By The Numbers: California Has A Numbers Problem, Virus Crisis Stimulus Screw Up, and The Virus Numbers Are Looking Different

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post in this series where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 

1) We have often talked about what a disaster the state of California has become because of the idiocy of the ideas and actions of the state’s political class:

• Housing prices have skyrocketed due to insane and cumbersome regulations at all levels of California government.
• The state government has untold hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities in the future.
• The state’s infrastructure is crumbling.
• The state government’s attempt to build a high speed rail line ended in failure after tens of millions of dollars had been spent with nothing of value in return.
• Idiotic and wrong conservation measures have turned the state into a never ending forest fire. 
• About half of the country’s homeless population live in California and the density of homelessness in Los Angeles has seen the rise of at least one Medieval disease, typhus.
• On average, the state is one of the poorest states in the country despite the wealth in Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
• The state’s public schools on average do a terrible job of educating the state’s kids.
• In many cities in the state it is not illegal to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in public.
• The state is now faced with rolling blackouts as political mismanagement of the energy industry leaves the state without enough electricity on a recurring basis.

You get the idea, it is not the ideal dream world to live in it once was with now outward migration of residents higher than the inward migration of new residents, a reality that has not happened for a very long time, if ever.

Given this backdrop, what do some of the numbers say about California:

• The state has the highest state income marginal tax rate in the country at 13.3% with some state politicians wanting to raise it even higher to 16.3% and make it retroactive to the beginning of the year.
• The state is number one when it comes to highest sales tax and ninth when it comes to highest other local state taxes.
• State politicians' insistence that electric utilities get more and more of their energy from renewable sources has caused the state to currently get 33% of its electricity from renewables with plans to get that number to 60% by 2030 and 100% by 2045.
• But when it is dark (solar power) or not windy (wind power) the state either has to cause intentional blackouts or buy energy from other states on the spot market, often at up to 10 times the normal price.
• This results in Californians on average paying 55% more for electricity than the rest of the country.
• Since 2011, California electricity rates have increased five times as fast as the national average.
• But it is not just electricity that costs more, state residents pay the 3rd highest amount for their water.
• One reason why the state has such a high level of unfunded liabilities is because of the salaries it pays government workers with a recent news article uncovering the reality that a Oakland city DEPUTY Sheriff makes $287,000 a year in salary.
• In Menlo Park, California, teachers AVERAGED $106,986 in salary in 2018 before they got a 5% raise.
• California has the sixth highest unemployment rate.
• The stupid AB15 bill that became law as of January 1 has endangered the jobs of 500,000 Uber and Lyft drivers, not to mention the jobs of thousands of freelance writers, artists, truck drivers, and other gig industry workers.

Job destruction, outrageously high public employee salaries, high water costs, high electricity costs, high taxes, the numbers are not pretty. No wonder residents are leaving the state in droves for greener, cheaper and better life styles.

2) Here are good news/bad news numbers. As you may recall, when the virus crisis hit, the Federal government printed up some money and sent it out to Americans to help with those that lost their jobs or had their work hours cut. This was generally a check for $1,200 per person. 

The bad news is that the Federal bureaucracy malfunctioned as it always has since it sent out a whopping $1.6 billion to dead people. The good news is that the Treasury Department thinks it has recovered $1.2 billion of the $1.6 billion that it sent out to dead people.

The bad news is how many other screwups did the Feds do and waste billions and billions of taxpayer wealth on other aspects of the virus relief that we do not know about. I can say with certainty that $1.6 billion is not the only wasteful spending that the Federal government committed.

3) Early in the virus crisis, the experts and politicians decided that we had to shutdown the whole country and the economy in order to avoid catastrophic virus death rates and carnage. This has caused millions and millions of Americans to become unemployed and economic activity to take a nosedive. Schools were closed, churches were closed, businesses were closed or went out of business, and the politicians of the country acted so stupidly in so many different ways.

As of recently, the official national death toll from the virus was over 180,000 that were classified as dying because of the virus. But not so fast, according to the recent pronouncement from the CDC:

• According to the CDC, only 6% of the deaths currently classified as caused by the virus were actually caused only by the virus.
• This does not mean that the virus did not contribute to deaths but it was only a contributing factor associated with another health issue, not the sole cause of the deaths.
• According to the CDC: “For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,”
• Thus, the death toll solely from the virus is not over 180,000 but possibly only 11,000 or so, 6% of 180,000.

For comparison to that 11,000:

• About 38,000 Americans die in auto accidents in the country every year.
• About 72,000 Americans die from drug overdoses every year.
• About 250,000 Americans die from medical errors every year.

And yet we do not shut down the country for auto accidents, drug overdoses, and medical errors. I realize that at the beginning of this whole virus thing we had no idea what was going to happen so playing it safe was the right move.

But the need for keeping draconian shutdown measures in place across the country by overbearing and dictatorial politicians is probably not necessary if the CDC analysis is right. The virus was bad, it contributed to deaths, it caused deaths by itself but it is nowhere close to the disaster we are being told it was and still, the CDC numbers say so.

So, the numbers show how bad life is in California, the Federal government still mishandles our taxpayer dollars, and the CDC says the virus was maybe not that bad after all, the numbers don't lie.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w