7 ms·

i.e. the original sin that gave us this problem in the first place. It makes absolutely no sense to have the older, wealthier, luckier, "I got here early, ther

by ohazi 5y ago

i.e. the original sin that gave us this problem in the first place. It makes absolutely no sense to have the older, wealthier, luckier, "I got here early, therefore I'm set for life" generation pay $300/year, while the couple in their thirties who moved in two years ago, have a new baby, and can barely afford the mortgage and daycare despite both parents working in tech have to pay nearly $15,000/year. I know the original argument for prop 13 was about how awful it was for poor little old ladies to lose their houses, but that is by far not the common case, and this level of inequality, stealing from the young to give to the old, is completely insane. One way or another, this has to end.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I've never seen a good solution for this. If the taxes get locked in, then you get the "2 neighbors with near identical houses paying totally different amounts in taxes" problem. If the taxes are not locked in, then you get the retired lifelong home-owner (or renter) on a fixed income, unable to afford the increasing taxes (or rents).
- seryoiupfurds 5y ago
  In other jurisdictions the solution is to allow the retired homeowner to defer property taxes, to be paid out of the eventual proceeds of a sale.
  - defterGoose 5y ago
    A sane, rational solution to a huge, massive problem? We wouldn't want any of those screwing up our politics, would we? /s But really, Prop 13 is among the most ham-fisted damaging legislation you could possibly point to...
    - jjav 5y ago
      It's not legislation, it's a proposition.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        Propositions are legislation; specifically, they are one of: (1) initiatives which are exercises of legislative power reserved by the people to adopt a law initiated by citizen petition, (2) referenda which are exercises of legislative power reserved by the people to approve or reject measures passed by the legislature, either with the assent of or over the veto of the governor. (3) legislation referred to the people by the legislature (often because it would impact a previously passed initiative statute in a manner which the legislature has not been delegated the power to do without popular assent.) Prop 13 of 1978 (proposition numbers get reused, so “Prop 13” alone is technically, though only rarely practically, ambiguous—though confusion from that ambiguity has been suggested to have helped the defeat of Prop 13/2020, which was on the ballot with two measures that would have modified Prop 13/1978, Prop 15/2020 [which failed] and Prop 19/2020 [which passed]), specifically is an initiative constitutional amendment.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    I've also heard people mention places where they freeze property taxes for retired people.
  - sagarm 5y ago
    California already has a means-tested property tax postponement program: https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html We should expand it and repeal income taxes and prop 13.
- colordrops 5y ago
  A good solution would be to lower property taxes for everyone to something manageable, and increase taxes elsewhere, especially around loopholes for the wealthy.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  That is easy, eliminate property taxes. That property was bought with money that was already taxed. If you provide services, ask them to pay for the actual services provided, not for a generic tax. Common services like police can be split to the number of residents.