California Faculty’s $48 Fantasy

Not for nothing did one economist represented by it once call the California Faculty Association (CFA) “the California Feckless Association.”

Recently, the CFA released a report with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in which it alleged:

“To fully fund projected enrollment and eliminate tuition in all three segments of California’s public higher education system will cost $9.43 billion in 2016-17. It can be covered through an annual income-tax surcharge that will:

• “Cost median-income California families $48 a year;
• “Cost two-thirds of state households less than $150 a year;
• “Cost households in the top 5 percent about $7,100 (more for multi-millionaires).”

Perhaps they haven’t noticed that the Golden State’s reverse Midas taxes are already driving its residents out of the state, by the millions. “About 2.5 million people living close to the official poverty line left California for other states from 2005 through 2015, while 1.7 million people at that income level moved in from other states – for a net loss of 800,000,” Phillip Reese reported in The Sacramento Bee in March. “During the same period, the state experienced a net gain of about 20,000 residents earning at least five times the poverty rate – or $100,000 for a family of three.”