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What if California is the most regressive state in America?

11 points by mslate

by al_borland

2 subcomments

> It’s a policy perfectly designed to entrench the advantages of whoever got here first, and it’s been untouched for nearly fifty years.
I don’t live in California, but my state has a similar policy where property tax increases are capped.
As far as it was explained to me, this isn’t designed as a finders-keepers law, the way it’s framed here. It’s designed to allow people to age in-place. So those who move to an area don’t end up priced out of their own neighborhoods due to excessive property tax increases.
There is an old lady who lives down the street from me, she’s probably in her 80s or 90s. She’s always outside slowly picking up the small branches that fall from her trees. She’s been in the house so long that Zillow doesn’t have a record of it. Had property taxes risen unchecked, she would likely have been forced out of the home she lived in for decades.
People without a house will shake their fists at these policies, but if they didn’t exist, fists would be shaken to fight against the problem these policies looked to solve.
Not to mention, they still benefit new homeowners today. I just bought a home a few years ago. It gives me some peace of mind knowing that my property taxes won’t randomly double sometime in the future. I spent 16 years renting, and moved almost every year when they tried to raise my rent. Maybe it’s the rental market that’s broken, not the model for capping property taxes.

by k310

0 subcomment

You have choice, something people in other states don't have. I bought a 3 bedroom like-new home in the Sierra foothills for less than half the state median home price. Backup power, my own well. It's a prepper's (and photographer's) paradise, though I am not a prepper.
People work from home here at jobs elsewhere.
If things are bad, take action. Fight regulatory capture by utilities and (ahem) Giant tech companies. Fight billionaires' campaigns against the average homeowner and renter. Prop 13 was meant to keep taxes down for businesses that never move. Citizens move often, except for a handful. Don't trust tech execs. Many of them are on powerful drugs. The wealthy can never have enough. Any solution is extremely difficult due to the extreme concentration of wealth.
There are large cities with everything you need ... airport, Amtrak, medical facilities and ta-da universities, at half the state median price.
I see new home developments replacing farm land. People love the multicultural and energetic, high tech and old redwood bay and coastal areas. Having lived in the bay some 30 years and in the woods some 10 years, here's a clue. The state and your community is its PEOPLE.
Very often, the price of cheap is a monoculture. The hell with that.