"The state's top income tax rate "10.3 percent "is the highest in the nation, and this surely explains why the richest 1 percent of residents end up contributing half of all the personal income taxes the state collects, Rubenstein said. "Even the state sales tax rate "a poor man's levy "is well above the national average.
"The usual suspects "high spending and low taxes "are not to blame. In their place stands something far more fundamental: demographic change. An ever-growing share of California residents are immigrants. The vast majority of immigrants are from Latin America (56 percent) and Asia (35 percent). They are generally young, poorly educated, and mired in low-income jobs that do not provide health insurance. Their English is often rudimentary. They depend on state social services at far higher rates than natives or earlier immigrant cohorts.
A whopping third of California's immigrants entered unlawfully! At least half of them work off the books thereby not paying any taxes into the system, but their children tap into education, food and health care at an astounding cost to the state. In the last eight years, 86 hospitals and ER wards bankrupted out of business.
"Latino families are larger than those of other immigrant groups. Their children swell elementary schools but are less likely than other groups to graduate high school or finish college, Rubenstein said. "Second-generation Latinos are also less likely to grow up with two parents, and more likely to go to jail or become teenage mothers.
"Many observers "including prominent Latin Americans "have concluded that the same traditional values that lie behind Latin America's difficulties in achieving prosperity and political stability are being substantially perpetuated among Hispanic immigrants and their descendants in California. This implies that the problem is primarily cultural, not economic, and that fiscal measures alone will not suffice to solve it.
California's Immigration Tsunami
"Between 1970 and 2006 the number of California residents born abroad increased by more than five-fold, from 1.8 million to 9.9 million, said Rubenstein. "Currently the state has a much higher share of immigrants in its population than the U.S. as a whole.
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