California gets a much larger portion of its money than most states from its income tax.

It's a very progressive tax. I heard on tv that 5 years ago a full 15 % of the state budget came from the taxes paid from exercised stock options, mostly from Silicon Valley. That number became about zero last year.

If you're going to have your state revenue depend on the incomes of the wealthy, you are talking about the stock market. If you want your state budget to depend on whether the stock market goes up or down, you are just waiting for a disaster. When the market collapsed from Jan 2000 - July 2002, the state stopped getting money from stock option exercisors, or from capital gains for that matter.

California has to do something about their property tax limits because depending on rich people's incomes (the stock market) is just inviting a boom and bust cycle, and that's no way to estimate a budget.

[greatauntoftriplets]

2. message deleted

[ComerPerro]

3. That always bothered me

They hate Davis because he was, as they described, "an incompetant failure whose lack of fiscal discipline sent the state into massive deficits".

But most of our states are in deficit. So is the nation.

But the nation is allowed to carry deficits. And no one cares how badly Bush screws us.

Fuck Bush. Fuck his supporters.

[Silverhair]

4. Think again

An individual state's economy will be better or worse than the national economy depending on the laws that are passed by that state government. It is a combination of the impact of the feds and the variation of the state. There are numberous cases of legislative changes causing both booms and busts in states.

[jame]

6. You are correct, sir......

I saw no boom here in the midwest in the nineties, but gave no credit or discredit to Clinton or Reagan.

There is a local boom here lately, but I give or take nothing from Bush or Clinton.

If you study econ, a gov't can only have a negative effect in the way of legislation re: business regulation or excessive taxation, bot of which affect consumer confidence, which is the real driver of the economy.

Gov't rarely has a positive measurable effect on the economy. It's all up to us, the consumer.