Thursday, February 19, 2009
PASSED OUT
My State Senate just passed the budget after months of deadlock.
They needed one vote from diehard GOoPers who are "till death do us part" on no taxes. These bastards will kill us.
There are only ten of them. Ten.
But we have one of those stupid 2/3 vote things and they have this power and by goddam they are going to use it.
Neanderthals.
That raises the taxes for us some. Just this morning I got a wake-up on taxes from Tom.
It is a little old but what the hell?
I am amazed to see that the state I left to be here, Massachusetts, better known to its residents as "Taxachusetts", is not the highest tax state at all. Nor are we, although MA is a lot better than CA.
I have always figured the two to be the same. Both have income taxes and sales taxes. But CA has a very high sales tax depending on location as local governments are allowed to tack on a bit for themselves. Our real estate taxes tend to be lower (if you bought at the right time as we did) because of Prop 2 1/2 which limits re tax increases to, well, 2 1/2 percent a year.
The part of this table that really surprised me is the average income of the states. MA is quite high. Along with Connecticut and New Jersey.
I would not expect CA to be as high because of the immigrant situation. We realized when we came here that we had more than 50% greater buying power with the trades and other services because of the lower immigrant wages.
On the other hand, gas and other costs are higher.
It evens out.
So, I learn something new every day. Not that I can apply my learning to anything other than, perhaps, moving. But who the hell would want to move away from Palm Springs?
Labels: California
