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California Is Deteriorating into a Feudal Society of Inherited Land Wealth

90 points by SQL2219 8y ago

jwatte 8y ago
All of American society is going back to feudalism, which is really just capitalism: those who inherit wealth, manage it to extract work free rent. It's pretty rational, really.
raincom 8y ago
Props like 13 and 58 were passed in the name of poor grannies; when we look at differential benefits, it is actually rich grannies who end up benefiting 10 folds better than a grannie living in San Bernardino county. This has parallels in other laws: in the name of terrorism, many laws were passed to spy on everyone—ranging from anti money laundering, know your customer, enhanced due diligence, forcing private companies to be active partners in spying. One way to kill the beast is by partial repeal of commercial properties. Apple claimed its real estate value’s worth is $200.
- duxup 8y ago
  I think a better parallel are tax breaks such as mortgage interest deductions and other tax breaks that the poor generally don't use to get into a house and the wealthy benefit from a great deal. Same goes for the systems for prepaying for college and such.
- djrogers 8y ago
  > One way to kill the beast is by partial repeal of commercial properties. Apple claimed its real estate value’s worth is $200. That has nothing to do with Prop 58 - it’s accounting rules and depreciation there...
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Could the government use this as a basis to purchase this property for $200 via eminent domain?
    - godzillabrennus 8y ago
      Sure. Then Apple would use its money to replace the government. They’d end up with a $2B payday from the government and their land back when the new regime took power.
  - tankerdude 8y ago
    You don’t own a home or have depreciated a business property have you? You can depreciate the value of a building over time but not the property itself. Land value is still land value and will never be “depreciated”. What happens is that folks like Disney in Anaheim as well as it seems, Apple owned the land for a long time. So Disney’s real estate tax bill is near nothing for Disneyland. That’s the pain of prop 13. Should have been modified for sure!
djrogers 8y ago
FTA: “All in all, the state preserves old assessments on 60,000 to 80,000 inherited properties each year” There are roughly 13 Million homes in California. It sounds like this is a fairly small problem to be evidence of a ‘feudal society’. Am I missing something? “or 2.5 percent of total statewide property tax revenue” Oh, nope - not missing anything. It is a small problem. Overheated rhetoric like this article title is extremely unhelpful if your goal is to actually solve small problems. Then again if your goal is to inflame classist tendencies and generate clicks, I guess it’ll do just fine.
- AckSyn 8y ago
  Unfortunately there's a dearth of "articles" like this as people become more and more cynical, jealous, and overall entitled to the point of absurdity. Finding injustices where there is none is a huge problem that seems to only be getting worse.
- manfredo 8y ago
  I'd want to see the rate of inheriting tax status versus reassessing the tax status on sale or transfer. If this is somewhere even in the double digit range I'd consider it a substantial issue that may snowball over time. The government discrimination by the government due to an individuals' ancestry is generally regarded to be unacceptable - the times we've done this in the post have mostly been remembered as immoral and wrong.
- yodon 8y ago
  The whole point is it's not about the individual home owners. It's about the trusts and businesses that own huge amounts of property and which pay easentially zero property tax because they were covered under prop 13.
google_censors 8y ago
Something I find interesting is that so many states that are heavily democrat have such high income inequality. I've always hoped that states like Massachusetts, California and New York would do more to help the poor considering that they seem to have enough voter support to do that. https://www.axios.com/income-inequality-blue-red-districts-641c4e96-327c-4237-91a5-6613ad80cff5.html https://www.axios.com/income-inequality-blue-red-districts-6...
- JBlue42 8y ago
  We do. We send our tax dollars to help support the impoverished red states. ;-)
  - dixie_land 8y ago
    Well the Yankees wanted a big federal government so here you go. Big brother taking your $$$ to subsidize others. Should've left the southern states alone.
    - dang 8y ago
      HN is not a site for political or ideological battle, so please don't post like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - medntech 8y ago
        Interesting you'd flag this comment and not the parent also.
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Flagging is done by members.
        medntech 8y ago
fuzzfactor 8y ago
Well, California's been in the United States a lot longer than any of us. Back when it was in Mexico an interesting thing about the land grants is that they could be thought of as deliverance from poverty or toward wealth depending on your point of view or actual outcomes. As a certain amount of wealth or poverty has always been ordained by the ultimate taxing entity whose original claim to authority traces back to discovery of undocumented territory, often including a large component of violent conquest. Then with the march of time you progress through subsequent entities and add layers of middlemen much more reliably by purchases and dealmaking rather than violence, but the iron fist is never completely off the table. When taxpaying subjects are traded between jurisdictions the prevailing party can profit handsomely from that point onward with only a small margin added to the perpetual cost for the occupant to remain, or the newcomer to arrive. Seems to me that's where the exponential growth in non-productive occupancy costs begins, which will always be devastating eventually. And the day of reckoning is accelerated or delayed based on the greed or benevolence of each successive regime. With accompanying incompetence or deception being deducted wholesale from any benevolence, and directly augmenting the damage resulting from the greed factor. It would have been good if the quaint 20th century propositions had been crafted to excuse all California citizens from the risk of eventual property seizure. Shameful that the politicians were not of adequate caliber. At least they were able to protect their most valuable citizens, the ones who paid to persuade the voters. My question is when exactly was California improved beyond a feudal society of inherited land wealth anyway? Documentation please . . .

