Commentary
Back in 2003, I was perusing some state budget documents and found an interesting correlation. When state general-fund spending rose above 6.2 percent of the income of Californians, inevitably the state would run deficits, get into budget trouble, and end up having to make sharp budget cuts and tax increases.
The data came from Gov. Gray Davis’s January 2003 budget proposal. That’s still how it’s done in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January 2023 budget proposal, with Schedule 6. Divide the Expenditures/General Fund number by the Expenditures per $100 of Personal Income/General Fund number.
The title of my column in the Orange County Register was “The 6.2 percent solution.” Our great artist Jocelyn Leger drew a nice graph. (The column used to be online, but for some reason no longer is.) The name was a play on Sherlock Holmes’ 7 percent solution of cocaine he was addicted to, and for which he was cured by Sigmund Freud in the 1976 movie, “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.”…