Just a small peep into the black hole that is California's fiscal picture.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Calif borrows $40M a day to pay unemploymentChrist on a Corn Dog... I am having to deal with a microcosm of this at the bakery. Sure, you come in and bring the infrastructure up to speed and have some cash to guarantee payroll for a couple of months --but-- you also start cutting costs and fine-tuning the system to get things profitable. You institute financial checks and balances so you can see if someone is dipping into the till. You institute inventory control so you can see if there is excessive wastage or theft. You train train and then cross-train so the staff is a team and people can fill in when someone is down. My dishwasher is being trained by my lead cook to take over on his days off. That is how you run a business -- you don't just go running to daddy when you run out of your own money; you learn how to earn it and how to budget and save it.
With one in every eight workers unemployed and empty state coffers, California is borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government to pay unemployment insurance.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the state owes $8.6 billion already, and will have to come up with a $362-million payment to Washington by the end of next September.
The continued borrowing means federal unemployment insurance taxes are going to increase, upping the annual payroll costs $21 a year per worker.
