California's Indisputable Facts and their Implications

Earlier this week, the California Legislative Analyst Office came out with the latest version of their "Cal Facts" handbook.  It is a brief overview of many of the public policy issues facing the state. It should be required reading for every citizen - a quiz should be administered before one casts a vote.  Some of the interesting points and their implications:

• Of major industries, government has shed the third least percentage of jobs in during the recent recession (page 3). While public employees certainly have not been spared pain during the downturn, it has hardly been an undue burden. Only the information and Education/Health sectors have lost a lower percentage of jobs.
• Personal income declined in 2009 for the first time since the Great Depression (page 4). It really is bad out there...
• Over the next decade, the number of 18-24 year olds in the state will decline while the number of seniors skyrockets. Good news for higher education, bad news for heath services (page 6).
• As of 2008, only 41 percent of California's population was white (page 7). Republicans need to expand their appeal to minority groups. Now.
• California's tax burden is higher than the national average (page 9). Democrats, get this through your head: Californians aren't under taxed. True, we are lower than New York, but I'm not sure we want to aspire to that.
• The top one percent of income earners provide 50 percent of income tax revenue and income tax makes up over half of state revenue (page 20-21). We need rich people. We probably shouldn't tax them out of the state.
• Pension costs for state employees have skyrocketed with no plan in place to pay for them (page 27). If you like our current budget shortfalls, you'll love it when these unfunded pension obligations come due.
• Adjusted for inflation, per pupil spending within the legislature's authority dropped from about $9000 in 2000 (dot com boom) to $7900 last fiscal year (page 31). Not good, but considering the doom and gloom stories it is hardly falling off a cliff.
• Despite spending cuts, student test scores have continued to rise throughout the last decade (page 34). Money does not equal achievement.
• The average teacher salary in California is over $66,000 per year (page 36). Good teachers ought to be getting twice that and bad teachers ought to get none of that, but still it isn't bad. In fact, it's tops in the nation.
• Adjusted for inflation, per student spending for University of California is less than it was a decade ago but still at about the same level as 1970, in the glory days of the Master Plan for Higher Education (page 39). That suggests that the problem isn't just less state funding - a big part is UC failing to control costs. Note that the CSU and community college systems haven't seen such large fluctuations.
• Community college students are getting a steal (page 41). I see no reason why in a budget crisis those students who can afford to pay more shouldn't be asked to pay a proportion similar to their counterparts in the UC and CSU systems.
• Crime has drastically declined over the past two decades (page 53). Sensible "tough on crime" laws work.
• California's incarceration rate is near the US average (page 54). Most of California's prisoners deserve to be there. The solution to the overcrowding problem is to expand capacity, not release them early.