Just out of curiosity I took the time to play with the number on this site, Comparison US State and Local Government Spending - GSP - Population 1992-2015 - Charts
It lists spending, debt, State Gross Product (SGP), and growth rate for each state.
I copied the number into a spreadsheet and calculated the following ratios as metrics for the health of the state economies.
- Debt/GSP
- Spending/GSP
- (Debt/GSP)/Growth Rate
For each metric I assumed that the higher value is "worse." The idea behind the last one is that a high growth rate makes it easier to "grow out" of debt problems.
- California ranked as the 8th worst state in Debt/GSP
- California ranked as the 8th worst state in (Debt/GSP)/Growth Rate
- California ranked as the 23rd worst state in Spending/GSP
There is no doubt that CA has some major financial issues but my conclusion based on these numbers is that it is no worse than many other states.
Of course CA is the "big kid on the block" and if CA goes down a lot of other things are going to go down with it.
I'm fine with anyone pointing out anything that I may have missed. I haven't studied the issue in great detail and this was a 10-minute analysis.
It lists spending, debt, State Gross Product (SGP), and growth rate for each state.
I copied the number into a spreadsheet and calculated the following ratios as metrics for the health of the state economies.
- Debt/GSP
- Spending/GSP
- (Debt/GSP)/Growth Rate
For each metric I assumed that the higher value is "worse." The idea behind the last one is that a high growth rate makes it easier to "grow out" of debt problems.
- California ranked as the 8th worst state in Debt/GSP
- California ranked as the 8th worst state in (Debt/GSP)/Growth Rate
- California ranked as the 23rd worst state in Spending/GSP
There is no doubt that CA has some major financial issues but my conclusion based on these numbers is that it is no worse than many other states.
Of course CA is the "big kid on the block" and if CA goes down a lot of other things are going to go down with it.
I'm fine with anyone pointing out anything that I may have missed. I haven't studied the issue in great detail and this was a 10-minute analysis.