Different conclusions

The Bee has a couple of columnists that write on politics. Those include Dan Weintraub who is consistently one of the most thoughtful writers on California politics in the state. But it also includes a guy named Steve Wiegand who fancies himself a humorist. This morning's column took seven Novembers and compared population, minimum wage, state problems and deficits. This was one of Wiegand's best columns. But I am not sure I took the same conclusion he offered. (Actually he seemed to ofer two - first, the state has lived through a series of problems over the last 60 years but second the minimum wage has not kept pace with a normal economic deflator during the same period. But as seen from the chart above there is one other inescapable conclusion.

In 1947 the state had slightly under 10 million residents (beginning the post WWII population boom), a minimum wage of $.65 (which he estimates to be equivalent of $6.01 in 2007 dollars), a budget of $772 million (Equivalent of $7.1 billion today) and an awakening awareness of air pollution. Wiegand then goes through Goodwin Knight ($14 billion budget equivalent for 14 million people); Ronald Reagan ($31.5 billion equivalent budget for 19.5 million people); Jerry Brown ($39.5 billion equivalent budget for 22 million people); George Deukmejian ($59.6 billion equivalent budget for 27.8 million people), Pete Wilson ($68 billion budget for 32.3 million people) and Arnold Schwarzenegger ($102.8 billion budget for 37.8 million people).

The chart translates Wiegand's numbers and arrays them as to per capita expenditures and held constant by an economic deflator. Over the sixty years per capita expenditures for state government have increased almost four fold at the same time that the perceptions about government have declined by similar proportions. Remember that the California of the 1950s and 1960s was considered to have one of the best education systems in the country. We were credited as being one of the best places in the country to live. That time also saw significant growth in public support for infrastructure. Our higher education system was unmatched and our growth in college attendance was about to pay massive dividends in terms of economic growth. The problems in 2007 suggest a lot less self confidence, lower college attendance rates and a perception of a deteriorating infrastructure. It is clear from the numbers above that we have not starved the public sector.