Who is this "Martin Luther King" and why does he have his day off today?

[Ben Kenobi]

Given the tiny differences in growth rates, no, it will not make up a 13% difference in 5 years especially since most of California's new jobs tend to be high paying while most of Texas's new jobs tend to be with in one dollar of the minimum wage. You're adding poor people and we're adding high waying jobs while losing poor people. Guess whose median is going up and whose is going down.

Who's talking about that GDP bull****? I'm talking about income. You know, actual earnings.

[Ben Kenobi]

Guess whose median is going up and whose is going down.

In terms of income? Texas.

[Dinner]

You're a babbling idiot who demands one thing but then when it is delivered and proves you wrong you just slide over to something different and pretend that's what you meant all along. Lying hypocrite. BTW, no, as usual you are wrong as California's are far wealthier than Texans any way you measure it.

On a different not here is yet another reason why California is better. In a report released just this weekend California was ranked #1 in government transparency, the ability of individual citizens to easily see what their government is doing in their name, and in responsiveness to citizen requests for information.

http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Transparency_report_card_%282013%29

[giblets]

Texas, the "3rd world ****hole", ranked 6th out of 50 on government transparency.

[MichaeltheGreat]

If you're trying to decide where to retire, what are the chances that you're in poverty?

Poverty? No. Financially constrained in retirement? Yes. There are a lot of people who could support themselves here while working, but not in retirement. They can sell a house here (maybe owned for 30+ years so it was dirt cheap back in the day) and pay cash for a house in some sunbelt retirement bum****istan and have money left over from the sale of the house here.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Texas, the "3rd world ****hole", ranked 6th out of 50 on government transparency.

It's pretty easy to see through any Texan. They're all transparent.

[MichaeltheGreat]

What's remarkable about receiving more federal spending than you pay for when the federal government is running large deficits?

Nothing, if you don't wail and gnash your teeth about how the fedrul gummint is robbing you and destroying your prosperity blah blah blah. Then the hypocrisy gets a little thick, like when then-Senator Phil Gramm said "I'm carrying so much pork (back to Texas) I'm starting to get trichinosis."

[Ben Kenobi]

You're a babbling idiot who demands one thing but then when it is delivered and proves you wrong you just slide over to something different and pretend that's what you meant all along. Lying hypocrite. BTW, no, as usual you are wrong as California's are far wealthier than Texans any way you measure it.

This information was already provided earlier in the thread, provind California's slide in terms of income from 7th to 17th, the largest of any state over the past 5 years. Texas has climbed up to 25th now. Extrapolating from long term trends, show that TX should pass California in per capita income in about 5-10 years, with Texas also passing the median US income for the first time, and California sliding below the median US income.

[Ben Kenobi]

Poverty? No. Financially constrained in retirement? Yes. There are a lot of people who could support themselves here while working, but not in retirement. They can sell a house here (maybe owned for 30+ years so it was dirt cheap back in the day) and pay cash for a house in some sunbelt retirement bum****istan and have money left over from the sale of the house here.

Then perhaps you should move to an area that doesn't force you to pay taxes when you draw off your massive California pension. Like Florida, which I noticed did not make this list.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Yes, because the only cost of living for a retiree is state taxes.

[Ben Kenobi]

Yes, because the only cost of living for a retiree is state taxes.

So if South Carolina and Georgia are so terrible, why is Florida so awesome? Maybe Dinner has the answer.

[MrFun]

Lots of reasons. California is more of a boom/bust state, but Prop. 13 handcuffs the state's options with surplus revenues during boom times. California also had a ton of new road, school and other construction (not all of which is directly in the state budget) for years to meet influx and migration patterns. Public employee pensions at the state level are not that big of a deal, since that money was funded over the course of employment into CalPERS, which doesn't draw off the state budget.

There's a lot of inefficiency in the budget process and state government, but it's also a big, expensive state to run, with a lot of infrastructure and state level services spread into very low population areas.

The unemployment rate is higher overall, but that is skewed primarily by five central ag-economy based counties - four in the San Joaquin valley, plus Imperial County. If you take those five counties out, then California falls into line. The housing bubble also distorts unemployment - there's a surplus of housing in most areas, so no reason to have a big boom in housing construction. Same thing happened in metro Phoenix and Las Vegas in that respect.

Thanks MTG, for answering my questions.

[MrFun]

1) The 2/3rds rule, put in place by Republicans in the 1980's, caused political grid lock and notice that with in a year of it being gone suddenly the deficit was reduced to all most nothing in 2012 and is expected to be in surplus in 2013.

2) California, like Japan in the 1990's and the Dutch after Tulip Mania, is suffering from a big bubble which popped; specifically a real estate asset bubble. Like Japan it is going to have a long hang over due to the massive debt accumulation during the bubble and the resulting bankruptcies and debt pay downs post bubble popping. You'll notice the states which saw the biggest price run ups during the bubble (Florida, California, Nevada, and a few others) are now seeing the worst post bubble bust. Loans secured based upon the value of real estate suddenly don't look so good once real estate values plunge. It will probably take 20-30 years for all that mal-investment to work its way through the bankruptcy courts but California law is actually speeding things up as it allows owners to walk away from their now upside down mortgages simply by returning the keys to the bank but that still leaves banks with big capital loses and that's the big problem we're currently having.

thanks, Dinner

[Pax]

I thought you had a hearing disorder, not a reading disorder.

This explains a lot of my frustration

[Sava]

I miss mtg