California - No Budget, AGAIN

The Governor gets dramatic with a (probably ineffective) decrease in the salaries of State employees to the federal minimum wage. But this kind of drama does not produce meaningful reform in the long run.

After he was elected to replace a man who had lost control of the State budget, the governor actually tried to enact some real reforms.  He did so with a considerable amount of bravado.  Remember "girly men"?  But The Terminator was, in effect, beaten to a pulp by the entrenched Democratic legislature and decided that if he couldn't beat them, he would join them.  And his wife is from the most prominent Democratic family in America, so his changing political positions probably eased some tensions at home, too.

Better to go with something like Ireland's austerity plan than the yearly drama in California: Tie government salaries to the deficit.   The details show this to be a far more sensible plan than the "cut them all to minimum wage" approach. Glenn Reynolds notes that the Irish plan has the benefit of turning government workers into a lobby for responsible spending. And it might cut down on some corruption, too. Embezzlers, etc., would be directly affecting the paychecks of their co-workers.

Unfortunately, the response in California makes it sound more like Greece.  The government proposes  draconian austerity, then waits for protests which make austerity impossible. Those on the government payroll do more to drive business out of the state so that the budget mess gets even worse.  Politicians cave to current pressures let the guys who are elected after you term out deal with the growing problem, until everything falls apart.