Brown’s Fascist Henchmen: Drought Will Have “Limited Statewide Economic Impact” on California

The Legislative Analyst’s Office of the California Legislature released a report on April 14 which shows the confidence that Governor Brown and his henchmen have that they can pull off their commitment to massive population- reduction in the state, by blatantly lying about the effects of the drought.  They sent out a press release, announcing the report, headlined “Limited Statewide Economic Impact of Drought.” The conclusion of their report is that, “while the drought is affecting many Californians and communities in different ways, we currently do not expect the drought to have a significant impact on statewide economic activity or state government revenues.” They say that a Wall Street Journal survey found that the “vast majority of economists agree that the economic effects of the drought will either be ‘too small to show up’…or be `small but measurable in the data.'”

The main argument they present, is that, since the biggest change in policy, with Brown’s rationing, will be to agricultural use of water, this will have little effect on the state’s GDP! This is because 1.) the communities dependent on agriculture have already been affected, and 2.) agriculture is responsible for only 2% of the state’s GDP.  Thus, a decline in agricultural income “probably would have only a limited impact on the overall state economy.”  Otherwise, with the exception of agriculture, and possible negative consequences for home construction, the outlook is rosy, as revenues are up, and the deficit is low!

To address the last point first, revenues are up, due to the stock bubble created by Wall Street’s trading, using zero-percent-interest money from the Fed to buy stocks. California benefits through Silicon Valley tech companies and start-ups, which created 23 new billionaires in Silicon Valley in 2014, who pay capital gains’ taxes.  The deficit is lower due to fifteen years of murderous austerity, under Schwarzenegger and Brown, which has reduced spending at the expense of human lives, among the poor — especially children — the sick, and the elderly. But more to the point, is the insanity of separating completely the collapse of the physical economy, from the speculative, saying that the collapse of water usage, which will collapse food production, i.e., consumption, will have only a “limited” economic impact — that is, except for the “useless eaters,” who don’t deserve to eat, anyway.