4 ms·

This feels correct as a California transplant. The incumbents in a lot of verticals have taken entrenching to a new level. Prop 13 being the capstone.

tedivm 5y ago
I lived in California for 10 years (I moved to Chicago last July). The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. At the same time costs in lots of areas have risen a huge amount, and Prop 13 incentivizes people being landlords and forces higher prices on newly purchased property to make up for subsidized taxes on those landlords. It's all very frustrating.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  > The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. You've probably figured this out by now, but that sentence describes Illinois as well as it does California.
- erosenbe0 5y ago
  Welcome to Illinois. More school districts per capita than anywhere else. Everyone gets their own highly inefficient fiefdom.
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  Yeah, it’s great paying 10x the tax of our neighbors with similar house values because they moved here 30 years ago. The argument is always “people shouldn’t be forced out of their homes because of rising prices!” but we shop at the same grocery stores, eat at the same restaurants, pay the same power and gas bills… What we end up with is neighborhoods with literal multi-millionaires in >1m properties living next to squalor, and people living in such a situation can’t afford to move anywhere else within 50 miles. They stay and try to scrape by until they can’t take it anymore and move somewhere cheaper, or pass away and the property is promptly torn down, rebuilt, and sold by the family for a ~1m profit. The reality of someone who can barely afford that even massively-reduced tax bill living in a million-dollar house that they can’t sell without moving out of state isn’t pretty, but these are the situations that Prop13 advocates are supposedly protecting (when really they just want to keep their own much lower tax bill forever in a vacuum detached from reality). A lot of the really bad Prop13 offenders are businesses though. I don’t have much sympathy for landlords, but I have even less for Disney paying 1/100th of their property tax because of prop 13: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disneyland-tax-bill-may-be-skyrocket-1269878/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/dis... https://aagla.org/2021/12/the-california-chamber-of-commerce-says-no-to-new-split-roll-property-tax-ballot-proposal/ https://aagla.org/2021/12/the-california-chamber-of-commerce... Unfortunately, boomers and existing home owners will keep voting against ANYTHING that reduces Prop13’s benefit to businesses because they all think it’s a slippery slope and that they’ll come for residential next.
  - tedivm 5y ago
    Most states have some variety of "homeowners" or "homestead" tax policy that gives deductions for people who live in their own home. I don't mind that, as long as it is fair. In California it isn't fair, and it isn't limited to a the home someone lives in.

tedivm 5y ago

I lived in California for 10 years (I moved to Chicago last July). The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. At the same time costs in lots of areas have risen a huge amount, and Prop 13 incentivizes people being landlords and forces higher prices on newly purchased property to make up for subsidized taxes on those landlords. It's all very frustrating.

nate_meurer 5y ago
> The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. You've probably figured this out by now, but that sentence describes Illinois as well as it does California.
erosenbe0 5y ago
Welcome to Illinois. More school districts per capita than anywhere else. Everyone gets their own highly inefficient fiefdom.
seanp2k2 5y ago
Yeah, it’s great paying 10x the tax of our neighbors with similar house values because they moved here 30 years ago. The argument is always “people shouldn’t be forced out of their homes because of rising prices!” but we shop at the same grocery stores, eat at the same restaurants, pay the same power and gas bills… What we end up with is neighborhoods with literal multi-millionaires in >1m properties living next to squalor, and people living in such a situation can’t afford to move anywhere else within 50 miles. They stay and try to scrape by until they can’t take it anymore and move somewhere cheaper, or pass away and the property is promptly torn down, rebuilt, and sold by the family for a ~1m profit. The reality of someone who can barely afford that even massively-reduced tax bill living in a million-dollar house that they can’t sell without moving out of state isn’t pretty, but these are the situations that Prop13 advocates are supposedly protecting (when really they just want to keep their own much lower tax bill forever in a vacuum detached from reality). A lot of the really bad Prop13 offenders are businesses though. I don’t have much sympathy for landlords, but I have even less for Disney paying 1/100th of their property tax because of prop 13: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disneyland-tax-bill-may-be-skyrocket-1269878/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/dis... https://aagla.org/2021/12/the-california-chamber-of-commerce-says-no-to-new-split-roll-property-tax-ballot-proposal/ https://aagla.org/2021/12/the-california-chamber-of-commerce... Unfortunately, boomers and existing home owners will keep voting against ANYTHING that reduces Prop13’s benefit to businesses because they all think it’s a slippery slope and that they’ll come for residential next.
- tedivm 5y ago
  Most states have some variety of "homeowners" or "homestead" tax policy that gives deductions for people who live in their own home. I don't mind that, as long as it is fair. In California it isn't fair, and it isn't limited to a the home someone lives in.