3 ms·

This comment reeks of victim blaming. Natural disasters happen literally everywhere on earth. When someone's house is destroyed by a tornado in Tornado Valley d

This comment reeks of victim blaming. Natural disasters happen literally everywhere on earth. When someone's house is destroyed by a tornado in Tornado Valley do you tell them "Oh well you were really irresponsible for living in tornado valley"? Or how about Florida, which has been hit by over 40% of US-landfall hurricanes? Do you tell the hundreds of thousands of people whose homes have been destroyed that they should have just packed up shop and moved away since they get regular hurricanes?

doctorpangloss 3y ago
Obviously I believe that governments should support people suffering from natural disasters, and that even huge amounts of money given directly to victims are an appropriate way to deal with disasters. > Natural disasters happen literally everywhere on earth Taxes also happen literally everywhere on Earth. This is an article about rate increases, not natural disaster policies. But like natural disasters not all taxes are the same. My neighbors have voted themselves a tax benefit where they've been paying property taxes as though their homes are worth 0.01-0.05x what they are, for years. Read all about it here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 - it's the single most important law in this state, if you live in California you ought to understand what it is. So if I bought a home in San Francisco, I would pay normal taxes like "everywhere else on Earth." But not these folks. Let's say there's an earthquake in San Francisco and a bunch of crumbling 100y old Victorians valued at $1.5m but whose owners have been paying taxes for decades on as though they were valued $40k-300k - those crumbling houses fall apart. Should we pay every resident in a crumbling Victorian they haven't maintained at all, in communities whose schools and roads and institutions they have not been paying for, yet simultaneously benefitting from their land values rise as a consequence of the human capital arriving every year and sort of have nothing to do with, and they also haven't been paying any meaningful taxes: should we give them a giant check as though they sold their home, at market prices when only 1-5% of home inventory moves a month, in that no longer existing city that wasn't earthquaked? Listen this would affect me, I mean I know I would love a check that lets me hit the "reset" button the event of a natural disaster, but there was actually no universe in which I live here and benefitted from not paying taxes for decades. That was never given to me as a literal constitutional right it was to people who basically won the lottery. So who is the antagonist? This is what I am asking you. It's so easy to come from a place like whatever community you live in, where things follow normal rules and you can be pretty confident that your neighbors deserve full and just rescue. But my neighbors have given themselves an entitlement that yielded all sorts of crappy disfunction and I'm not the only person who is sick of that bullshit. The fire prone areas in California just synthesized their bullshit into some weird ass rigamarole where other Californians pay for that bullshit through the utility company.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  Californians are uniquely bad at handling wildfires. Fire is perhaps man’s oldest enemy. We know how to handle it through preemptive controlled burns. California just refuses to implement them.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    No, PG&E is uniquely bad at maintaining infrastructure. The fires were caused by century old towers with hooks that have literally worn out: http://www.wsj.com/graphics/california-wildfire-pge-drought/ http://www.wsj.com/graphics/california-wildfire-pge-drought/ ( https://archive.is/2023.08.17-195423/https://www.wsj.com/graphics/california-wildfire-pge-drought/ https://archive.is/2023.08.17-195423/https://www.wsj.com/gra... )
pas 3y ago
> "Oh well you were really irresponsible for living in tornado valley"? um, yes? I mean if you build it from cardboard especially. that doesn't mean they deserve no support, of course they do, they most likely live in some by-thy-bootstrap central crazytown), but it's not a good strategy to keep encouraging/enabling living/building without the appropriate measures to make it sustainable. (ie. heavy duty sprinkler systems with enough water, sufficient clearing, etc.) one of the important functions of the state is to inform people of risks, and in a neoliberal setup it is also ought to enforce that markets price in those risks.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

Obviously I believe that governments should support people suffering from natural disasters, and that even huge amounts of money given directly to victims are an appropriate way to deal with disasters. > Natural disasters happen literally everywhere on earth Taxes also happen literally everywhere on Earth. This is an article about rate increases, not natural disaster policies. But like natural disasters not all taxes are the same. My neighbors have voted themselves a tax benefit where they've been paying property taxes as though their homes are worth 0.01-0.05x what they are, for years. Read all about it here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 - it's the single most important law in this state, if you live in California you ought to understand what it is. So if I bought a home in San Francisco, I would pay normal taxes like "everywhere else on Earth." But not these folks. Let's say there's an earthquake in San Francisco and a bunch of crumbling 100y old Victorians valued at $1.5m but whose owners have been paying taxes for decades on as though they were valued $40k-300k - those crumbling houses fall apart. Should we pay every resident in a crumbling Victorian they haven't maintained at all, in communities whose schools and roads and institutions they have not been paying for, yet simultaneously benefitting from their land values rise as a consequence of the human capital arriving every year and sort of have nothing to do with, and they also haven't been paying any meaningful taxes: should we give them a giant check as though they sold their home, at market prices when only 1-5% of home inventory moves a month, in that no longer existing city that wasn't earthquaked? Listen this would affect me, I mean I know I would love a check that lets me hit the "reset" button the event of a natural disaster, but there was actually no universe in which I live here and benefitted from not paying taxes for decades. That was never given to me as a literal constitutional right it was to people who basically won the lottery. So who is the antagonist? This is what I am asking you. It's so easy to come from a place like whatever community you live in, where things follow normal rules and you can be pretty confident that your neighbors deserve full and just rescue. But my neighbors have given themselves an entitlement that yielded all sorts of crappy disfunction and I'm not the only person who is sick of that bullshit. The fire prone areas in California just synthesized their bullshit into some weird ass rigamarole where other Californians pay for that bullshit through the utility company.

jimbob45 3y ago
Californians are uniquely bad at handling wildfires. Fire is perhaps man’s oldest enemy. We know how to handle it through preemptive controlled burns. California just refuses to implement them.
- epistasis 3y ago
  No, PG&E is uniquely bad at maintaining infrastructure. The fires were caused by century old towers with hooks that have literally worn out: http://www.wsj.com/graphics/california-wildfire-pge-drought/ http://www.wsj.com/graphics/california-wildfire-pge-drought/ ( https://archive.is/2023.08.17-195423/https://www.wsj.com/graphics/california-wildfire-pge-drought/ https://archive.is/2023.08.17-195423/https://www.wsj.com/gra... )

pas 3y ago

> "Oh well you were really irresponsible for living in tornado valley"? um, yes? I mean if you build it from cardboard especially. that doesn't mean they deserve no support, of course they do, they most likely live in some by-thy-bootstrap central crazytown), but it's not a good strategy to keep encouraging/enabling living/building without the appropriate measures to make it sustainable. (ie. heavy duty sprinkler systems with enough water, sufficient clearing, etc.) one of the important functions of the state is to inform people of risks, and in a neoliberal setup it is also ought to enforce that markets price in those risks.