Damn. My beloved Pennsylvania is only projected to run a $2 billion deficit in the upcoming year. Only Alaska and Virginia politicians are doing a worse job than PA. politicians. And these are just projections. More than half the states in the country will run budget deficits in 2016. The new Democrat governor of PA. thought he was going to tax the living shit out of the fracking industry to balance his budget. Too late Tommy Boy. The frackers will be lucky to survive the next two years. There will be nothing left to tax. Of course plan B will be to tell the citizens of PA to bend over and take it up the ass again. He wants to increase our income tax rate by 21% and our sales tax rate by 10%. This is how politicians think. They never think to cut any spending. They never think to cut the gold plated pensions of government drones. Just increase taxes, fees and regulations on the little people.
This country is delusional, dysfunctional, dystopian, and in debt up to its eyeballs. We have supposedly had a growing economy for 6 years, the lowest unemployment rate in 8 years, 0% interest rates, and non-existent inflation (according to the BLS). If these states can’t balance their budgets under these “GREAT” economic conditions, just wait until the stock market implosion, soaring unemployment, and debt payments come due. You don’t have to be a doomer to understand the situation. You just need to understand math. Oh yeah. I forgot. I should have known better than to expect the iGadget addicted, math deficient, Kardashian watching, Twitter crowd to care, understand, or even pay attention.
Wolf’s a bum. PA is indeed delusional. I’m a little north of Pittsburgh and I’ve seen the same pack of political idiots my whole life. Corrupt mayors, councilmen/women, lawyers, coroner (wecht…bleh). My own dad is a brainwashed union lover.
Why is Kathleen Kane in the news almost every single day? How bout the orie sisters? Corrupt and weird to boot.
I’m so sick of taxes (state, federal, ALL) that sometimes it makes me want to puke. I want out and I try to come up with ways to get out all the time. Uruguay?
Sadly, I’m a smoker. I’ll quit someday. Everybody quits someday 🙂 and I crank out my own using store bought tubes, bags of pipe tobacco, and a machine. What used to cost approx. $60 bucks a carton now costs me about $12 and the difference is almost all because of taxes as pipe tobacco is not taxed the same as manufactured packs/cartons of cigs. I’m certain stupid wolf will close that “loophole” and then I’ll have to make my choice. Jim, he will tax the shit out of everything. This sucks
Alaska population, 737,000. How in the fuck did they manage a 3.2 Billion deficit??
Alaska is totally dependent upon oil profits. They based their budgets on $100 oil.
IL’s supreme court recently ruled that the state constitution, in plain English, says that any retirement promises made to public employees must be honored, no matter what.
Since 1970 the clowns running the state (many of whom are still in office) did the equivalent of promising a Lear Jet to every retiree. The ISC now says, if that’s the promise, call the Lear corporation and place the order.
Shedlock’s math is that if stocks take just a 30-40% dive, each HOUSEHOLD in IL will be on the hook for upwards of $100,000 to cover the pension promises the supreme court says are mandatory.
That’s not per taxpayer. It’s likely that only half (or less) of IL households are net taxpayers. So for someone like me (or my sons’ families) we’re talking more like $200,000 in liabilities.
REALLY?
Yet the press (HuffPo, WaPo, NYT, Chicago Trib, Chicago Sun-Times, etc.) all talk about this like, “Well, that’s going to be a real political challenge….”
ANY rational person can see that if they try to set tax rates judicially to “make good” on these promises, 5-10% of Illinoisans will simultaneously put their houses on the market and flee. This will DESTROY the real estate market in Illinois. It is INESCAPABLE.
This is YET ANOTHER BRICK in the DEFLATION WALL. Deflation is, first and foremost a collapse in the supply of money, and money in the broadest sense is wealth. When the value of stocks collapses, the wealth it represents collapses; before the collapse, people THINK they can sell and turn their stocks into money. After the collapse, selling turns their stocks into a LOT LESS MONEY.
The same will happen to real estate and the value of EVERYTHING that can be taxed in IL. They will utterly destroy the value of property, which will then be “sellable” into a much smaller amount of money, which is DEFLATION IN ACTION.
All roads now lead to a collapse in the price for all property, real and intangible.
Politicians promised to rob Peter blind to pay Paul, and then instead of putting the money aside they used it to line their cronies’ pockets and purchase votes from Penelope.
Now Paul is screaming that the cupboard is bare, and the amount of blood they’d have to take from everyone to pay Paul would be enough to kill them.
Never in history has political criminality been so plainly on display.
I’ve said before. The only hope for the U.S. Is that Illonois is a disaster and goes belly up. Before it officially declares bankruptcy I want the people of Illonois to suffer misery.
The ONLY sure plan is
1. get out of debt.
2. hold “assets” that are as difficult to tax as possible. The more visible and fixed-in-place property is, the more it will attract political extortionists.
Look for income, property and business taxes to go haywire. Fuel, telecom and utility taxes may also go Full Retard, even as “low income” people are given subsidies to make such taxes effectively progressive.
Personally, I think progressive taxation is selective robbery, and those espousing it should be treated the same way as an uninvited stranger holding a kitchen knife and your stereo while standing in your family room.
Thanks, Mark. Two of my sons and I live in IL.
I know, you don’t mean it personally. The disaster that is IL is baked into the cake already. This is why only a small fraction of my “net worth” is my house. I live in a small house in a not-wealthy area. I figure my house may become literally worthless eventually.
It’s my sons about whom I worry. Our debt-saturated system forces young adults to jump on that treadmill or forever put off living their lives. Those who have recently purchased homes are among the most extremely vulnerable to the kinds of political EVIL I think will vomit forth from the Thompson State of IL building.
