Bump for Flossy
Good find Boom
Moody's Investor Services:
California has an unfunded pension liability of $120 billion, while
Ontario had a surplus of $5.7 billion as at March 31, 2013.
Moody's Investor Services:
Ontario is in some ways better positioned to tackle its fiscal challenges than California. Both have large, diverse economies, which provide access to large and productive tax bases and support their investment-grade ratings. But California’s legal and political environments create obstacles to timely budget management and revenue-raising, which restricts its freedom of action relative to other US states and some sub-sovereigns, including Ontario
Moody's Investor Services: Constitutional constraints on budgeting flexibility continue in California, although modest governance changes have helped the state achieve three years of on-time budget passage.In comparison, Ontario has relatively stable revenues and like other Canadian provinces, has strong fiscal flexibility, on both the revenue and expenditure sides of the ledger
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per the related Fraser Institute study: Some might argue that this comparison is unfair, because Canadian provinces shoulder a larger share of government duties, vis-a-vis the federal government, than their U.S. state counterparts. Nonetheless, this comparison shows the limits of relying on tax hikes to escape the fiscal hole
Ontario Debt Looks Much Worse than California’s – At First Glance