Beacon Economics

California doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending and discipline problem.

Sacramento keeps treating temporary tax windfalls like permanent income -- then acts shocked when deficits appear after the cycle turns.

That is not fiscal management. It is wishful thinking.

In a commentary for CalMatters.org, co-authored with Pete Weber, we argue that California must stop its boom-and-bust budgeting by:

- Building far larger reserves
- Treating excess revenues as windfalls, not baseline revenue
- Imposing real fiscal discipline before the next downturn hits

California does not need a bigger government.
It needs a better one.

Read the full piece here: https://calmatters.org/commentary/2026/04/budget-reserves-california-boom-bust/

Opinion | California should halt its boom-and-bust budgeting and boost reserves instead A new governor would find their hands tied if the state doesn’t shrink its budget deficits and smooth out its tax revenue rollercoaster ride.

Everyone keeps talking about “stagflation” like it’s the 1970s all over again.

It’s not.

The real lesson of the 1970s isn’t that oil shocks caused inflation—it’s that bad monetary policy turned structural economic problems into an inflationary crisis.

Today’s risk looks different, but it is very real.

The United States’ growing debt, runaway deficits, and reliance on monetary intervention are creating the conditions for another inflationary reckoning.

History might not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme...

Read Beacon's latest analysis on here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stagflationis-americas-future-christopher-thornberg-nrn7c

Stagflation...Is It in America's Future? The pandemic-driven inflation surge of 2022 and 2023, along with today’s renewed concern about an oil shock, has pushed talk of stagflation back into the headlines. The term is most commonly used to describe the toxic combination of high unemployment and high inflation associated with the U.