NumbersGuy

California: More than Just Economic Problems (Plus Some Potential Solutions)

I love my home state and always will. Sure it's kind of screwed up, but find me a place that isn't. On the fiscal side, we've been living a boom-and-bust cycle since Prop 13 made us very dependent on sales and income/capital gains taxes. I'm still amazed that during the Gray Davis era, some genius in the budget department suggested that revenues were going to keep rolling in at dot-com boom levels into the future. It didn't occur to anyone that when the market slowed down, so too would revenue? Nope. They decided the money would keep flowing and locked in some very expensive commitments. And Arnie hasn't truly bit the bullet. He wants to be liked too much. Do you know any politicians who don't?

I saw some data in a presentation a few weeks back about applications in the state for renewable energy installations. Now it was only applications and clearly not all of the projects that are applied for will ever get built. But in total, it looked like all those applications amounted to a very significant percentage of total peak load energy. I thought it was near 50%. I'd love to see that data again and hope you can find it and incorporate it into some of your future work.