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What worries me is California refuses to raise property taxes. That and strip local government of any and all say in where and how to build homes and buildings.

• fortran77 3y ago
  You want more taxpayers to leave?
  • aml702 3y ago
    [dead]
  • ethanbond 3y ago
    No we want people sitting on extremely valuable, underutilized land to leave. They’re already paying very low taxes. It will make room for people to come in and pay income tax and more efficiently utilize the land.
    • 29athrowaway 3y ago
      How do you want to "efficiently utilize the land" if there is no water? The central valley aquifer is dry.
      • scoofy 3y ago
        The people who want to "utilize the land" already live here... in shoe-box apartments... with roommates... in their forties. Most of them are literally just the children of the people living on that under-taxed land. Who may finally get the tax benefit sometime in their 60s that their parents got in their late 20s.
      • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > if there is no water False condition. California has plenty of water, as evidenced by its wasteful farming practices, which consumes 80% of it [1]. As with most of its problems, California’s retail water “shortage” is a policy choice. [1] https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agricultural-Water-Use-Efficiency https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric...
        • 29athrowaway 3y ago
          Significant part of the agricultural water comes from the central valley aquifer system which is being pumped much faster than it is replenished. Adding more population in permanent settlements won't help mitigate the problem.
          • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
            > agricultural water comes from the central valley aquifer system which is being pumped much faster than it is replenished Sure. They’re still wasting the water. > more population in permanent settlements won't help mitigate the problem It also won’t meaningfully worsen it. Water is simply not a real barrier to development in California.
      • Retric 3y ago
        California doesn’t have a water issue, it has at worst a water allocation issue. However, even with dumb policy desalination has become cheap enough to be practical for costal communities. Paying ~1$ for 200 gallons just isn’t an issue at the household or retail level just agricultural and industrial uses.
        • 29athrowaway 3y ago
          Right, that is why there are people in the central valley living of water from trucks. And the ones that do have water need to dig deeper and deeper to find it. "Don't look up" is a film that could be perfectly be based on the California groundwater crisis.
          • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
            > people in the central valley living of water from trucks Would these be the same communities pumping their aquifers dry [1] to export almonds and alfalfa? [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019483661/without-enough-water-to-go-around-farmers-in-california-are-exhausting-aquifers https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019483661/without-enough-wat...
            • 29athrowaway 3y ago
              Right. And if they stopped doing that, the water level would not be replenished. Groundwater aquifers are not a renewable water source, and when you extract the water from underground you can compact the soil causing it to sink and lose its ability to store water, which is also happening over there according to the USGS.
              • Retric 3y ago
                The alternative of simply never tapping these aquifers isn’t somehow better. Abstractly using up local resources until forced to import them isn’t a policy issue, it’s simply rational behavior.
    • throwaway8877 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • ethanbond 3y ago
        Actually neither. I’m an American who cares about our country prospering long into the future and California is a huge, huge component to that whether you like it or not. One of our most technologically innovative and naturally productive regions putting itself in a tax policy chokehold is Strictly Bad. Certainly so for the majority of Americans, at the very least.
  • mc32 3y ago
    People of retirement age do leave; but probably not fast enough if you’re trying to “raise” taxes that way. That said, it depends on people’s total state tax burden. If it’s too high they will leave to lower tax burden states. This is one of those slow moving things like when corps were leaving NYC in the 80s. It’s hard to stop it. Adding taxes is too attractive. Eventually companies and people will have enough reason to leave. Many are not there yet. You will never have everyone willing or able to leave. But on occasion you get enough leaving so that a state is left with a potential which will not become realized.
  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
    Isn't it the opposite? The parent wants the people who don't want to pay their fair share of taxes to leave? Every time a person cashes out their home that they bought for a couple buttons and some twine in 1982, then moves to Arizona to retire, California's tax revenue goes up, because the people that take their place actually pay appropriate property taxes on the 2023 value of the home.
    • archagon 3y ago
      A homeowner doesn't control the value of their home. What's unfair is forcing them to move just because their land happened to appreciate in value.
• VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
  > strip local government of any and all say in where and how to build homes and buildings How would this work? Who has the authority to decide where and how home construction happens?
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Who has the authority to decide where and how home construction happens? The property owner and the state.
  • fasthands9 3y ago
    States already set limits on what zoning decisions local municipalities can make. The towns only derive their power from whatever state laws delegates to them. If the state really wanted to they could strip this power and run all regulation itself (similar as how local towns only have limited flexibility in terms of setting education or police policy). California has passed some laws recently which already take a step in this direction. SB9, for instance, made it so that on some parcels of land local municipalities were not allowed to block existing property owners from building a duplex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_HOME_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_HOME_Act
• dataflow 3y ago
  Well this is definitely a take I don't read often on HN. The notion of having to pay "rent" on property you "own" is just weird, and it's not helped by the fact that very notion property of ownership is eroding across the nation. What's your logic behind property taxes being inherently better than income taxes?
