It's Always About Money

I really, really love living in southern California. It's beautiful, has perfect weather and it has mountains, beaches, dessert and big cities. Like I've said before, the only problem with it (in my view) is that it's too expensive to live here. In terms of buying property, any decent 2 bedroom condo in our town is at least $650K and you cannot buy an actual house (i.e. with land) for less than $1 million. Not exactly young-family friendly.
While this is certainly a problem, it doesn't render it prohibitively expensive to live here because we rent an apartment and are just saving really slowly to buy a place. But soon there will be lots of new problems. The State is currently trying to pass a budget to deal with its own deficit ... $42 BILLION. And guess how they plan to fix it? By taxing everyone more. OF COURSE! BRILLIANT!

I like what this article has to say about it all:

It's sad to watch. The Golden State -- which a decade ago was the booming technology capital of the world -- has been done in by two decades of chronic overspending, overregulating and a hyperprogressive tax code that exaggerates the impact on state revenues of economic boom and bust. Total state expenditures have grown to $145 billion in 2008 from $104 billion in 2003 and California now has the worst credit rating in the nation -- worse even than Louisiana's. It also has the nation's fourth highest unemployment rate of 9.3% (after Michigan, Rhode Island and South Carolina) and the second highest home foreclosure rate (after Nevada)

The media is painting the Republicans in the state senate as evil and menacing, gleefully foiling the Democrats in their honorable battle to pass a budget compromise. But the sound bytes say it all... One dissenter said something along the lines of "I am strongly against raising taxes to generate revenue, especially in a recession. The way to bridge the gap in the budget is to cut spending." Hmmm, that sounds ... logical! Arnold Schwarzenegger is in office because Gray Davis was recalled for damaging California's financial situation so badly, but look at what he has done.

So, I'm starting to get a little concerned about my future here. Rumor is that the tax rate on personal income tax will jump up to 10.56% (at the top marginal rate). Our sales tax is already 8.25% (plus an LA County surcharge). If we are ever able to buy property, there will be property tax and mello roos on top of all that. Adding in federal taxes, we're probably only going to come home with about 40% of our income. That will all go toward fun stuff... you know, like paying rent, student loans, childcare and food.

Being an adult sucks. I just want to live my life and settle down where I want, without sleazy politicians selling my soul for their special interests and bad ideas.