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    This "the money was already taxed" line is so much BS. There's not some law handed from God that says "Thy shall only levy taxes on a single dollar once in its entire existence". There isn't even one that says "Thou shalt not levy a tax on this meagre dollar more than once as long as it is held by this particular individual". Taxes are a matter of choice - a (democratic, even vaguely) society makes a choice to spend a certain amount of money, and as a reflection of that, they levy taxes on a variety of things to raise something roughly equal to that amount of money. These taxes will affect different people differently, and they will affect different kinds of income and different kinds of wealth differently. Some taxes are based on what a person is paid for their labor. Some taxes are based on a person's ownership of something valuable. Some taxes are based on what a person spends. What matters is who pays what and why, not whether "the money was already taxed". But you're right that we have a choice in whether or not we levy a tax on the ownership of land/buildings. Personally, I'm more a Georgeist in such things, and I think that taxing the ownership of land is an excellent idea, much better than taxing income or spending. But I don't feel that Georgism itself answers the question of how to determine how much tax a person would/should pay for owning a particular piece of land.
    - AdrianB1 5y ago
      Would you go to Mars to ask the people moving there to pay tax on the land they will own? Where is the boundary of what you think you can "democratically" force your taxation views on? I consider zero taxation as living people alone to live their lives, not as forcing them to do something that I think it's good for society.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
jshen 5y ago
You can absolutely afford it on two tech salaries. I was exactly the person your describing 15+ years ago, but my wife wasn’t working so we only had one tech salary. Fast forward all that time, and the housing market you complain about will likely be a huge wealth generator for you, where as this cheap houses in the middle of no where won’t be.
- ohazi 5y ago
  > Fast forward all that time, and the housing market you complain about will likely be a huge wealth generator for you But this perpetuates the problem, and makes it much worse for the next generation! You do realize that this can't continue indefinitely, right? I mean, maybe this doesn't bother you, which I suppose is fine. Does it bother you? Look, you're technically right. I also own a house in California, and am far better off because of it. But it still bothers the hell out of me. I'd much rather fix the problem in the general case than adopt this "I've got mine, therefore everything is fine" sense of entitlement. Do you really want to be 90 years old in your $50 million NorCal farmhouse paying your grandfathered in $15,000/year property taxes when everyone else paying $500,000/year decide that enough is enough and torch the place? A retirement strategy that depends on screwing over a younger generation and hoping that they don't manage to get revenge before you die is a risky bet.
  - jshen 5y ago
    Not buying a house doesn’t do anything to fix the problem.
    - svnt 5y ago
      This is identical to saying that cutting your carbon footprint does nothing to help the problem.
      - jshen 5y ago
        Those aren’t identical at all.
  - 5y ago
nradov 5y ago
That was only one of the original arguments for Proposition 13. The main reason it passed was that local governments had been jacking up property taxes and spending it on things that most homeowners didn't particularly want, such as higher wages for unionized government employees. Eventually people got fed up with the waste. Prop 13 was a blunt instrument but at least it finally forced local governments to exercise some fiscal restraint.
- sagarm 5y ago
  Prop 13 actually passed because property owners were pissed their nominal taxes were going up due to inflation in the 70s. Renters voted for it because they were told that their rents wouldn't go up if property taxes were capped, but of course that's not how market rate rents work. So pissed off renters voted in rent control on SF, Oakland, and elsewhere.
jjav 5y ago
> pay $300/year, [...] pay nearly $15,000/year. That's fairly exagerated. It means the recent buyer paid 1.5M for the same house the older buyer paid well under 30K (since their tax has been increasing 2% every year since then). It might be true somewhere, but finding a house worth well under 30K in 1978 (start of prop 13) and 1.5M today, isn't that common. My neighborhood is 25 years old and the largest real spread between property taxes is ~2x, very far away from the 50x of your example.

