Without fundamental reform of government spending--including addressing the pension mess with more than a bandaid, the state is doomed to a downward spiral of "catch-up" taxes to address commitments already made and chronically underfunded. It's not enough to say that state employees will pay more for their health insurance. As long as Calpers is allowed to use blue sky, totally unrealistic discount rates to calculate liabilities, underfunding will continue to be baked into the system--for pensions AND health care costs. Not only do we need to raise employee contributions; not only do we need to lower the assumed rate of return; but we also need to STOP pension spiking and raise the retirement age at which employees can collect full pensions--at least to the same age as has existed in private pensions for years. We also need to prohibit "double dipping." Without all these fixes, taxpayers are looking at years and years of tax increases and reduced services!

Most probably the fairest tax scenario that would actually reduce the overall sales tax per-centage and individual state income tax would be to simply create a consumption tax on all food products, not just prepared food products. Like the federal gasoline tax we pay on each gallon, the tax revenues are only used for highway construction and maintenance and therefore those that use these highways actually pay for them. Those that don't (they don't buy gas) don't use them and hence do not pay the direct costs to build and maintain. The largest non-taxed personal expense today is groceries. All of us buy groceries and it would seem a logical place to tax everyone fairly. For those who cry out to protect the poor, recall that the numerous welfare programs i.e. WICC, food stamps, and of course the EBT Golden Credit Card would remain unchanged. A rough calculation places the new sales tax at less than 6% for everyone and when SAC spends within this limit, the old debt is retired in 5 years.

Wow that sounds really good, "9 Billion dollars over the next fiscal year". BUT what happens in the year after the tax increase on the rich and the sales tax increase expire? Does anyone really believe that Sacramento will reform it's free spending ways? Does anyone believe that Sacramento will actually CUT spending? I think we all know the honest answer to these questions. The year after we will be back in the same downward fiscal spiral we are in now. No real change except that Sacramento will have driven more job makers and tax payers out of the state and accepted more jobless unskilled benefit takers to keep the state in the same downward slide toward being a third world entity.