Tax Revenue Fiscal

Year to Date

⇒ Compared to the amended

2009-10 Budget Act, General

Fund revenues are below the

year-to-date estimate by $794

million (-3.2%). The three

largest sources of revenue

were lower than estimates by

$1.47 billion (-6.3%).

⇒ Sales tax collections year to

date were down by $387 million

(-4.9%) from the amended

2009-10 Budget Act estimates.

Income taxes were $1.17 billion

lower (-8.8%) than expected.

Corporate taxes came in higher

than expected by $92.8 million

(4.1%). Because the amended

2009-10 Budget Act estimates

contained actual revenue

through its late passage, this

revenue deterioration occurred

primarily between August and

October.

⇒ Compared to this date in

October 2008, revenue receipts

are down by $2.29 billion

(-8.8%). This was driven by

personal income taxes, which

came in $2.2 billion (-16%)

below last year at this time.

⇒ Year-to-date collections for the

three major taxes were down

$2.2 billion (-9%) from last year

at this time and corporate taxes

were $176 million lower

(-7.0%). However, retail sales

taxes were up $316 million

(4.4%) from last year’s total at

the end of October.

Saw them. Literally, last summer, which I spent in Orange County dismantling a failed bank. Scary stuff.

Pardon my economic illiteracy, but I keep asking this:

The commercial real estate crisis will go away if commercial real estate goes down in value. Consequently won't rents go down?

Aren't low commercial rents a good thing for everybody but landlords and banks?

This leaves us with the problem of commercial banks going under. They are not loaning money to businesses right now anyway, so I don't know how much of a problem that is. At any rate, helping the banks doesn't seem to impel them to loan money to businesses, so perhaps we should figure out another way of dealing with this problem.

California's hubris will finally have its inevitable result. And if the rest of the nation follows, as it has followed every California trend since the 1940's, we may finally be broken of the idea that California and the East Coast is golden, predictive and superb.

And for the poster that mentioned "see-through building" - on the other side of the country, here in Orlando, there's a lot of California-style thinking going on as well. High-rise apartments are built downtown, thinking that unmarried single professionals (a.k.a. the gays that receive prejudice everywhere else in our state) will just FLOCK to it and pay those high rents. It hasn't happened, because gays are not that cliched or predictable, and nobody has the money for those brand-new rattletraps anyway.

Buildings and malls are still being built around the city, expecting new tenants once this "temporary" depression ends. I think they'll be there a long time, and will eventually become squatting places for all us ordinary citizens who are losing our homes.

Thanks, California. And thanks, Arnold.

Government is the problem, state and local governments use eminent domain (and redevelopment agencies) to replace functioning economic businesses with others which generate higher tax revenues, but which are more financially overextended. Revaluing commercial and residential property to a level where economic activity will start up again compromises tax revenues, and transfers power away from the political class, and back to the people. So there is no solution coming from within the political class. The political class in Washington then bails out Wall Street, which finances these high revenue (low margin) business models, because they hold the bank deposits of the public hostage. As long as the sales tax remains high, and going higher, consumers will be discouraged from making purchases, and retailers will lower prices, which forces them into the same low margin, tenuous situation that the most overextended businesses are running, counting market share and revenue, as the preferred measure. When margins go negative they will implode rapidly, and the corporate model, big buildings, and long supply lines, will come under seige.

I was going to bash you for taking selfish, sadistic joy in the suffering and economic problems of millions of Americans. I was going to point out how clueless you must be to cheer on the economic troubles of the state which produces the most revenue of any other state in this nation, a state which on its own boasts an economy of global proportion and influence.

Then you mentioned you live in Florida, apparently near Orlando, and I realized: you are already suffering enough. You poor dumb bastard you.

As a citizen and patriot, I can't bring myself to enjoy the suffering of other Americans. Not even proudly deluded asshats such as you.

I hope things improve for you. I hope Florida gets better. I hope America recovers.

I'm putting my shoulder to the wheel for all of America. How about you?

I'm not worried. They'll sort it out.

California has its faults, but actually hubris isn't one of them. Hubris is centered in the Northeast, where ivy league snots and other generic snots destroyed the world economy from Wall Street. Meanwhile, California actually labors to product THINGS, like high tech, biotech, and entertainment products, to name but a few. That's far from hubris. Any hubris in CA actually comes mostly from the east coast snots who run much of the entertainment industry.

Florida, on the other hand, is a state that produces as close to nothing as any state in the Union. But, it is also the state that has repeatedly in the last century launched or been at the center of get rich quick real estate scams that have ended up pulling in large parts of the nation. Hmm, did someone say something about worthless hubris?

The riskiness of minorities is rearing its ugly head again. If only we hadn't listened to Carter and given all those loans to risky minority commercial real estate owners. Clearly Fannie and Freddie enabled the minority take over of our commercial real estate. The illegal aliens can chalk up another victory in crashing our commercial real estate market with their intransigence.

~Unemployment is not slowing down as is being touted, reference the Household survey. One can only put the spin on the Payroll Survey unemployment numbers one way ~ They are lying through their teeth using the business birth death adjustment ... fewer payroll and sales taxes

~Real Estate

CRE as mentioned is much worse than thought, even though they are changing valuation rules to make banks look healthy reference Mish. Residential Housing is heading down once more due to unemployment and the Fed stopping the purchase Freddie and Fannie debt...fewer property taxes

~The Obama stimulus that states used to defer layoffs will be running out ...and won't be replaced in kind ... loss of billions and hundreds of thousands of jobs producing a downward spiral ...

Get ready for yet another financial crisis ... and an all out crisis of confidence in government ...