The California budget is public information. Proposition 13 means you as a new arrival were subsidizing property owners who were there before you, and the broken initiative process means that there's billions from the general fund tied up to pay bonds for pet projects of swindlers who are clever enough to put their projects on the ballot instead of trying to get them past the legislature.
You make it sound like newcomers came and built a viable city for existing Californians. It’s not like California was a wasteland before ‘new comers’ arrived. ‘New comers’ have always been entering California.
The new comers came because California already had an ecosystem and infrastructure in place built ready made for them to thrive.
New comers are not subsidizing existing property owners. They ..and their children use the infrastructure already in place that is subsidized for them.
People with children older than 18 or with no kids have no use for public schools. Since property taxes are being used to fund public education, it’s essentially everyone subsidizing public education. For all. And this includes renters, undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, those who pay taxes and those who don’t. Everyone. That’s what’s free public education means. For everyone in CA as public school fund budget is redistributed to all counties in California and not just the zip code it’s collected from...
Tweaking Prop 13 won’t miraculously get us better roads or infrastructure. Or affordable housing. It will only go to fix the gap of the unfunded pension liabilities of unionized teachers[1]. Wages account for 60-80% of school budgets. Public education accounts for 44% of state budget. Almost all of property taxes goes towards public education.
> People with children older than 18 or with no kids have no use for public schools.
It is unbelievable to see this actually written down, and in an argument asserting that people from generations ago built an ecosystem for what is currently an exploding knowledge based economy, no less.
1. A public school education costs anywhere between 10-14k/annum per student.
2. There are 18 years of subsidized free public education.
3. The average home value is around 500k and sometimes higher. Average property tax bill is 6k. But often 15-20k in the Bay Area.
4. Homes that pay 15-20k in the Bay Area only get less than 8k-10k/student. Oakland that makes still less in property taxes has a budget allocation of 14k/student. This is a redistribution of taxes so everyone gets an education.
5. If A has 5 children and rent a home, education is still free.
If B is an undocumented immigrant picking strawberries for minimum wage and have 3 kids, education is still free.
If C has two children and pay 12k as property tax, education is still free for my two kids.
If I am 70 years old and my kids have grown up, my kids are paying taxes. I am still paying taxes on a property that I haven’t sold yet.
Why should I pay MORE taxes for a home that I paid mortgage for ..when all of my property taxes have been paid for 40-50 years. When I get no benefit out of the current school system but still willing to pay my promised share on the home that I finally own after 30 years of mortgage.
Trying to displace elders and seniors who have done their part to educate the children of YOUR loins is like robbing old people to buy candy for your kids.
The younger generation needs to grow up and stop being grabby. We should be taking care of our seniors. We stand on their shoulders. Pay your fucking taxes and raise your own kids instead of trying to chase older people out of their homes because you can’t manage your finances or elect leaders to do their jobs. Stop protesting and go to a city council meeting instead and ask why the taxes you already pay aren’t used for what they are meant for.. fucking hell! Show some fucking respect for all the freebies you enjoy from those who built these cities after wars and depressions and recessions before you were a twinkle in your fathers eye. Goddamit! California needs to fucking wake up.
You're analyzing the effects of Prop 13 at face value, while ignoring its many unintended effects of commercial property undertaxation and rentiering, reduced workforce mobility, concordant increased incentives for NIMBY behavior, effective increase in regressive taxes, etc. Prop 13 (along with California's constitutional amendment referendum system) has a network of pernicuous effects that promote cynical behavior and economic inefficiency on a scale that is unmatched in California politics.
Unintended consequences don’t matter. The intended purpose was to keep seniors and retirees in their homes without the danger of them being made homeless due to the speculative nature of California housing market whose instability is largely contributed to the said feted ‘new comers’.
What you type are talking points that make no sense. Ask anyone who had lived and paid taxes and mortgages in California before 1980, they will tell you why prop 13 is the third rail and the disastrous consequences it had on Californians when they tried to touch it.
