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Californians Think Tax Money is Wasted; Differ on Solutions

1 min readBy: Joseph Bishop-Henchman

A California poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California finds:

Only 23% of Californians said they could trust the state government to “do what is right” most or all of the time. Three out of every five Californians said they believe that government wastes “a lot” of the money paid in taxes.

As for solutions:

Nearly two in three said they favored an annual cap on state spending, though a ballot measure to accomplish that lost last May.

Fifty-three percent said they favored dropping the legislative vote needed to pass the budget from the current two-thirds to 55%; only 38% disagreed.

Of course, that two-thirds supermajority requirement is the one thing keeping California from becoming a one-party state. Yes, stifling significant dissent is one way to push things through legislatures, but that would just mean California’s highest-in-the-nation state/local taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. burden would rise even further.

More on California here.

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