About California's only hope is mass nuke building before it's too late.
I'm pro nuclear power in general, but evidence suggests it's not a very good fit for California. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/ http://www.energy.ca.gov/nuclear/california.html
http://finger-tree.blogspot.com/2009/11/floating-nuclear-pla...
Earthquakes are just another engineering challenge, and one that nuclear engineers have been dealing with successfully for decades now.
Personally, I think that probably the thing to do is work on power lines that can efficiently carry vast amounts of power long distances, and build nuke plants in places that are less crazy politically than California. Reduced earthquake likelihood would be a very nice side-benefit.
(I know this thread is dead, but I figured you should get an answer anyway.)
(Definition of happy death spiral: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ln/resist_the_happy_death_spiral/ . Does anybody have a more common synonym for this that wouldn't require explanation? Links are a little awkward on HN.)
I just re-evaluated my risk tolerance in the wake of this whole gulf thing. Anyways happy death spiral is a great way to put it -- I kind of view my past feelings about it through that lens.
Did you read this article, referenced by the author? http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_california-unions.html
What evidence convinced you of your current positions?
For example, my parents bought a house in Santa Cruz, CA for about $100,000 in the 1970s. Before the housing crash, the house was probably worth more than 8x that. This makes it very difficult to move, because if they did their property taxes would go up almost an order of magnitude. The problem is even worse with commercial real estate, which can stay in the same hands for decades.
Without repealing Prop 13 and making our tax system more equitable, we cannot reduce the high property/sales taxes that currently pay for municipal government.
I don't know anything about this issue, but your statement here doesn't make logical sense. You're saying (if I interpret it right) that "property taxes can't be reduced because some people are already paying low property taxes".
What am I missing?
Edit: re-reading my original comment, I should have made clear that I was talking about the property tax rate, not the dollar amount assessed, which will of course be different for everybody.
He is saying that the burden of property tax is not distributed evenly while the benefits of the property tax in the form of more educated populace, fire and policy protection, and better infrastructure are enjoyed evenly. People living in their houses longer are being subsidized by the new home owners, who are paying high property tax. If it's taxed more evenly, those new home owners would see a lower property tax bill.
See the Tax Foundation's "Tax Burden" report. It examines several types of taxes. California is ranked sixth highest for the year 2008.
The cost of the prison system may be a significant burden and the article did not address that.
The failure of electricity privatization is another issue that was not mentioned.
Are the pensions for bureaucrats the main costs or is it actually cops and teachers pensions that are more significant?
Living in another first world country that has just lost its textiles industry to third world competition, I hardly see this loss of indicative of anything, except being in the way of globalization and cheap labour from China.
Showing income tax alone seems one sided. What about property and sales taxes? Are these lower than other states?
If you already believe all this stuff, sure you may be right, but for an open minded critical thinker I found it unconvincing.