These talking points when examined are literally..and I mean literally..meaningless. They are repeated and never analysed. Young people don’t research, look at CA budgets or the insane nutcase formulas Gov. Jerry Brown instituted that has made CA budgetary maze a house of mirrors.
Here is an easy one to remember: when someone is being blamed and loudly and often, pause. Examine. More likely than not they are an easy scapegoat. Consider who is screeching and yelling at them. They are the problem.
California politicians have successfully turned its people against each other. Older Californians feel like the state has become unaffordable and are being strangled to pay the taxes of the new comers who walked into a ready infrastructure ready state. The schools, roads, cities were already planned and ready to be taken over by the tech horde.
On the other hand, there is the tech crowd. Young and having had 18 years of their schooling subsidized by the very people they are trying to unhouse with demands for punitive taxes that offer them no benefits in their old age where they only look forward to a fixed income. They see the young people in their late 20s and 30s trying to grab their homes and can’t understand why these so called millionaires and educated class earning 5 figures need them to die or fuck off to be able to afford a home.
Meanwhile in the background, unions and our ELECTED leaders are pulling the puppet strings to create conflict so that in the chaos of calling each other names, the public will ignore their machinations. The only goal: extract as much taxes as possible to pad public sector jobs/salaries and unfunded pension liabilities. Unions, homeless activists, diversity and inclusionary departments, prison rehab, housing activist are ALL union backed. Everyone else is a puppet too. Look.it.up. Look up CA budget. The unholy alliance to create vote banks for public funding.
The people who are shelling out the money as taxes should stop fighting and take a breath. Look at the REAL enemy. Look how smart he is to keep two cash cows to fighting each other. Wake up.
> The intended purpose was to keep seniors and retirees in their homes without the danger of them being made homeless due to the speculative nature of California housing market whose instability is largely contributed to the said feted ‘new comers’.
That was the stated objective given to economically illiterate voters but not the intended purpose. Those property owners can be targeted with tax exemptions without the "unintended" consequences of Proposition 13. The vast majority of the beneficiaries of Proposition 13 are not seniors who would be put on the street, and the fact that the tax benefit is inheritable makes the idea that this was the purpose of the initiative even more of a farce.
what exactly is 'economically illiterate'. i cant take anything you wrote seriously until you explain this made up word wrt this talking point.
if you are talking about the exemption given to the children who inherit property and the prop 13 benefits along with it, i am in agreement.
i am also in cautious agreement with prop 13 being amended when it comes to commercial properties.
any prop 13 amendment that adversely affects tax paying citizens or senior citizens who own property is the untouchable third rail.
any increase in taxes will result in higher cost of living. just like the myth that high density living is sustainable (because a cluster of high density homes within feet of each other is not high density but just over crowded. high density is only sustainable if it spares sprawl and lives within allocated available resources), the notion that high taxes will somehow benefit the state is a very ill thought out plan.
there are a million ways to raise taxes. but following that dollar isnt as easy. every single tax dollar misappropriated by our politicians is a travesty. we are already a highly taxed state. before demanding to tax others on our behalf, perhaps we should first ask WHERE the tax dollars are going right NOW. it's not like we are a tax free state. anyone paying taxes and making a paycheck in california is just an ambulatory ATM for sacramento. tits to balls, we are taxed to death.
> what exactly is 'economically illiterate'. i cant take anything you wrote seriously until you explain this made up word
Have you heard of financial literacy or scientific literacy? Economic literacy is similar. I am using the English language in a very straightforward manner.
> the notion that high taxes will somehow benefit the state is a very ill thought out plan.
Who said anything about increasing total state revenue? After Prop 13 passed, a big chunk of the state revenue was tied up in propping up local governments. By undoing the damage of this highly regressive policy, the state will have the ability to reduce regressive taxes and even income taxes. It will also encourage development (new property developers will no longer be disadvantaged vs. existing landowners), bringing in more money (and reducing blight) and reducing the need to tax individual earners even more.
