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 co

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 . . .