This author may be right, but it’s a LONG way from now to failure.
CA is running a SURPLUS of over $10bil this year, even after all the extra spending. That’s on a budget of over $200bil. All debt payments are current and new borrowing is minimal.
State GDP is on fire. You have to hire trucks to haul all the money away.
That said, if they go after tech, ag and aerospace for more...this will go sideways FAST. Tech and aerospace can move.
They wouldn’t be dumb enough to kill agriculture, would they? This state is #1 in the nation in AG. By far.
Sadly, AG is usually the first casualty of communism.
You actually haven’t driven the 5 and noticed the signs on the dried up fields that say ‘Congress Created Dust Bowl’? Or maybe they aren’t there anymore.....I haven’t driven that route in 9 years.
It is not at all a long way to the city pension collapse.
Fort Worth in Texas isn’t looking too good either.
AG is in a death spiral in CA because of the manmade water shortages.
The Central Valley is a modern day dust bowl.
Didn’t they kill agriculture when they shut the water to the Central Valley off? All in service of the Delta Smelt and 23 trout.
And the state is currently under severe water restriction. Like crazy severe. Don’t plan on taking a shower and doing your laundry on the same day. And the restrictions are progressive (see what I did there?), they will keep getting worse.
I’m always amazed that Prop 13 hasn’t been repealed yet. That would obliterate a lot of people, especially seniors.
We are so grateful that we fled in 2015. It comes up almost daily.
One of the reasons for the $10bil surplus is deferred maintenance. The Oroville dam spillway project will cost $2bil alone and the Feds just told them no FEMA money for it as the causation was “deferred maintenance”. California is using deferred maintenance of previously paid for capitol infrastructure as a piggy bank to fund their socialist wet dream. That money would evaporate in a nanosecond if it were to be plowed into just maintenance, let alone capitol projects such as water infrastructure that has been identified as a “dire need”. Don’t even get me started on the $65bil high speed train to nowhere.
And AG means water and they are squeezing us big time on a commodity we don’t have much of, they won’t spend to stock pile (new reservoirs), and are taxing us big time in tiers based on use. The mass restrictions get worse each year. When you mention we are #1 in the nation with AG, makes me wonder how much the taxpayers are taking up the slack there for them to allow this to happen. Basically robbing Peter to pay Paul in both water and in funding the cost of it. We all noticed the taxes and pricing on water didn’t go down when the drought ‘temporarily’ went away.
c.f. Missouri 2019 budget of 6.1 billion