You can count me out!
The title of today's blog entry comes from Hudson, a character from the movie Aliens. Hudson decides he's really not up for the job of helping with the salvation of everyone on a planet riddled with blood thirstry aliens. Apparently its dependent on a long trip down a secluded access shaft to a remote transmitter antenna. Getting eaten by aliens on the way and taking one for the team was pretty much a certainty Hudson didn't want to be in on.
So I felt like I'd just heard a Hudson "you can count me out!" exclamation today when the brand-spanking new CEO of my earstwhile employeer spoke out to the entire company about California. That's the state where he'd made his home, where his wife and family lived and where his big fancy house is. "California", he pronounced, "is pretty much upside-down right now. If California were a country, the World Bank would have cut it off by now". He then proceeded to inform us, "There's only one way they are going to put things right and I'm damn glad I'm not living there now paying California taxes to help them".
Well doesn't that just about sum it up? And that coming from mister "I got rich in the dot com boom and reaped all the benefits of the tax cuts because no-one thought to spend the windfall on the common good and the minimum (or sub-minimum) wage earners who prop up the CA economy. No sirey, he doesn't care to stick around an pay his dues. Why is it that a certain segment of the population feel a god-given right to soak up the riches whenever possible and never pay their dues when they are needed?
Doesn't he realize that California produced 13% of the American GDP in 2001, exceeding that of even France (our new found enemy in "Old Europe") and yet its entire deficit (and we're not talking debt here, just deficit) is a mere $1000 per peron? For just a measly $1000 a big fat cat CEO like him could help wipe out the entire deficit of California and make a world of difference to the State. Of course there's an awful lot of people who'll never be able to afford $1000 each - that's all those undocumented workers, some of whom are probably cleaning his house and pool right now - so he'd probably need to chip in say $2000. But for that you buy an awful lot. To him its probably 10% of his property taxes (alone). To the rest of us its huge numbers of school programs don't get cut, huge numbers of day care subsidies don't get cut, huge numbers of arts programs that aren't laid to waste, huge numbers of environmental programs that aren't thrown out the window. The list goes on and on.... Just because someone wants to leave the state and dodge their taxes when the going gets tough. If we all leave the state then what happens? If we all leave the country then what happens? What kind of a nation of tax dodging quiters are we?
Anyway, as I was starting to point out, the 2001 California GDP is 13% of the USA GDP. Remember that George Bush will rack up over $500 billion in deficit spending for this year even when you discount the huge piles of cash he's taking from the social security fund. Therefore compared to the USA as a whole, our budget deficit for 2002 turned out to be around 50% of the national average per capita. And that's for a state with the highest cost of living and the highest wage earners who were most affected by the market crash that started in May 2000 and therefore had the most massive decline in tax revenues. So Mister CEO, I really I think we're doing quite alright thank you very much. And that's inspite of the Enron factor that contributed several billions in debt that California personally footed.
We wont even mention the USA national debt which is currently a staggering $6.8 trillion dollars. On a per captia basis that would be like California owing $700 billion. So when my company's new CEO starts getting all gung-ho and bragging about how fucked up California is, and how we'd be cut off by the world bank for our financial misdemeanors, I'd respectively like to remind him that USA Inc. now owes the world more than 20 times per captia what California does. And mark my words, its the world because a very significant part of our national debt is shored up by foreign capital investments in American financial instruments. If the other 95% of the worlds population collaboratively decided the dollar was no good then, as Hudson would say, we'd be on "one express elevator to hell - going down!"
No doubt at the bottom of the elevator shaft George Bush, Dick Chainey, John Ashcroft, Ken Lay and all the rest of their Neo-con cronies would be there to greet us. Oh joy...
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