Politicians are all like those in Baltimore. Now that the tax eaters outnumber the tax payers and property owners, politicians will buy the votes of the former with the blood of the latter.
You guys are fucking pikers when it comes to government spending. $29 billion annual budget for a state with 12.8 mil people. We in MN have a $71 billion biannual budget for a state with 5.5 mil people. It’s the fucking Scandahoovians.
Even with the fucking toll booth every hundred yards on your turnpikes? Say it ain’t so.
Also, what the fuck is up with liquor stores not selling fucking beer?
DRUD
Government runs the liquor stores, manned by thousands of government drones. The last governor wanted to sell the liquor stores for $3 billion and the unions defeated him and threw him out of office. Liquor prices are 30% higher than Delaware, so everyone goes to Delaware for their liquor.
Turnpike tolls have been going up by 10% to 20% per year for the last 5 years.
Just a little PA bashing…I’m going to have to go back for an install trip in June. They are not fun…12 hour days…cold as fuck when we went in March…and I’m sure it will be hot as fuck in June.
I’d like to know the advertising budget (tax dollars) for PA Wines and Spirits. I hear their ads regularly. A monopoly that feels the need to advertise to me with my money. Government douchebags are also THE most qualified at selecting the items that they will carry in their State Stores. BEST SELECTION EVER! ROCK BOTTOM PRICES! WELL PAID, KNOWLEDGEABLE UNION CLERKS!
Deficit, smeficit. That’s chump change. What about the DEBT of the state of PA ?
$101 Billion in debt, now how are they going to pay that off ?
Sure hope the interest rates don’t go up any time soon.
http://www.statedatalab.org/state_data_and_comparisons/detail/pennsylvania
http://www.statedatalab.org/c/iatNlH15b4c0f99
This chart says it all.
Illinois is a vast criminal enterprise. It’s the only explanation for this graph. The “taxpayer burden” of Illinois dwarfs those of every surrounding state.
WHY? Are people in IL harder to educate, are the roads harder to pave, are the prisons full of more Illinoisans? The whole thing is SICK.
IL would be better off if every IL politician was put in prison and the government of Indiana was hired to run the state.
[img]http://www.statedatalab.org/c/iatNlH15b4c0f99[/img]
A lot of these states own huge amounts of real estate etc. I guess the great liquidation will happen soon enough .
D.C……Paul has had Peter bent over for generations. Unfortunately Peter may never get a chance to bend Paul over because Paul owns the cops. We’ll see
The pension systems have become sort of a lotto ‘I’m going to win millions’ absurdity. Every government drone I know has that pension on their mind all day every day. It’s what they live for. It’s what they thirst for. They are positive their lottery ticket is a winner. It creeps into every conversation, it is the only thing politically relevant . My pension.
I actually love pensions. The old way. You worked 40-45 years, and you got 15-20 grand a year, public or private. By 65, your house should be paid off, kids through school, and if you’d managed to save a couple hundred grand, and make 5 per cent a year, you were going to be ok. Boy, that got fucked up.
Arizona’s budget is projected to be $1 billion in the red. If it weren’t for the now revived economy of the Phoenix metro area (over 4 million people in a state with a total population of 6.7 million), the state would be a total basket case.
Phoenix is the last, great Republican-dominated metro area in the entire country. It is totally business-oriented for small, medium, and large employers. And businesses are relocating there in droves, particularly from California. The transportation infrastructure is modern and well-maintained. Except for some school districts in the city itself, public education is good to excellent. The area plays host to half of MLB’s spring training teams, and has great facilities for its major league teams. It is a classic model of how well a huge metro area can be run, even with one of the most miserably hot summers in the entire country.
Tucson is the antithesis of Phoenix. It is in a death spiral. America’s 6th poorest city. Totally controlled by liberals for two generations. Welcomes a new call center with 900 low paying jobs, while turning DOWN an offer for 2,000 well-paying jobs from a private, Christian-oriented university (Grand Canyon) to open up a satellite campus in a lower-class neighborhood with a 15-20% unemployment rate. Why did the city do that? Because the campus would be located on a city-owned golf course that LOSES hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because it is so poorly maintained that it has a well-deserved reputation as a “dog track.” The offer included a payment of several million dollars to the city for the land.
I defy anyone on this site to match that for stupidity.
SSS- Was that just stupidity or were the liberal Christ haters just keeping out the teachings of Christianity?
SSS……here is your match: In 2003, Robert Thompson (a Detroit businessman) went to the Detroit bureaucrats and offered to build a 15 new schools to provide an education for the predominately black student population that was suffering from poor education via the public school system.
The Private Group would pay for all construction costs. Additionally, they would give Detroit 200 Million for the privilege of helping the kids.
He withdrew his proposal, said “I can’t do it anymore because the teachers unions.” They argued that the charter schools would drain millions of dollars from the public schools. And then the excessive regulation in Detroit, multiple inspections and inspection fees, incomprehensible building requirements, expensive mandatory public hearings, arbitrary discretion of the officials, lengthy process delays the entrepreneurs from starting their own businesses. Nobody even wants to start a business venture or improve their existing one.
SSS…the 15 schools were Charter Schools.
@ CZ If you are serious about quitting smoking, try EFT. It seems odd but does work. You may have to continue tapping when you feel the urge for a long time or the rest of your life but it is free and healthier.
If you do continue to smoke, there are better tobaccos out there.
Commercial stuff is loading with poisons that actually do the real damage.
google tobacco polonium 210 you will find that it contains radioactive fertilizer with half life 138 days
Quit Smoking with Emotional Freedom
If you sign up for email, you receive info for other condition, which may or may not work as well.
Best!