>I am using the English language in a very straightforward manner.
english is not my first language. economic literacy wrt this topic seems irrelevant.
>After Prop 13 passed, a big chunk of the state revenue was tied up in propping up local governments.
wrong. property taxes are diverted to the state's public education program through a complicated set of formulas called LCFF.[1]
it collects all the property taxes. dumps them in a big pot and redistributes them. for example: an affluent bay area neighbourhood's property taxes will go fund a farm labourer community in central california. 44% of state income goes to public schools. you wont see a dime of it to pursue any of the above stated goals. what is the point in unhousing and imposing punitive taxes on the senior population who have worked hard to buy their homes.
if they are paying low taxes, it automatically means that they bought it years ago. the solution is to regulate housing prices and engage other controls and processes so housing costs dont spiral out of control due to speculative housing markets.
>It will also encourage development (new property developers will no longer be disadvantaged vs. existing landowners), bringing in more money (and reducing blight) and reducing the need to tax individual earners even more.
how? how will increasing taxes on older properties that are still housing original buyers and havent been resold.. 'encourage development' without UNHOUSING existing people with fixed incomes who are already living there.
i think the word you are looking for or didnt mention is 'gentrification'.
people with income and those who consume should be taxed. if someone earns 200k as a FAANG employee, they shouldnt be given more tax breaks than a 70 year old senior houseowner on a fixed income. you are asking that prop 13 punish older houseowners so they will be forced to give up their residences to fund the younger citizenry.
those who consume from smart phones to game consoles to electric cars should be taxed for their higher consumption.
those who have children should be taxed because the children consume resources and need to be educated. the peers of parents should share the burden. not the generation that has already done it's part and is getting ready to retire.
people should be taxed on income. if at all. people shouldnt be taxed because they are old and have fixed immovable assets.
your comment suggests that we should 'reduce the need to tax individual earners' more and by messing with prop 13, you want to increase the burden of taxation on NON EARNERS with non income producing fixed assets. homes are not for income generation or speculative purposes or tax cows.
your proposal wants to add tax paying seniors to the throngs of drug addicted, mentally ill, financially insolvent people, unfortunate people who are already housing insecure.
and we will spend more money on social programs to house them. unless you are hoping that the high taxes will drive them away by making them sell their homes and they will move elsewhere. because the younger generation cannot live within their means and are financially illiterate?
> economic literacy wrt this topic seems irrelevant.
It is supremely relevant. You are advocating a regressive policy that hampers growth, and it's easy to figure this out with economic thinking.
> wrong. property taxes are diverted to the state's public education program through a complicated set of formulas called LCFF.[1]
That doesn't say I'm wrong. It just shows the formula by which the state props up each local government.
> how? how will increasing taxes on older properties that are still housing original buyers and havent been resold.. 'encourage development' without UNHOUSING existing people with fixed incomes who are already living there.
You're making at least three mistakes. The first is that you assume all property is residential. The second is that you assume that all property is developed. Due to Prop 13, there are several undeveloped lots with keep out signs in my neighborhood of million dollar houses. The third is that you assume that apartments can't be redeveloped to house more people. Prop 13 increases the cost of doing so to not only the fixed cost of redeveloping the property but the ongoing cost of significantly higher taxes.
> you are asking that prop 13 punish older houseowners so they will be forced to give up their residences to fund the younger citizenry.
You're falling for a marketing trick the proponents of the initiative intended for rubes. The correct way to keep the few old people in their homes is via tax exemptions, as I've already explained. It is not to give incumbent landowners a huge competitive advantage over new landowners, leading to de facto serfdom.
> you want to increase the burden of taxation on NON EARNERS with non income producing fixed assets.
Who said that? These landlords are producing massive unearned profits. The rents go up with demand, but their costs stay low. Removing prop 13 would bring their profits in line with newer landlords.
> those who have children should be taxed because the children consume resources and need to be educated. the peers of parents should share the burden. not the generation that has already done it's part and is getting ready to retire.