90 points by SQL2219 8y ago

All of American society is going back to feudalism, which is really just capitalism: those who inherit wealth, manage it to extract work free rent. It's pretty rational, really.

raincom 8y ago

Props like 13 and 58 were passed in the name of poor grannies; when we look at differential benefits, it is actually rich grannies who end up benefiting 10 folds better than a grannie living in San Bernardino county. This has parallels in other laws: in the name of terrorism, many laws were passed to spy on everyone—ranging from anti money laundering, know your customer, enhanced due diligence, forcing private companies to be active partners in spying. One way to kill the beast is by partial repeal of commercial properties. Apple claimed its real estate value’s worth is $200.

duxup 8y ago
I think a better parallel are tax breaks such as mortgage interest deductions and other tax breaks that the poor generally don't use to get into a house and the wealthy benefit from a great deal. Same goes for the systems for prepaying for college and such.
djrogers 8y ago
> One way to kill the beast is by partial repeal of commercial properties. Apple claimed its real estate value’s worth is $200. That has nothing to do with Prop 58 - it’s accounting rules and depreciation there...
- manfredo 8y ago
  Could the government use this as a basis to purchase this property for $200 via eminent domain?
  - godzillabrennus 8y ago
    Sure. Then Apple would use its money to replace the government. They’d end up with a $2B payday from the government and their land back when the new regime took power.
- tankerdude 8y ago
  You don’t own a home or have depreciated a business property have you? You can depreciate the value of a building over time but not the property itself. Land value is still land value and will never be “depreciated”. What happens is that folks like Disney in Anaheim as well as it seems, Apple owned the land for a long time. So Disney’s real estate tax bill is near nothing for Disneyland. That’s the pain of prop 13. Should have been modified for sure!

djrogers 8y ago

FTA: “All in all, the state preserves old assessments on 60,000 to 80,000 inherited properties each year” There are roughly 13 Million homes in California. It sounds like this is a fairly small problem to be evidence of a ‘feudal society’. Am I missing something? “or 2.5 percent of total statewide property tax revenue” Oh, nope - not missing anything. It is a small problem. Overheated rhetoric like this article title is extremely unhelpful if your goal is to actually solve small problems. Then again if your goal is to inflame classist tendencies and generate clicks, I guess it’ll do just fine.

AckSyn 8y ago
Unfortunately there's a dearth of "articles" like this as people become more and more cynical, jealous, and overall entitled to the point of absurdity. Finding injustices where there is none is a huge problem that seems to only be getting worse.
manfredo 8y ago
I'd want to see the rate of inheriting tax status versus reassessing the tax status on sale or transfer. If this is somewhere even in the double digit range I'd consider it a substantial issue that may snowball over time. The government discrimination by the government due to an individuals' ancestry is generally regarded to be unacceptable - the times we've done this in the post have mostly been remembered as immoral and wrong.
yodon 8y ago
The whole point is it's not about the individual home owners. It's about the trusts and businesses that own huge amounts of property and which pay easentially zero property tax because they were covered under prop 13.

google_censors 8y ago

Something I find interesting is that so many states that are heavily democrat have such high income inequality. I've always hoped that states like Massachusetts, California and New York would do more to help the poor considering that they seem to have enough voter support to do that. https://www.axios.com/income-inequality-blue-red-districts-641c4e96-327c-4237-91a5-6613ad80cff5.html https://www.axios.com/income-inequality-blue-red-districts-6...

JBlue42 8y ago
We do. We send our tax dollars to help support the impoverished red states. ;-)
- dixie_land 8y ago
  Well the Yankees wanted a big federal government so here you go. Big brother taking your $$$ to subsidize others. Should've left the southern states alone.
  - dang 8y ago
    HN is not a site for political or ideological battle, so please don't post like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - medntech 8y ago
      Interesting you'd flag this comment and not the parent also.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Flagging is done by members.
        medntech 8y ago

fuzzfactor 8y ago

Well, California's been in the United States a lot longer than any of us. Back when it was in Mexico an interesting thing about the land grants is that they could be thought of as deliverance from poverty or toward wealth depending on your point of view or actual outcomes. As a certain amount of wealth or poverty has always been ordained by the ultimate taxing entity whose original claim to authority traces back to discovery of undocumented territory, often including a large component of violent conquest. Then with the march of time you progress through subsequent entities and add layers of middlemen much more reliably by purchases and dealmaking rather than violence, but the iron fist is never completely off the table. When taxpaying subjects are traded between jurisdictions the prevailing party can profit handsomely from that point onward with only a small margin added to the perpetual cost for the occupant to remain, or the newcomer to arrive. Seems to me that's where the exponential growth in non-productive occupancy costs begins, which will always be devastating eventually. And the day of reckoning is accelerated or delayed based on the greed or benevolence of each successive regime. With accompanying incompetence or deception being deducted wholesale from any benevolence, and directly augmenting the damage resulting from the greed factor. It would have been good if the quaint 20th century propositions had been crafted to excuse all California citizens from the risk of eventual property seizure. Shameful that the politicians were not of adequate caliber. At least they were able to protect their most valuable citizens, the ones who paid to persuade the voters. My question is when exactly was California improved beyond a feudal society of inherited land wealth anyway? Documentation please . . .