Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News The RoundTable Round Table For Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

We don't need a tax increase. We need to seriously cut on the spending in this state. No wonder businesses leave the state left and right.

I work for an ex S&P500 company which was bought out recently, but 2 years ago I was in a division that moved more than 50% of the workload to a newly built facility in Tampa FL. That's about 500 jobs that could have been kept instate.

Sales tax is a separate issue from corporate and payroll taxes. Sales taxes, everyone pays - especially the tourists. Plus the increase is to sunset in three years.

It's just another tax increase that will allow state and local government to keep spending money with no accountability.

And while tourists may pay the tax for the few days they are in California, since I live here I pay it every single day so no thank you. Cutting costs and having the government be responsible with the money they have is the way to go, not increasing taxes for countless programs and thousand of bureacratic jobs.

I'm not sure if the state temp workers got their pink slips yet (was in the news late last week but I don't typically read news over the weekend unless something major happens) but that is one of the steps needed to be taken while this state budget is still not approved.

The issue with LA livin is housing cost. Why have your staff livin poor in a 200K house whn they can move to someplace like Oklahoma and be kings for 100K?

The housing costs are the same for LA metro and the Bay Area. The "problem" with LA is that 2/3rds of the population of California lives in SoCal and it's quite crowded.

Plus we here in NorCal have blue skies and redwood trees.

Because those places have tornadoes and floods.

Income is also proportionate. If you look at ratios like Housing to Income you will notice that California's ratios are within the national range.

If companies in OK would pay me the going wages in CA I'd be more than happy to move there... but they don't.

And home prices in CA will continue to go down for another year or two and thus make them more inline with the income due to the recent foreclosures.

Also a lot of the price increase in the costs of owning a home was driven by investors and speculators especially in states like CA, NV, TX, FL, AZ and NM. In those states it's not uncommon to see values go down 10-25% this past year, but places like NC and the midwest have only seen a home price drop of about 5%.

Now this is an older article to but the trend has continued. A lot of the foreclosures were intially investment properites or vacation homes:


MBA Study: Industry Initiated More ...tions and Repayment Plans in 3rd Quarter

Foreclosures drive down the prices of properties around them thus people that bought their homes around the peak of the housing boom now own homes which have a value of a lot less than the mortgage they have to pay thus it is not uncommon to see those people walk away from the mortgage. Why make payments on a loan of $600,000 when the home now is worth $450,000 and you won't see the value reach $600,000 for many years to come.

Purchasing a home is like the stock market - there are no gurantees that the price will go up. One continues to pay on the home because that's what one promised when one signed the contract to so.

The housing market will rebound - it always has.

It is always nice to honor every contract a person signs but that is not the case. Sure, you get a big black mark on your credit report and you probably won't be able to get a good rate on your next house.... but a lot of people can get financing through FHA loans a couple of years after a bankruptcy and pay a small premium on the rate. And in 7-10 years that bankruptcy can no longer affect your credit scores.

You got to make the existing laws work for you... not live in a ideal world where everything is perfect and think that everyone will do the right thing because you want them to.

Heheheh...