kalk
Take this paragraph from the first section, just about the only attempt to present big-picture numbers:
"Between 2003 and 2007, California state and local government spending grew 31 percent, even as the state’s population grew just 5 percent."
The article doesn't say if the 31% is inflation adjusted - which makes me suspect it's not. Also, what's happened since 2007? That was three years ago. Why cherry-pick numbers from the height of the housing boom, which presumably saw steadily increasing revenue? Is that the only way to show a dramatic spending increase and validate the article's thesis?
"The overall tax burden as a percentage of state income, once middling among the states, has risen to the sixth-highest in the nation, says the Tax Foundation."
No periodization here at all, and then we get...
"Since 1990, according to an analysis by California Lutheran University, the state’s share of overall U.S. employment has dropped a remarkable 10 percent."
How much of this occurred over the 2003-2007 period that saw increasing spending? From anything the article tells us, the answer might very well be none. What was the population doing in the meantime? Again, for all I know, it might have changed proportionately.
If one was to look up numbers that all covered the same time periods, I don't know what results one would get. But the numbers in the article really don't set up the case it goes on to make, that the problem is spending and regulation.
And then that case has its own independent issues. Though again I don't have quick access to the real numbers, it's not plausible to me that "bureaucratic pensions" are really a substantial proportion of the state budget, unless teachers, firefighters, and prison guards are all alike "bureaucrats", a characterization which would be pretty tendentious. And are carbon-emissions regulations really likely to have contributed more to those 400,000 lost manufacturing jobs than a nationwide trend towards outsourcing?