Comment by MarkusQ
12 hours ago
They did not slash spending. At most the rate of increase slowed down for a year or so before continuing to rise at an even faster rate.
12 hours ago
They did not slash spending. At most the rate of increase slowed down for a year or so before continuing to rise at an even faster rate.
That’s not a great measure. The state was still growing very fast. The better metric would be state expenditure as a fraction of state gdp
It's exactly the right measure to use if the claim is that they "slashed spending". They didn't. They continued increase may or may not have kept pace with other measures (GDP, population, whatever). But they didn't slash spending.
As it turns out, even your new goal posts fail the test of facts. In the years immediately following prop 13, the GDP grew at an APR < 15% [1] while the budget grew and an APR > 15% [2]. The per capita spending did slump briefly in the early 1980s (as shown in the graph on this article[3]) but that was more of a reversion-to-the-trend (which continued upwards thereafter.
While there may be some remaining tortured reading of the data under which you could claim they "slashed spending" it would be manifestly disingenuous to do so. At best the rate of increase slowed briefly.
[1] https://files.ceqanet.lci.ca.gov/276991-2/attachment/cSe45La...
[2] https://sbud.senate.ca.gov/sites/sbud.senate.ca.gov/files/Ca...
[3] https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/24/whats-behind-californ...