This is economically nonsensical. Who is going to pay the taxes to take care of the elderly if not the children? The state has every incentive to make these children as productive as possible, which means educating them.
Do you know any neighbors or relatives or friends who you think are benefiting from prop 13? I do. I see them everyday. Many of them pay a fraction of what I pay and I know new home owners will pay more than me.
Those before me also make a lot less and non inflation adjusted income than I do and the kid next door whines about making ‘only 500k’ as joint income and lives paycheck to paycheck. Because two kids.
The problem is not prop 13. The solution doesn’t lie with prop 13 either. Both of them are with California budget and its allocations. The solution lies in LOWER taxes, not higher. The solution lies in local governance and not regional governance. The solution lies in weaning off the teat of Sacramento that itself is attached to the bosom of the likes of highly taxed Bay Area enclaves and figuring out economic opportunities for every part of California. The solution lies in keeping home prices stable and not allow it to fluctuate. The solution lies in NOT concentrating jobs and earning potentials in small high density enclaves. The only advantage of high density high income cities is that they can be taxed heavily.
Because asset valuation is a function of the GDP and economic health/vigor AT THE TIME of sale. For most people, it’s mortgage debt that demands interest. Which itself fluctuates with the health of the country.
And it happens at Wall Street. You know what else happens at Wall Street? The money that comes back as pensions and 401k. The unions and pension funds and insurance companies invest in Wall Street. The whole thing is a like a pit of vipers all entwined and tangled. If you stick your hand into the viper pit, it’s not the vipers that will be bitten.
We should look to stabilize the property market and stop treating housing as a speculative asset. Instead people are lathered up into a frenzy to attack those who they imagine have an unfair advantage over them.
I know homes that have been bought sight unseen by foreign home buyers who rent it out and flip it to buy multiple properties in 4-5 years. In my neighborhood. Tax them! Maybe we should ban foreign investors and speculative investors who treat our housing stock as a gambling chip. That would be a better strategy to deal with California’s housing woes.
But wait! Try. Just try suggesting it at your city council meeting. Try to move it up to your county seat. Try to make it a bill or a proposition. The blinds will come off our collective vision about the nanny state of CA when we actually hold our politician and elected leaders accountable.
But take heart. You will fail. Because they don’t work for you. You work for them.
A proposal: instead of twin cities all over the world, we should be twinning cities within California to avail more economically developed cities to assist less advantaged regions in California. Having a mentor-mentee relationship and sharing resources between two counties is more viable and sustainable. Results will be quicker and more transparent. We can become one truly golden state because we helped each other.
We should all strive to be Robin Hood. Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men did not..as most believe..’steal from the rich and gave it to the poor’. He took from the tax collector and gave it back to the people. We need Robinhood. Not Karl Marx.
> You are advocating a regressive policy that hampers growth, and it's easy to figure this out with economic thinking.
How? How is it a regressive policy? It is not like you are taxing real wealth or real income. The value of a property that is a domicile is taxed Ad Valorem. You are taxing a non income. It is not regressive but is in fact, a punitive tax.
A regressive tax policy only applies to that which has entered the economic circulation. An occupied home that is considered a owner occupied residence and generates NO income when punitively taxes is NOT progressive policy.
I don’t want easy. I want facts. Stating something doesn’t make a case for punitive taxes.
> That doesn't say I'm wrong. It just shows the formula by which the state props up each local government.
Yes. It shows that you are wrong. Because it’s NOT for local govt but for regional and state coffers. If you had looked into LCFF you’d have understood that.
>You're making at least three mistakes. The first is that you assume all property is residential.
That is not a mistake. I had stated elsewhere that my argument is only for owner occupied residential properties. Not for commercial properties or rental/investment properties. I am also not in favour of prop 13 benefits being passed on to children of the original owners.
>The second is that you assume that all property is developed. Due to Prop 13, there are several undeveloped lots with keep out signs in my neighborhood of million dollar houses.
