That’s the partial title of a rather funny – and tragic – essay by Victor Davis Hanson at Pajamas Media. A California native and UC grad himself, Hansen keeps all the aggrieved fundraising letters he receives from his alma mater which, like most everything else in the Golden State, is facing a budgetary axe.
Yet all the pleas and demands for salvation seem to have a fantasy-land tone that Greek civil servants would immediately recognize. It’s an idea that “they” are somehow holding out on “us” coupled with an absolute blindness to the simple reality facing the state and country: that there is simply no money. The protests and demands provide a unique – if convoluted – window into the collective soul of a system that has no comprehension of any reality larger than itself.
I have talked with a few students and employees over the last year and I think the angst behind the protests runs something like this. In sum, apparently state employees, teachers, and students believe that there is either (a) a “stash” of money somewhere that is unspent and could easily ease their pain (e.g.,” they” have all sorts of money and are lying to us about its undisclosed location); (b) we could raise income, sales, and gas taxes to even more record highs and encourage perhaps 4,000 a week to leave in consequence (e.g., why do some need BMWs or private planes when “we” need cheaper tuition?); (c) the 1% who pay about 50% of the state income tax burden could easily pay 80-90% of it (e.g., I get along on $50,000, so why can’t someone who makes $300,000 give $250,000 of it to meet “our” needs?); (d) we could renounce our debts to state bond holders (if they have excess cash to buy bonds, why are they so greedy not to give “us” some of it?) and use the savings for more subsidies, entitlements, and salaries (without my job at the DMV, prison, school (fill in the blanks), the rest of you could not survive.)
Note lost in the present “I accuse” acrimony (cf. Greece) is any serious, concrete plan of how to make up the budget shortfall. Completely absent is any recognition that we are the highest taxed state populace in the country, and yet have some of the most dismal infrastructure and schools to show for it. And that is logical, not a paradox.
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