by ohazi 5y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

I've never seen a good solution for this. If the taxes get locked in, then you get the "2 neighbors with near identical houses paying totally different amounts in taxes" problem. If the taxes are not locked in, then you get the retired lifelong home-owner (or renter) on a fixed income, unable to afford the increasing taxes (or rents).

seryoiupfurds 5y ago
In other jurisdictions the solution is to allow the retired homeowner to defer property taxes, to be paid out of the eventual proceeds of a sale.
- defterGoose 5y ago
  A sane, rational solution to a huge, massive problem? We wouldn't want any of those screwing up our politics, would we? /s But really, Prop 13 is among the most ham-fisted damaging legislation you could possibly point to...
  - jjav 5y ago
    It's not legislation, it's a proposition.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      Propositions are legislation; specifically, they are one of: (1) initiatives which are exercises of legislative power reserved by the people to adopt a law initiated by citizen petition, (2) referenda which are exercises of legislative power reserved by the people to approve or reject measures passed by the legislature, either with the assent of or over the veto of the governor. (3) legislation referred to the people by the legislature (often because it would impact a previously passed initiative statute in a manner which the legislature has not been delegated the power to do without popular assent.) Prop 13 of 1978 (proposition numbers get reused, so “Prop 13” alone is technically, though only rarely practically, ambiguous—though confusion from that ambiguity has been suggested to have helped the defeat of Prop 13/2020, which was on the ballot with two measures that would have modified Prop 13/1978, Prop 15/2020 [which failed] and Prop 19/2020 [which passed]), specifically is an initiative constitutional amendment.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  I've also heard people mention places where they freeze property taxes for retired people.
- sagarm 5y ago
  California already has a means-tested property tax postponement program: https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html https://sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html We should expand it and repeal income taxes and prop 13.
colordrops 5y ago
A good solution would be to lower property taxes for everyone to something manageable, and increase taxes elsewhere, especially around loopholes for the wealthy.
AdrianB1 5y ago
That is easy, eliminate property taxes. That property was bought with money that was already taxed. If you provide services, ask them to pay for the actual services provided, not for a generic tax. Common services like police can be split to the number of residents.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  This "the money was already taxed" line is so much BS. There's not some law handed from God that says "Thy shall only levy taxes on a single dollar once in its entire existence". There isn't even one that says "Thou shalt not levy a tax on this meagre dollar more than once as long as it is held by this particular individual". Taxes are a matter of choice - a (democratic, even vaguely) society makes a choice to spend a certain amount of money, and as a reflection of that, they levy taxes on a variety of things to raise something roughly equal to that amount of money. These taxes will affect different people differently, and they will affect different kinds of income and different kinds of wealth differently. Some taxes are based on what a person is paid for their labor. Some taxes are based on a person's ownership of something valuable. Some taxes are based on what a person spends. What matters is who pays what and why, not whether "the money was already taxed". But you're right that we have a choice in whether or not we levy a tax on the ownership of land/buildings. Personally, I'm more a Georgeist in such things, and I think that taxing the ownership of land is an excellent idea, much better than taxing income or spending. But I don't feel that Georgism itself answers the question of how to determine how much tax a person would/should pay for owning a particular piece of land.
  - AdrianB1 5y ago
    Would you go to Mars to ask the people moving there to pay tax on the land they will own? Where is the boundary of what you think you can "democratically" force your taxation views on? I consider zero taxation as living people alone to live their lives, not as forcing them to do something that I think it's good for society.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

jshen 5y ago

You can absolutely afford it on two tech salaries. I was exactly the person your describing 15+ years ago, but my wife wasn’t working so we only had one tech salary. Fast forward all that time, and the housing market you complain about will likely be a huge wealth generator for you, where as this cheap houses in the middle of no where won’t be.

ohazi 5y ago
> Fast forward all that time, and the housing market you complain about will likely be a huge wealth generator for you But this perpetuates the problem, and makes it much worse for the next generation! You do realize that this can't continue indefinitely, right? I mean, maybe this doesn't bother you, which I suppose is fine. Does it bother you? Look, you're technically right. I also own a house in California, and am far better off because of it. But it still bothers the hell out of me. I'd much rather fix the problem in the general case than adopt this "I've got mine, therefore everything is fine" sense of entitlement. Do you really want to be 90 years old in your $50 million NorCal farmhouse paying your grandfathered in $15,000/year property taxes when everyone else paying $500,000/year decide that enough is enough and torch the place? A retirement strategy that depends on screwing over a younger generation and hoping that they don't manage to get revenge before you die is a risky bet.
- jshen 5y ago
  Not buying a house doesn’t do anything to fix the problem.
  - svnt 5y ago
    This is identical to saying that cutting your carbon footprint does nothing to help the problem.
    - jshen 5y ago
      Those aren’t identical at all.
- 5y ago

nradov 5y ago

That was only one of the original arguments for Proposition 13. The main reason it passed was that local governments had been jacking up property taxes and spending it on things that most homeowners didn't particularly want, such as higher wages for unionized government employees. Eventually people got fed up with the waste. Prop 13 was a blunt instrument but at least it finally forced local governments to exercise some fiscal restraint.

sagarm 5y ago
Prop 13 actually passed because property owners were pissed their nominal taxes were going up due to inflation in the 70s. Renters voted for it because they were told that their rents wouldn't go up if property taxes were capped, but of course that's not how market rate rents work. So pissed off renters voted in rent control on SF, Oakland, and elsewhere.

jjav 5y ago

> pay $300/year, [...] pay nearly $15,000/year. That's fairly exagerated. It means the recent buyer paid 1.5M for the same house the older buyer paid well under 30K (since their tax has been increasing 2% every year since then). It might be true somewhere, but finding a house worth well under 30K in 1978 (start of prop 13) and 1.5M today, isn't that common. My neighborhood is 25 years old and the largest real spread between property taxes is ~2x, very far away from the 50x of your example.