Some Perspective

Since there is an election tomorrow, I've been looking at what is on the ballot in order to determine how I will vote. One of the items that interests me, since I have particular ideas about early childhood education, is Rob Reiner's Proposition 82 for "universal preschool." I actually found a helpful and informative nine page analysis of the the proposition on the website of the California Budget Project.

Without getting into my opinion of the proposition itself, one of the things I was curious about was the projected cost of the program. The consistent number that I was able to find was that the new tax that the program would create would raise about $2.4 billion to be used exclusively for prop. 82. (The CBP report discusses the fact that the proposition provides for the contingency of using additional state funds if the earmarked tax revenue is insufficient.)

Just for fun, I wanted to get an idea of how this compared to CBP's critical assessment of the cost of Enterprise Zones:

Even if we discount any notion of a return on investment from the Enterprise Zones, the "cost" for the only significant business attraction and retention tool that California has is about $300 million. That is one tenth the proposed cost of having a state-funded place to put 4-year-olds.