  • HDThoreaun 3y ago
    The land should belong to society at large not any individual. Land is not created so it doesn’t make sense to allocate its rents to an individual. The rents should be split by everyone through land value tax.
  • digdugdirk 3y ago
    There's the obvious aspect of you having to pay for the associated infrastructure that makes it possible for you to live in the property you own. Streets, fire department, police, electrical grid, water/sewer. Those costs aren't related to the purchase price of the house/property you own.
    • dataflow 3y ago
      That wasn't my question. I wasn't asking "why are property taxes necessary". I was asking: how is that inherently better than taxing income? As to to the question you answered, I could understand land value taxes, or some other forms of taxes that are actually based on the infrastructure cost for supporting your home. (And you could add exemptions/tiers for people who can't afford it, that's beside my point.) But property taxes seem nonsensical for exactly the reason you mention: that they depend on the value of the home (at whatever point) rather than on the cost of the infrastructure itself. Whether my home sells for $1 or $1M, my pipes and wires are going to act the same. And neither of those tells you anything about my means for payment - I could easily lose more money on a more expensive home.
      • ip26 3y ago
        Your zip code is better correlated to the public spending you benefit from than your salary.
• jerlam 3y ago
  Prop 13 means that any property tax increase won't apply to anyone who's owned a home for a long period of time, or purchased at the bottom of the market in 2008. It's only going to apply to homes recently purchased, and would mostly dissuade people from moving into the state.
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Prop 13 means that any property tax increase won't apply to anyone who's owned a home for a long period of time, No, it doesn't. Assuming that a taxing jurisdiction in California was to raise property tax rates, Prop 13 would apply the rate increase to all taxpayers in the jurisdiction. The lower effective tax rate for people who have owned a property longer under Prop. 13 isn't a limitation in their nominal rate, it is a limitation in their basis value (assessment increases are generally limited to the lower of 2% or the rate of inflation each year.) But that's all theoretical, in reality, Prop 13 means there won't be any increases to property tax at all, barring repeal or amendment of Prop 13 itself. While everyone talks about the limitation on tax basis value assessment increases in Prop 13, Prop 13 also sets a very low maximum property tax rate of 1%, and every taxing jurisdiction in the state already has their rate set at this rate, so it is impossible under Prop 13 to raise property taxes rates.
• boredpeter 3y ago
  I'm in NJ so not sure if this applies but since I'm in another high tax state I thought this would be relevant. One thing that I find interesting that isn't really talked about is the difference in property tax rates between different towns. In NJ for example, my parent's home is worth $300k-400k and they pay almost $10k in property taxes per year. Meanwhile, an out of state investor could buy a $3 million property in NJ's Long Beach Island and pay just $30k in property taxes on it (1/3 the rate my parents pay). I don't know how much this applies to California, I think they cap property tax increases there, not sure how the rates differ by town? A single state-wide standardized marginal property tax rate would probably work best. Those with $5 million+ single family homes should be paying a higher percentage to discourage that type of housing. Additionally that tax money could be collected at a state level and distributed more equitably (to towns that aren't as wealthy). Ultimately single family homes need to be phased out in these kinds of places and replaced with higher density along with mixed zoning. Mixed zoning should reduce the need for more car based infrastructure which is extremely expensive and allow more efficient public transit to be built. That would lower costs for regular people since they wouldn't need a car to get places.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    California has prop 13, meaning your property tax increases are capped, but if property changes hands, the property tax resets to a more reasonable (and much higher rate). Which makes the property market even more illiquid in California.
• _blz2 3y ago
  Yes it's quite worrisome indeed. highest state tax, most mismanaged budget, welfare black hole, high living expenses aren't enough to remind an average californian how futile their existence is. More property taxes will build some character.
• bagels 3y ago
  If prop 13 goes, I think many people will be forced to leave the state.
  • yongjik 3y ago
    Those people who are "forced" to leave will be the same people who couldn't keep up with paying the same real estate tax as their neighbors, but still enjoying the same prime location and municipal service. At which point, one of the two things will happen: (1) Housing price will fall down because there are more on the market. (2) Or, the houses will be snatched up by people who can pay the price, many of which are young couples working in high-paying industry willing to start a family. It will cause net population increase. Or, even better, they can be replaced by dense residential blocks. Either way, it sounds like desirable outcome to me.
    • archagon 3y ago
      What's unfair is being forced to move from your home of 20 years, far away from your community, just because some tech companies decided to set up shop in your city.