California’s Recovery

My comment that either Steve Westley and Phil Angelides would be more fiscally responsible that Governor Girlie Man drew fire from AB reader Muckdog that Angelides would simply spend our “$7 billion surplus”. Actually, I might just vote in the Republican primary (if they let me) for McClintock who is a bona fide fiscal conservative on the hope that we Californians would have a true choice between two fiscal responsible candidates: the low-tax budget cutting McClintock v. Angelides who wants to at least cover our current level of spending.

As I was searching our Department of Finance State Budget to show Muckdog that even the Governor’s Budget says we are still running deficits, I found some cool data on real personal income for both California and the U.S. Muckdog thinks California is booming on Arnold’s leadership.

Here are the facts in terms of real personal income relative to where we were in 2000. For the nation as a whole, real income in 2003 was about the same as it was in 2000. For California, however, we had experienced a 2.5% decline, which is not surprising as the recent recession was an investment-led recession, which hit California hard. The good news is that both the nation and California has enjoyed a recovery from the recession. Our 2005 real income per capita is now 2.5% higher than it was in 2000, whereas the nation’s real income per capita is now 4.1% higher than it was in 2000.

I know the Bush cheerleaders wish to credit his fiscal policy for the meager growth over the past five years, and I can see Arnold cheerleaders doing the same. But recessions came and go without tax cuts and the economic growth over the past 5 years is disappointing both for the nation as a whole and for California in particular.