Unemployment

[Jester]

1.4 million is not a crisis, even if it is 8% of the general fund budget.

Surely that must be a mistake of "million" vs. "billion". 1.4 million could not possibly be 8% of the general funds budget of Florida, unless Florida's works on a level four orders of magnitude below comparable states.

A few car washes and a bake sale could get them on budget again. That is like a 20 person lay off, or perhaps a small cut in state employee salaries across the board.

If I am correct, and the mistake above is millions to billions, then no, you're not going to make up 1.4 billion dollars by laying off 20 people. You wouldn't even make it up laying off 20,000 people.

I live in one of those states.

You live in Minnesota, do you not? You guys do even worse than California - 72 cents federal spending for every dollar contributed in federal taxes. When they build that Bridge to Nowhere, that's 28 cents of your dollar off to a place a lot colder than Minneapolis.

California has augured itself into the ground by passing so many laws, raising taxes, driving costs too high, and creating a climate of uncertaintly so high that business is fleeing.

This is a novel concept of California, almost entirely at odds with reality. Let's run it down:

1)The most dynamic sector of the US economy is based in California, as are many of its most dynamic companies. Google isn't based out of Kentucky.

2)Per capita income, far from weighed down with freeloaders, is well above the national average, ranking only behind the Northeast - the other "high tax, high benefit" states.

3) Taxes in California are barely higher than the national average.

4) California faces deficits it can't support. California voters didn't vote themselves high taxes, they voted themselves low taxes - and now they're suffering for it. They exacerbated their housing bubble and killed revenue with the craziest proposition of all time.

State bailouts are a horrible idea. States need to get that federal monkey off their backs, and regain their fiscal independence.

Let me get this straight. The States are in deep, deep fiscal trouble, and yelling as loudly as they can for bailout money. Your idea is that the drowning man needs his life preserver taken away, because it's holding him down? The alternative to bailouts is a *massive* slashing of programs and services. Millions of jobs evaporating. Necessary services, including obligatory ones, being destroyed right when people are having to rely on them. No preparation, no softening the blow, just triage.

This would be an utter disaster. Hell, it already is an utter disaster. This would be throwing the drowning man an anchor, and telling him that once he learns how to swim with it, he'll be better off.

For every job creation dollar spent, a government job will return on 15% of what a private sector job produces.

Source?

If you cut 100 California State employee jobs, and offered that money as tax relief, or hiring incentive you'd replace the 100 employees in the private sector you would quickly recoup the small amount lost in revenue with the increases in corporate tax paid by firms.

Shorter: "The government should increase revenue by giving away money."

Right. Give that a try, see how it works. I can only think of one situation where it would: if you were on the downslope of the Laffer Curve. The chance of that is pretty much zero.

The private sector can already hire people dirt cheap. Wages are down, productivity is way up. People are scared and desperate for jobs. The unemployment rate is through the roof. If there was really tons of money to be made in hiring more people, don't you think they might have already done it?

Not hidden for those who read legislation. But, it is hidden in a bill called "Stimulus". It should have been a separate bill called "State Bailout Bill".

It's on the first fracking page, that one of five objectives of the stimulus is to bail out state governments. You don't have to read the legalese. You can stop after page one!

If your idea is that they're "hiding" this by not having a completely separate bill, then I think you're nuts.

What happens to a consumption driven economy when the people run out of cash, and credit? America.

No doubt, the US will have to get back on more secure footing. Private debt was out of control, and public debt threatens to swallow the budget in about twenty years. You know what's driving both things? Health care. You know how you can fix it? Health care reform. Fix that, and you're more than halfway out of the hole before you even need to start on anything else.

-Jester