Thread by @usacsmret

California is doing its best to drive out its upper-middle class. dailysign.al/2UstMm5 via @VDHanson @DailySignal

Venezuela, which is driving out its middle class, is apparently California’s model. Venezuelan leaders believed in providing vast subsidies for the poor. The country’s super-rich are often crony capitalists who can avoid high taxes.

A lot of upper-middle-class taxpayers feel that not only does California fail to appreciate their contributions, but the state often blames them for not paying even more—as if paying about half of their incomes to local, state, and federal governments somehow reveals their greed.

California’s social programs are magnets that draw in the indigent from all over the world, who arrive in search of generous health, education, legal, nutritional, and housing subsidies. Some 27% of the state’s residents were not born in the United States.

@ 25% of the nation’s homeless live in California. So do about one-third of all Americans on public assistance. Approximately 20% of the state’s population lives below the poverty line. About one-third of Californians are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid

What really irks California taxpayers are the shoddy public services that they receive in exchange for such burdensome taxes. California can be found near the bottom of state rankings for schools and infrastructure.

For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3%, the highest in the nation.
About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax.

Those who administer California’s plagued department of motor vehicles and high-speed rail authority may often be inept and dysfunctional, but the state’s tax collectors are the most obsessive bureaucrats in the nation.

What is Sacramento’s message to those who combine to pay half the state’s income taxes and have not yet left California?

“Be gone or we will eat you!”