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LAist's disastrous attempt to fix the budget | Screenshot via LA Time's Budget Calculator
Last night, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted, asking followers to try to fix the budget themselves on LA Times' wicked-cool budget calculator. "Tell me how you do," he said.
Now that's Government 2.0, or whatever, at its prime.
So, this is how we did, amazingly earning the state an extra $840 million. Of course, that came at the expense of the education system and your taxes. Here's how we solved the budget crisis, making enemies the whole:
- Slashed $5.3 billion from K-12 Schools and Community Colleges
- We also took an additional $4.6 billion from the Community College system, closing it down entirely.
- Cut $1.5 billion from the UC and CSU System
- We taxed cigarettes at $1.50 a pack, that's $1.2 billion in revenue
- We raised $5 billion by taxing the top income-tax bracket more
- Adding a nickel per alcoholic drink raised $585 million.
- Raise the gas tax a shocking 32-cents per gallon and that's $5.8 billion
- Lastly, an oil severance tax to any producer pumping oil from California lands and water raised $855 million.
Well, we did it, without getting a death threat from teachers, students, smokers, commuters and just about everyone... yet.
How'd you do? A discussion is happening over at LA Now and the Governor's Office is using Flickr to collect screenshots like ours above. Of course, you can chime in below, too.
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I actually chose all the tax increases, at the expense of not cutting anything from education, and very little from health care and social services. It was fun!
Nice one!
And if marijuana was legal and taxed, that would be another $1 billion, according to estimates from Ammiano's bill.
Holy crap its hard!
i'm surprised you kept the commercial property tax increase out of your proposal. isn't prop 13 the reason why california's revenue streams are so fickle...?
I probably should have, could have traded that and a few other taxes for at least one educational item. I can always redo cause it only takes a minute to fix the budget on the internet :)
it's seriously missing a lot more possible tax increases.
i'd throw a 15 percent sales tax on there (like VAT in other countries) along with the marijuana taxation someone already had mentioned. I'd also tax gasoline up to european levels. don't like it? get a 40mpg honda!
I wish it was that easy to go out and buy a magical honda. I agree with tax increases but we have a too powerful minority that would rather see this state go down in flames than help. I actually liked the governor's proposal cause he did go down the board and cut everything. But as much as they cut they should tax so the pain is equal on everyone.
And it's annoying that they're so fixed. Can't we get a 20 cent gasoline tax increase instead of 32 cents? Obviously the legislature could do it, but I guess it would make the online experiment too complicated.
tax marijuana, DUH.
Not that this is real, but cuts to education are only going to cause more economic problems in the future (when those kids graduate and don't have a college to go to, or can't get into college because they had such a poor education, etc). It's a vicious cycle.
http://www.house.gov/jec/educ.htm
California is too expensive to live in, the taxes are already too high and bottom feeder politicians are looking to raise them further,enviromental policies are way too tight. and it never works when you have more welfare cases than hard working producive members of society.
i think the solution is simple.
drill thousands of small deep holes along the california - nevada border, and drop tnt sticks in them...and light them. America will be better offf if california slides into the ocean.
Why is tax increases just one big lump? Can't we opt for reinstating the vehicle taxes that Arnold repealed (and staked his political career on)? That alone would fix this mess.