California's collapsing.
How bad is it? This afternoon as I passed Gap and Victoria's Secret at my local West LA I spotted not a single shopper. Across the street at DSW more people were working cash registers than lacing up shoes marked down 70%.
Illegal immigrants are fleeing California, crossing the border to look for work. In Mexico.
When non-English speaking people who risked arrest to work at below minimum-wage jobs in sweatshops and strawberry fields decide that California's economy sucks so badly they'd rather starve in their home country than here, you know it's bad.
So after months and months of sitting on the sidelines, doing who knows what, maybe watching re-runs of The Terminator, our governor took action, furloughing 230,000 state workers. Shutting the doors to their offices two Fridays a month and denying them 9% of their pay. The state will keep all that money, and the furloughed workers who were guarding prisoners, cutting checks for the unemployed and disabled, and checking to see if our bridges and dams are secure will tighten their budgets and continue not shopping at Gap, Victoria's Secret, DSW and just about every place else.
Yep, that'll help.
The governor is so elated that a judge upheld his furlough move that he's considering whacking an additional 10,000 state workers with two forced days off a month, and there have been whispers out of Sacramento that teachers might be treated to a full week off in June, without pay, of course.
As I, a public school teacher, brace myself for an early vacation, I've come up with an idea that I think might help our state's budget crunch, if only a bit. We've all got to chip in, right?
So what if our governor, who, after all, is a state employee, took off the first and third Friday of every month?
Perhaps he could return to LA and spend more time with his family. Maybe drop into the $30,000+ per student, per year Brentwood School his children attend and volunteer as a room father. Or maybe he could sit in on a 12th grade economics class there and learn why laying off people causes a domino effect that causes more businesses to layoff more workers who then file for unemployment claims only to show up at government offices to find they've been shuttered to save the state some money.
Better yet, since our governor and our state legislature have lived in gridlock for months, maybe they could all take a well deserved three-day weekend twice a month. It's not like they're accomplishing anything hanging around our state's capitol.
Arnold doesn't take a salary (those Terminator residuals must be awesome), but our 120 legislators rake in $116, 208 each per year. If we furloughed the whole lot of them we taxpayers would save $1.4 million this year. It's not going to solve our crisis, but it's a start.
I think the solution is obvious - furlough Arnold. And the whole lot of his legislative co-stars.