4 ms·

> one of the few constants in California is change Unless it is property taxes.

• ashelmire 9y ago
  And let's not forget property prices.
  • icantdrive55 9y ago
    And 99.99% of rent. "Let's repeal Prop 13, and I'll have my modern apartment at a reasonable rent? Hell I'll be able to buy a house before that Chinese REIT buys it up? And those guys wouldn't waste the new revenue? Oh no! College will be free. I still wonder why that old man wrote, I'm Mad as Hell, years ago? Why were they so mad?" (I see the misplaced anger, and cringe. It's no wonder the wealthy own everything, rent control is a bad thing, unions are a bad thing, and most of tech will be looking for a bathroom to use in a few months. Sorry, but the projection is getting thick.)
  • Nuzzerino 9y ago
    Always an arm and a leg?
    • saalweachter 9y ago
      Always more than you can afford. ;-P
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    Direct correlation.
  • et-al 9y ago
    Property prices were affordable a 10-15 years ago. Otherwise how would we have all these middle-class families living here?
    • Moto7451 9y ago
      The housing bubble through the bubble bursting isn’t exactly the best example of affordability.
      • et-al 9y ago
        I agree, but my point was that there was significant period of time when folks could and did buy houses here. Now if the parent poster had said housing stock has remained (generally) constant, I'd be in agreement on that.
    • unexpected 9y ago
      I'm not so sure about this one. I remember visiting the Bay in 2003 and housing prices took my breath away. Now, of course, it's stupefying. I think salaries have increased dramatically since that time frame, creating the perception of relative affordability for previous years. I think the % of home price increase has been fairly constant (except for the market crash). Who knows what may happen in 10 more years! Home prices may still yet double, but then entry level SE positions may be going for 400-500k!
      • ghaff 9y ago
        Everything is relative. One of the reasons I turned down a couple of job offers in Silicon Valley in the 1990s was because the cost of living was relatively high compared to the Northeast.
  • craftyguy 9y ago
    I thought everyone is upset because property prices were changing...
• jonahhorowitz 9y ago
  Right - with Prop 13, property taxes never change, sadly.
  • beedogs 9y ago
    Direct democracy was a bad idea.
    • coldtea 9y ago
      For whom? A representative democracy could raise (or low) taxes 20x as easily. A non-democratic state, even more easily.
      • tialaramex 9y ago
        For basically everyone? Direct democracy pretends that you just have this whole bunch of unrelated decisions, and so it lets you vote "Yes, everybody should get $10" and "No, nobody should pay for that extra $10" and then be _outraged_ that the result is economically incoherent even though that's _your_ incoherent policy at work. It's a footgun. Methods of government vary in how many wise people you need for good decisions. For example an autocracy can work well with just one wise person, so long as they're the autocrat. Under Direct Democracy, more than half of all people need to _agree_ on a decision so you're going to need fully half your people to be wise or the outcomes will be awful. Good luck with that.
        • coldtea 9y ago
          >It's a footgun. Methods of government vary in how many wise people you need for good decisions. For example an autocracy can work well with just one wise person, so long as they're the autocrat I guess you can see how this is more of a foot canon...
        • dragonwriter 9y ago
          > Direct democracy pretends that you just have this whole bunch of unrelated decisions, and so it lets you vote "Yes, everybody should get $10" and "No, nobody should pay for that extra $10" and then be _outraged_ that the result is economically incoherent even though that's _your_ incoherent policy at work. Representative democracy does that too, as is evident from watching. Congress. And non-democratic systems tend to end up with the ruling class deciding “We should get $x, And everybody else should be taxed to pay for it”, which while more fiscally coherent, isn't actually better from the perspective of anyone outside the ruling class. > For example an autocracy can work well with just one wise person, so long as they're the autocrat. And as long as they are not only wise, but unusually deficient in drive to serve their own self-interest. Unfortunately, it turns out that it's fairly hard to find people with the latter quality a d assure they become the autocrat; democracies, rather than relying on electors avoiding serving their self interest, rely on them actively striving to, which turns out is much more common.
• jabgrabdthrow 9y ago
  And death! Meme barf buddies!