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FISCAL & GOVERNANCE IRRESPONSIBILITY
By Garen Yegparian
Asbarez
http://www.asbarez.com/2009/08/ 07/fiscal-governance-irresponsibility/
Aug 7, 2009
It's bad enough that so-called fiscally conservative legislators
(which should be interpreted as those advocating a "save now but spend
unavoidably, yet needlessly, more later" approach) are preventing the
federal government from stimulating the economy more strongly. But
here in California, because of peculiar requirements for passing
a budget, a minority in the legislature (sharing its ill-conceived
ideology with the aforementioned federal level electeds) is able to
impose its will. This tyranny of the minority must end, though the
means are unclear.
Meanwhile, let's look at how "reasonable" the "prudence" of these
fiscal conservatives truly is. Please take a good look at the attached
table. I'm no economist, but the data I've assembled is representative.
Economies grow, and there are ways to measure them. But it's not just
the growth. Prices increase and populations grow. In tandem with all
this growth, it stands to reason that government expenditures too
must grow to meet the greater demand for public services and goods:
roads, healthcare, education, regulation, etc.
What I've done is to take the oldest California budget information I
could find, the 1976-1977 fiscal year, and compared it with the last
complete fiscal year, 2008-2009. You can see the growth was 888%. That
seems huge, until you consider what else was going on.
In the same period, California's population grew 76%. That's a
whole lot of people! Simultaneously, the economy, as measured by GDP
(gross domestic product) increased a whopping 693%! All this, while
the cost of everything, as measured by CPI (consumer price index),
went up 279%. Add these three figures together and the result is 1049%.
Any schoolchild will tell you that 1049 is greater than 888. This means
that state expenditures have not increased ENOUGH to keep up with the
demands of all the growth within California's borders. And, if anyone
wants to argue that population growth is somehow accounted for in
the GDP figure, the result is still 888% to 973%. No wonder the road
system is in such bad shape. It's one of the easiest places to defer
maintenance, which is what anyone does when funds are insufficient.
So much for the argument that government is "wasteful"! I know
first-hand that about the same number of city employees as existed
in the early 1990s, serve the currently larger population of
Los Angeles. I have no reason to believe the state employees are
less efficient. The current state of affairs is a result of petty
legislative despots who have no compassion for or awareness of the
lives of the people they are harming.
So unless you hate your kids and grandkids, who'll take the brunt
of the hit now AND eventually have to pay for all the deferred
maintenance and other costs of the "penny wise, pound foolish"
approach advocated, and tyrannically enforced, by the right wing
obstructionists in Sacramento, you'd better get off your tail and
start finding ways to turn these Republicans around.
Oh, and I sure hope you have good health insurance. Why? Well, with
less money (something on the order of 12-13% less, judging by the $25
billionish in budget cuts recently enacted), public health is bound
to suffer too. The likelihood of contagion (think swine or avian flu)
running rampant then increases... Who knows, that might drive some
members of the Armenian community to return to whence they emigrated.
By Garen Yegparian
Asbarez
http://www.asbarez.com/2009/08/ 07/fiscal-governance-irresponsibility/
Aug 7, 2009
It's bad enough that so-called fiscally conservative legislators
(which should be interpreted as those advocating a "save now but spend
unavoidably, yet needlessly, more later" approach) are preventing the
federal government from stimulating the economy more strongly. But
here in California, because of peculiar requirements for passing
a budget, a minority in the legislature (sharing its ill-conceived
ideology with the aforementioned federal level electeds) is able to
impose its will. This tyranny of the minority must end, though the
means are unclear.
Meanwhile, let's look at how "reasonable" the "prudence" of these
fiscal conservatives truly is. Please take a good look at the attached
table. I'm no economist, but the data I've assembled is representative.
Economies grow, and there are ways to measure them. But it's not just
the growth. Prices increase and populations grow. In tandem with all
this growth, it stands to reason that government expenditures too
must grow to meet the greater demand for public services and goods:
roads, healthcare, education, regulation, etc.
What I've done is to take the oldest California budget information I
could find, the 1976-1977 fiscal year, and compared it with the last
complete fiscal year, 2008-2009. You can see the growth was 888%. That
seems huge, until you consider what else was going on.
In the same period, California's population grew 76%. That's a
whole lot of people! Simultaneously, the economy, as measured by GDP
(gross domestic product) increased a whopping 693%! All this, while
the cost of everything, as measured by CPI (consumer price index),
went up 279%. Add these three figures together and the result is 1049%.
Any schoolchild will tell you that 1049 is greater than 888. This means
that state expenditures have not increased ENOUGH to keep up with the
demands of all the growth within California's borders. And, if anyone
wants to argue that population growth is somehow accounted for in
the GDP figure, the result is still 888% to 973%. No wonder the road
system is in such bad shape. It's one of the easiest places to defer
maintenance, which is what anyone does when funds are insufficient.
So much for the argument that government is "wasteful"! I know
first-hand that about the same number of city employees as existed
in the early 1990s, serve the currently larger population of
Los Angeles. I have no reason to believe the state employees are
less efficient. The current state of affairs is a result of petty
legislative despots who have no compassion for or awareness of the
lives of the people they are harming.
So unless you hate your kids and grandkids, who'll take the brunt
of the hit now AND eventually have to pay for all the deferred
maintenance and other costs of the "penny wise, pound foolish"
approach advocated, and tyrannically enforced, by the right wing
obstructionists in Sacramento, you'd better get off your tail and
start finding ways to turn these Republicans around.
Oh, and I sure hope you have good health insurance. Why? Well, with
less money (something on the order of 12-13% less, judging by the $25
billionish in budget cuts recently enacted), public health is bound
to suffer too. The likelihood of contagion (think swine or avian flu)
running rampant then increases... Who knows, that might drive some
members of the Armenian community to return to whence they emigrated.