For “Those in Need”—Indeed?

Ron Getty

Vice Chair

Chair Initiatives Committee

Frederic Bastiat, a 19th-century French legislator and legal philosopher said, “The state is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

California’s budget traumas are prima facie evidence of what Frederic Bastiat meant and are indicative of Sacramento’s “Robbing Hood” mentality. Sacramento legislators enact tax laws mandating "voluntary" taxation of taxpayers’ hard-earned incomes to fund redistribution to "those in need" and to provide pay and benefits to state public servants.

Unfortunately, “those in need” are politically selected by the legislators doing the "Robbing Hood" pillaging. Legislators’ magnanimity also provides state public servants with pay and benefits averaging almost twice the pay and benefits of private industry workers. Thanks to legislators’ generosity, taxpayers are on the hook for $48 billion in unfunded state public employee retiree health and pension liabilities.

A Latin phrase describes this revolting situation: Non nobis, sed aliis, or, "Not for ourselves, but for others." This means the legislators are doing this for your own good because they know what's best for your earned income. Resistance is futile; obey or pay the price.

Suppose you say, “I won’t pay the price” and you devise methods to keep what is being ransacked from your hard-earned paycheck to protest the looting. You’ll end up with liens against your property, levies of your bank accounts, garnishment of your paycheck, seizure and sale of your assets, and possibly prison.

And yet taxpayers would face charges of felony armed robbery if they were to do what Sacramento does to seize taxpayers’ income. Nevertheless, Sacramento, with total impunity, legalizes and validates this thievery through self-justification.

Please note, California has no statute of limitation on collecting unpaid taxes. To avoid paying income taxes you’d have to join the underground economy, earning an income below the radar screen totally off the books, getting paid under the table—preferably in cash.

You say that’s not feasible. Well, then claim a hundred dependents to keep what you make during the year. At tax time, do a multi-year installment plan on the unpaid taxes. Imagine the massive impact if every year 19 million working California did this with their state and federal taxes.

Sacramento legislators must accept the excruciatingly painful reality that the day of spend-spend-spend and tax-tax-tax is finito. The voters emphatically told Sacramento where to shove off on May 19 with their supra-majority rejection of Propositions 1A-1E and their acceptance of 1F legislator salary freezes in budget deficit years. It’s time for Sacramento legislators to enact budget spending cuts without any new taxes and wherever possible cutting taxes.

Despite this situation, all is not lost. The Legislature could still cut the budget drastically, as the following examples show:

• 200 state parks face closure. With 80 million visitors, charging an entrance fee of $7 per visitor would keep them open. The parks budget is funded when people using the parks pay to keep them open.

• Some 105,000 nonviolent Department of Correction prisoners, who did the crime and now can pay for the time, could be hired out as agricultural labor at $10 an hour, generating $2.5 billion. Releasing 19,000 illegal immigrant prisoners to ICE for deportation would save half a billion in incarceration costs.

• Stop hiring costly seasonal fire fighters. A network of local trained volunteer fire fighters could be hired to fight forest fires, and their training could be extended to floods and earthquakes. Local trained volunteers with supplies and equipment cached for emergency usage would make them first responders.

• Teacher layoffs could be prevented by firing California’s 25,000 school bureaucrats along with 4,000 school psychologists who currently cost the state $24 billion in pay and benefits. A portion of the savings could be used to hire teachers where needed, and we could once again have teacher-run schools. Shutting down the California Department of Education, with its 2,500 employees and a $300 million budget, would once again let parents control the local schools.

• State employee pay and benefits should be scaled to average that of private industry. The state employs 345,000 people averaging $85,000 in pay and benefits. Private industry per capita pay and benefits average $45,000. The $40,000 reduction per state employee would cut the budgeted $14 billion, leaving money that could pay down the state employees’ health and pension unfunded liabilities.

• In-depth reviews should be conducted for each state department, division, bureau, board, and commission, determining whether the taxpayer-funded government service should be discontinued, should be merged with other departments, should charge user fees to cover its budget, or should be competitively bid out at less cost to taxpayers. The overall savings would be in the tens of billions.

It’s time Sacramento stopped the “Robbing Hood” mentality that treats taxpayers like ATM’s. Vital services can be funded, but please stop the involuntary philanthropic marauding of hard-earned income taken from taxpayers against their will to “help those in need.”