Fresno Bee: GEORGE RUNNER: Don’t kill California’s recovery
With jobless numbers still at record highs, it wouldn’t be right to declare California’s economic downturn over anytime soon. Even so, glimmers of hope are beginning to emerge that the Golden State is inching its way toward economic recovery.
Let’s hope the politicians don’t mess it up.
In his recent State of the State address, Gov. Jerry Brown said “we will not create the jobs we need unless we get our financial house in order.”
Unfortunately the governor’s proposals to put California’s financial house in order are starting to look more like a wrecking ball than a rescue plan.
His budget proposes billions of dollars in taxes on the private sector — the very folks he wants to create more jobs.
It may seem like a distant memory, but merely two years ago, a different governor and Legislature tried taxing their way out of a similar budget mess. Since then California has lost more than half a million jobs and our state’s unemployment rate has grown by 20%.
We clearly don’t need an empirical study to tell us that tax hikes don’t create jobs.
Read the entire editorial here.
