The Tax Foundation’s annual “Facts and Figures” booklet is out for 2019. Much to consider, and I just got the download. But one thing jumped out at me that I’ll comment on for now.
A common refrain of CA progressives is that California is shortchanged by the feds — that blue states such as ours get short shrift when federal aid is parceled out to state governments. Turns out, it’s a non-issue.
When looking at the percent of our CA general revenue budget, 32.2% comes from the federal government. The 50 state average is 32.9%. We are slightly below that average — 29th in rank.
https://taxfoundation.org/publications/facts-and-figures/ Table 9
But given how much more the Golden State compensates public employees vs. the other states, it’s amazing that the feds still cough up over 32% of our budget. For instance, in California we pay our firefighters 60% more than the other states’ average. We pay our police 56% more. Most other categories of our state and local public employees are similarly overcompensated. Yet our median CA household income is only 13% higher than the national average.
www.tinyurl.com/CA-ff-and-cop-pay
and
https://tinyurl.com/ydhuj2j7