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This article has originally been published in December 22, 2002, issue of Alamance Independent
CALIFORNIA TAX DOLLARS: EASY COME EASY GO
by Mark Andrew Dwyer - 12/22/02
There is an old Eastern European proverb form the by-gone Soviet era that says: "If the Socialists were in charge of Sahara then shortages of sand would follow soon". So, it had to surprise no one, at least no one familiar with how the leftist ideas worked when implemented, that Democrat-controlled California government turned a 14 billion dollar surplus into a 35 million dollar deficit. Per Washington Post ("California Budget Deficit Nears $35 Billion", Wednesday, December 18, 2002, by Michael Kahn), they blame the bulk of the shortfall, $17.7 billion, on lower-than-expected tax revenue, and another $4.5 billion on required spending increases and loss of federal funding. Their "explanations", as you can guess, do not say anything where did the $14 billion of previous surplus go. Assembly Republican leader, Dave Cox, characterized it as "living beyond our means". I would put it this way: Liberalism is being merciful for the poor and oppressed from somebody else's pocket.
Although the idea of "taxing the rich and giving away to the poor" seemed easier for California Democrats to implement than it was for the governments of Eastern European People's Republics (there has been incomparably higher supply of the rich here than there), the Socialist governments had an actual advantage over the California Democrats. The Eastern European rich were not allowed to vote with their feet (run away, that is), and even when they managed to flee their countries, they had to leave most of their riches for the appeasement of their governments. Unlike the California rich who, once taxed to teeth, just moved out to another state that showed more respect for their above average income generating talents. This included those who profited handsomely form the (mostly illegal) immigrant "cheap labor" subsidized by the State of California in a form of free education, free health care, and low income housing, compliments of the rest of California taxpayers.
To make the odds even more biased against the California Democrats, the Socialist governments did remarkably good job in not allowing millions of the poor to flood the People's Republics, partly because of very modest entitlements that they offered to their poor and partly because of stringent enforcement of the borders. Unlike the California Democrats who actually encouraged not only the domestic less fortunates to move into the "Golden" State, but they also welcomed millions of uneducated though highly fertile poor from Mexico and other Third-World countries to (legally or otherwise) cross the American border. Which had that unpleasant effect that the cost of welfare and indirect benefits that were given away to keep them afloat could sink even such potent money making machine as California economy.
There are estimated 5 million+ illegal immigrants in California. They account for at least 15% of the state's population. Children of these illegal immigrants, technically not immigrants anymore (because they are not foreign born) constitute perhaps the largest single drain of California budget. Here are the figures. According to Laura E. Hill and Hans P. Johnson of the PPIC (Download PDF file), "between 1987 and 1991, total fertility rates [expected number of children per woman over her lifetime] for foreign-born Hispanics [in California] increased from 3.2 to 4.4", which more than doubled 2.1 replacement fertility rate for native Californians. (Per Steve Sailer, this illegal immigrant "baby boom" was triggered by the amnesty of 1986.) As a result, the percentage of illegal immigrants kids in public schools is more than twice their percentage (15%) of California's population, that is roughly 30% (well over 60% in highly populated areas of Southern California), simply because on average they had twice as many kids than natives. Since the K-12 total state enrollment is close to 6 million, that would yield an estimated 1.8 million of illegal aliens' children in California public schools. With average annual cost per student equal to $9,100 ("What the deficit could buy" Orange County Register, Dec 22, 2002), the estimated budget expenditure for educating children of illegal aliens is over $16 billion each year, almost half of current budget deficit. Think of it as a cost of derailing of Proposition 187 by Gov. Davis and his cabinet; despite what some bleeding heart liberal morons say, there is nothing in the U.S. law that would mandate FREE education of illegal alien children.
But that's just a beginning. According to national statistics compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies, an average immigrant collects over his lifetime estimated $1,200 more in welfare and other benefits than he pays in all taxes. (For illegals, who often get paid "under the table" so that they don't pay taxes, and who are poorer and less educated than legal immigrants, the actual figure is - most likely - much higher.) That resulted in a total of $6 billion+ (low estimate) paid in welfare to the illegals under assumption that all the taxes they paid, if any, went back to California budget. Since a bulk of these taxes were used by the Federal Government, the resulting shortfall paid by the State of California was likely to be several times higher and to fall into a range of tens of billions of dollars. Add to that humongous (multi-million dollar) restitutions that were awarded by liberal judges to convicted drug traffickers and gang members after the evidence against them was deemed planted or otherwise inadmissible, and you will get the idea what happened to all the surpluses. They were recklessly wasted as if those who spent them were thinking "Easy come, easy go".
There is a causality relationship between what the Left stands for and the disastrous economic effects of their administration. Since millions of the poor, Democratic most loyal voting constituency, are needed to assure the political survival of the Democratic Party, it was just a matter of time before the Dems developed policies and means that assure a steady increase in population of the poor. As a consequence, big chunk of billions spent by California Democrats to fight the poverty and illiteracy ended up being used either to promote high fertility rates among those who could not afford to raise kids on their own, or to attract and abet millions of low skilled (mostly illegal) immigrants, followed by their numerous families, from Mexico and other Third-World countries. The Malthus law predicted this pattern surprisingly well: any increase in the volume of handouts for the poor would temporarily increase their standard of living, which in turn would increase their fertility rate thus depressing their living standard back to the point before the increase of the handouts.
The year when the last California's poor becomes "rich" (that is, having a combined household income of $115,000 or more in today's dollars) will be the last year that anyone, except, perhaps, for the San Francisco liberals and the left wing extremists of the Democratic Party, votes Democrat. Most of the Democratic leadership seems well aware of that, so it's good to remember what their real objective is: to keep the population of poor growing. With such an agenda, not only a shortage of tax dollars but also the shortages of sand may follow soon. Let's hope that President Bush and other advocates of "open border" policy and "guest worker" programs can learn a valuable lesson, if not from Malthus then from the current fiscal disaster in California, that mass importation of the poor and the fertile, particularly when the rich and their dollars can flee the country easily, is a blueprint for future economic collapse.
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