Real Clear Markets:
Steven Malanga

There’s good reason why most states won’t fall down the fiscal black hole where California now dwells. This is a state whose politicians, public sector unions and advocacy groups have been living in a fantasy world of overspending, investment-deadening taxation and job-killing regulation. Looking out over the state’s prospects and examining the budget deal that legislators have put together (jerry-rigged as it is with revenue gimmicks and unrealistic projections), the only question is who will be begging Washington for more money sooner, the banks, the auto companies or the Terminator

The similarities between California and the auto companies are especially striking. Neither can afford their workforce. California schools pay their employees 35 percent more on average in wages and benefits than the national average (17 percent more when adjusted for the state’s higher standard of living), a significant bite because the state funds much of local education (to the tune of $42 billion last year). Benefits are a big part of these costs. A public employee in California with 30 years of service can already retire at 55 with more than half of his salary as pension, and public-safety workers can get 90 percent of their salary at age 50.

The rich program of social service benefits is also burdensome because of the state’s large low-wage immigrant population. As Milton Friedman observed in the mid-1990s, you can’t have porous borders and a welfare state. The incentives are all wrong. California has become a case-study in that notion. A report by economists working for the National Academy of Sciences in the mid-1990s concluded that the average native-born California household paid about $1,100 in additional taxes because of government services used by immigrants whose own taxes don’t come close to covering their cost to society. It would be very interesting to see what the numbers are today.

My comment: I am not anti immigrant, my wife is a foreigner with a Masters Degree who is currently pursuing a Nursing degree. I am paying out of pocket for this as I make too much money for any grants or freebies. I also had to pay thousands of dollars and fill out tons of forms and deal with Homeland Stupidity so my wife could be here legally. I do not want to to be taxed to pay for people that have no right to be here. It really is that simple. We have immigration laws that are being broken and no one in government is doing anything about it. This is going to be the basis for pushback, in my view, by formally middle class people who realize that elected officials working with certain advocacy groups have illegal immigrants welfare ahead of native born people’s. I will also not be shouted down or allow people who disagree with me to call me a racist or a xenophobe in order to attempt to shut me up. People need to be courageous and speak the truth. The truth is these people have their own countries and we cannot continue to allow unfettered immigration into this country. We can no longer afford this nonsense especially when the federal government mandates that states feed, educate, and provide health care for these people when we have our own people who are suffering. This is simple common sense. There is nothing wrong with limited prudent immigration. However what is going on currently is a mass migration of third world peoples who have no common history or sense of what the idea of America means. They come from countries where either socialism, anarchy, or religious fundamentalism reigns and then we expect them to come here and support liberty, property rights, individualism, and Western Civilization. Ain’t going to happen and the result will be a collective national suicide. We see it in beheadings in Buffalo, muslim honor killings here in the US, Mexican border drug war spilling into the US, etc…..This national suicide is already occurring in Europe as third world immigration coupled with third world values is overwhelming the UK, Netherlands, France, and Italy. Politicians in several countries have responded to criticism of these mass migrations by limiting free speech or attempting to prosecute citizens for speaking out. However it would appear only certain hate speech against certain groups is prosecuted. Will this eventually occur here in the US. If we begin to limit free speech in order not to offend people who have no right to be here is this even America anymore? Why are we xenophobic if we limit immigration to people with either capital or skills we need? Do we really need 10 million or more unskilled, uneducated peasants from third world countries living here? Why does the government, including both parties, ignore these issues?

John Polomny
The Real Deal