Me on KQED-FM Forum

I enjoyed hearing you this morning on Forum on KQED and I agree with the points you made. Many of the people calling in have positions that are entrenched and do not even listen to other points of view.

I want to add one observation that I have made over the last several years, which is that I know about a dozen people and portions of companies who have moved out of California (particularly moved to Nevada and Arizona) because they don't want to pay California income tax (of roughly 10 - 11 %) for the privilege of living here. These are affluent people who bought goods and services and had their businesses here. Many companies that do not need to remain in California to run their businesses are moving out. Unless we make the state friendlier toward these type of people, more major taxpayers will move out and the "tax takers" will remain, further exacerbating our budget problems.

I caught about 20 minutes of the broadcast, and your points made good sense to me, non-economist but regular reader of this blog.

It was an excellent reminder of how hard it is to get past the emotionally appealing arguments "people are hurting economically, they really need the money" etc. Also, who goes first in answering questions matters a great deal. I'm sure what stuck with listeners are Sylvia's emotional appeals, not your more technical arguments that came before. Pity.

@Orene Kearn,
Good points about taxes. Thanks.
@ AM,
Thanks. What I also didn't appreciate was Sylvia misstating my argument in two ways: (1) claiming that I was blaming unemployment on the unemployed and (2) claiming that I was saying that unemployment benefits are the sole cause of unemployment.