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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

California has been a blue state (as per Presidential votes) since the 80's. You're only off by 30 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

While true, California also has the infamous Proposition 13, designed in the 70s by conservatives to starve the state of tax income. One of its provisions is that tax increases require a 2/3 supermajority on any tax increases enacted legislature. This effectively gave Republicans a veto on most sources of revenue.

This led to chronic budget deficits, which would often be papered over by issuing bonds, and a variety of "fees". Such as the hated auto registration fee, which was one of the grievances during the recall of Democratic governor Gray Davis.

Eventually we decided we had enough of Republicans, and Democrats gained a super majority in state congress. Now the state is running a surplus. I'm not claiming they have solved our problems, but at least we have money to build things again.

You do know that governments can also decrease their spending - and you can decrease from doing things other than just cutting services (how about fraud, waste, abuse, redundancies, etc.?) The only answer isn't to tax more?

As for the budget "surplus" - CA has retired all its debt too? Now that really is good news!

lol - surplus with a debt is just accounting fun and games. Keep deluding yourselves; I'm sure nothing bad - like not having enough power - will come from it.

Worth noting, I think, that California has the highest income tax rate in the country by a good margin and the 4th highest tax revenue per capita among states in 2021.

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