The Google Years

The Associated Press reports that California's current favorable budget position is due in large part to the amazing success of Google:

After cashing in more than 9 million shares valued at $3.7 billion last year, 16 Google employees will owe the Golden State as much as $380 million in taxes — enough to cover the salaries of more than 3,000 state workers.

Taxes paid by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page account for nearly half the amount. There is virtually no way for them or other California billionaires to escape a 9.3 percent state capital gains tax or a recent voter-approved 1 percent tax on the wealthy to underwrite the state’s mental health programs.

“On behalf of a grateful state, I’ll be happy to wash their windows or mow their lawn,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for California’s Department of Finance.

Of course, California has been here before, in the late 1990s with the high-tech stock boom. That went south shortly after the new millennium began, ultimately costing Gray Davis his job and resulting in the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who now stands to benefit from this latest boom. Only time will tell whether Schwarzenegger can resist the clarion call of spending from the state Legislature that essentially doomed Gray Davis.