California budget crisis - Another result of the conservative anti-government ideology

California has a budget deficit of $16 billion this year. That's 12% of the total budget. It could be paid by increasing taxes of 1% on everyone in California's income. It can't be covered by reducing expenses, since that has already been done since Proposition 13 was passed over two decades ago. How did such an incompetent event occur? From Michael O'Hare at the Reality-Based Community:

The moving parts go back to the state constitution's requirement of a 2/3 legislative majority to tax, and to Proposition 13, when local governments couldn't cut property tax rates fast enough and voters were sold a bottle of snake oil that permanently ruined local public finance. Then the state Supreme Court moved school financing to the state level, and removed the major incentive for citizens to let their local governments tax them, a well-intentioned tragedy of the commons. It hasn't helped that the legislature voted itself safe districts all around, or that the voters enacted term limits assuring that the legislature, including its leadership, would forever be novices.

But politics is different from the content of laws and rules. The politics of this is that California Republicans have collapsed to a permanent minority mainly representing people rich and stupid enough to think they don't need government, and heartless enough to sleep at night as they deny it to those who do. There are just enough of them in the legislature to do their one trick, which is to contract that if any one of them ever votes for any tax, the party will run an opponent in the next primary and defeat him.

That's the conservative movement at work. No new taxes. 2/3rds majority for tax increases and primary challenges for any legislator who thinks a tax is really seriously needed and so votes for it. State funding of local schools - funding is separated from the need. Safe districts for legislators set up by the legislators themselves (this isn't unique to conservatives.)

The very wealthy may feel they have no need for government. The rest of us do need it, and we have to pay for it.

But so do the wealthy and powerful because they are the first and greatest beneficiaries of government. Without government their power and wealth becomes much less secure. The original use of government was to protect the wealthy from the less wealthy. It took democracy and the growth of the middle class to make government valuable to people beyond the most powerful and wealthy, but that move also greatly increased the wealth of the society.

The greatest beneficiary of government should pay the greatest tax to support it. That is the wealthy and powerful. After that, the middle class must support themselves and their need for government.

The poor need to be invited to join the reliably productive middle class, and since they have the least resources to contribute, they should pay the lowest tax to support government until they join the middle class.

That's the argument for the progressive tax system. The absence of government will destroy the sources of reliable wealth in the society. Everyone loses.

Conservatism has pushed the view that government is unnecessary and that no taxes are required. The current economic recession is a clear proof that this is a lie.

It's time for the Reagan Revolution/Conservative ideology to come to an end. It is the cause of almost all of America's current weaknesses.