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Comment by houseabsolute | Hacker News Reader

I'm afraid you are incorrect. The link you put for California is just the general fund, which does not include special funds, bond funds, or federal funds like the Texas one does. After you add those in, California's count is $208 billion in 2008-2009. See this for more: http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/information/docu...

Edit: I should say though, right on for pointing out the material issue. You got the meat of it right in that it's overall spending that matters, not just income tax. You "showed your work" correctly, you just plugged in the wrong numbers. That means you get an 8/10 from me.

Edit2: I read the parent's post too quickly in my haste to make a point. However, neither of us considered the contribution of local taxes, as discussed below. I believe that that definitively answers the question of which state spends more per capita.

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And after you add them in for Texas, it's $158 billion. You're comparing apples and oranges.

Additionally, timr was correct to restrict his numbers to state tax revenue, which is the total under discussion.

If you do the math, it comes out to $6,500 per person in Teaxs, and $5,600 per person in California. So even considering the other sources of revenue (though it makes no sense to do so in this context), timr's point is still correct.

You're right, I misread the parent's post. It's unclear to me at this point whether the sums actually account for the same basket of incomes, but even if they do you have to admit that after this adjustment timr's point is about 50% less correct than it was before.

Apparently still not true. Have a look here (California State Per Capita Revenue numbers) 2010E - State: $4015; State+Local: $9050 http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/CA_per_capita_revenue.htm...

and here (Texas State Per Capita Revenue numbers) 2010E - State: $2980; State+Local: $7041 http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/TX_per_capita_revenue.htm...

These tie better back to the US Census numbers (which are only as at 2004 but are on an apples-apples basis): http://www.census.gov/govs/state/04rank.html

The problem is that states do not report revenues in the same ways and some are clearly more creative than others.

Yes, there's a problem with my original post; no, it's not related to federal transfers -- it's correct to exclude them from the calculation. The problem is that Texas (bizarrely) allocates its budget on a biennial basis. I didn't read the documents closely enough, and had assumed that 2009-2010 meant fiscal 2009-2010. Oops.

From the same Texas source, table A-12, the estimated total state revenue is $39.3 Bn for fiscal 2009. Thus, the per-capita revenue numbers for fiscal 2009 would be $1,617.30, versus $2,391 for California. So, I'm wrong. Texas takes in about 32% less per capita than California.

It's not that bizarre they budget biennially -- when you consider that the Texas legislature is part-time, and meets only every other year.

Given the eternal train-wreck that is California budgeting -- even in good years, they just give away the store in future obligations (like public pensions) that make the bad years twice as bad -- fewer, longer budgets might be a good idea here as well.

AFAIK, the biggest problem with California budgeting is the initiative-driven pre-allocation of huge amounts of money that would otherwise be discretionary income. Pensions may play a part, but not nearly to the extent claimed by certain partisan interest groups.

You're right that I'm wrong, but you're wrong about the reason. Federal contributions and local taxes have nothing to do with it -- the Texas budget is calculated on a biennial basis, whereas the California budget is calculated on an annual basis.

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