How To Fix California's Budget Issues

It's really really easy.

Either you:

1) increase spending
2) raise taxes

or

1) cut spending
2) cut taxes

YOU CAN NOT

1) increase spending
2) cut taxes (or don't raise them enough to keep up with all the cool stuff you want to do)

But that seems to be what the "plan" has been.

Then there's this radical idea

1) decrease real spending (not decrease spending increases)
2) decrease real taxes (not decrease tax increases)

If you are a politician the people who voted for you want you to either:

1) increase spending on all the good ideas they have no matter what needs to be done

or

2) decrease taxes on as much as possible no matter what needs to be done

I think people tend to hold to either extreme, then vote for the guy that says they will do that, complain when they don't.

The key is to find the balance. Just like real people do in real life. You can't buy everything you want all the time. Not unless you either want less in life (how much do you really need?) or are a bazillionare.

If you cut some wants out of your life, you'll do better. Or maybe get a job at night and on weekends and pay for it.

Well I guess you could apply for credit cards and max them out and keep charging the good life at 18 percent interest and hope that uhh well umm I don't know what you're going to hope for really...

Up in Sacramento we get stuck, it is called a "budget impass." Everybody wants everything, but they want somebody else to pay for it. People who smoke, or drive SUV's, or build new houses, or drive over bridges, or have a business, or a job, or even if you are dead, they want you to pay taxes on your stuff when you are dead.

It is hard to make things work that way. Something has got to give. Even a dummy like me can figure it out.

I kind of like the "radical idea."