I don’t think undeveloped lots should be punitively taxed. Property rights are the corner stone of capitalism and America. If you change that, we will have to accept that we have to amend the constitution.
>The third is that you assume that apartments can't be redeveloped to house more people.
It is not an assumption. High density occupation is not sustainable or desirable. High density homes are suitable for transitional homes and senior housing where the resource spending and consumption activity doesn’t stress the public facilities.
Example: have a high density homes for families in a city that can’t support playgrounds or schools is a bad idea. We have seen in the past that as high density increases for family homes with children, expenditure for public schools also increase. The biggest expenditure of public schools are not salaries and wages, but the pension liabilities as unions negotiate increases every year that gets accrued as pensions. This is absolutely unsustainable and will plunge the state into debt.
>Prop 13 increases the cost of doing so to not only the fixed cost of redeveloping the property but the ongoing cost of significantly higher taxes.
That makes no sense. Your entire premise is based upon the virtue of taxation. It has never occurred to you that the functioning of a state that relies on higher and higher states of taxation is abnormal and odd.
Example: The city and state has done nothing to increase the revenues of ..let’s say..google. Yet, the google employees have filled the state coffers with all manner of taxes. The state of California has had a windfall with taxable income. And yet. YET, they can’t manage their finances.
Instead of trying to keep patching the waterfall of deficit with a bandaid over the rocks, ask WHY?
The solution to our problems is not ask the Dept of taxes to act like our henchmen to collect taxes from those whom we feel are not like us.
>You're falling for a marketing trick the proponents of the initiative intended for rubes.
That’s a dumbass insult and I won’t respond to it.
>The correct way to keep the few old people in their homes is via tax exemptions, as I've already explained. It is not to give incumbent landowners a huge competitive advantage over new landowners, leading to de facto serfdom.
This makes no sense. Rubes, marketing trick, serfdom. I will address this when it makes sense to me.
>Who said that? These landlords are producing massive unearned profits. The rents go up with demand, but their costs stay low. Removing prop 13 would bring their profits in line with newer landlords.
Define Landlords. Do you mean the random person who rents a second home to pad income or real estate/rental firms that rents out apartments to people or commercial building owners?
Anytime you tax someone, that is going to be passed down to the renter. The renter or non house owner is the most subsidized person here. Because public schools are funded by property taxes. And public school expenditure is being eaten up by union negotiated pension liabilities for years to come when your children and their children will still be paying the debts. If ever there was a Ponzi scheme.
>This is economically nonsensical. Who is going to pay the taxes to take care of the elderly if not the children?
You know what sounds nonsensical? When someone puts a fixed amount in the bank for thirty years and when they ask for it when they need it, the bank says that they would be happy to lend it as a high interest loan.
That’s exactly what you are suggesting. Who educated these ‘children’? The elderly have more net worth than the children upon whom millions were spent for education.
Who paid Medicare, social security taxes, 401k contributions that became CAPITAL that the next generations enjoy. They did so they don’t have to pay more taxes.
What you are arguing for is like asking someone to make a deposit and when the time comes for withdrawal, you want to collect interest.
>The state has every incentive to make these children as productive as possible, which means educating them.
This is the problem. Parents expect the state to be the nanny state.
It doesn’t seem to have done a good job, has it? Because it looks like the educated millions of youth can’t even manage their finances and want to run back to the nanny state that raised them to impose more taxes where in fact they should be the ones paying taxes.
Someone who graduated school in 2000 should be able to pay the taxes to educate their generation’s children in public schools. The elderly have already done the job of educating the previous generation.
The youth and state are using each other as henchmen and acting like thugs to separate those who have paid their dues from their assets. If this isnt co-ordinated thuggery, I don’t know what is... the nanny and ward robbing the parent blind.
You've made so many mistakes in one post that it would be useless to respond to them. Take an introductory course in economics and come back to this issue when you understand how supply and demand set rental prices.
