Getting arrested is a bit much, but what's the redeeming quality of spitting on the sidewalk?
California has problems, but individual liberties and lives are treated with respect.
city states are like sleek yachts while nations are like ferry shuttles.
I believe one of the differences is that in California, this would be on top of federal and state capital gains taxes, whereas in Switzerland, there is no tax on investment gains (from stock gaining value - dividends do count as income, and once ETFs with dividend-paying stocks get involved, it gets messy but TLDR you still pay the income tax on dividends).
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur...
If at least Prop 13 benefits could not be passed as inheritance, that would go a long way to balance things.
I'm happy I moved to WA now where my property taxes do get reassessed every year, but it balances out with no state income taxes.
That's like citing the average rent in San Francisco. Great if you've been living in a rent controlled apartment for 30 years, but irrelevant if you've moved there recently.
That cohort of Californian is dying off now, and it may be better for all involved if companies pull out and disrupt the status quo. California’s incompetence shouldn’t drag down everything.
just stopping foreign investment in california real estate will make an enormous difference. removing the prop 13 waiver for those who inherit property with the old tax rate will also help. with older people on the clock to die sometime within the next decade, ca will see a flood of plumped up property taxes when the homes change hands. but just the two measures is a good short term relief. million dollar homes are bought sight unseen and then flipped for 40-60% markup by foreign investors and people who dont even reside in california. making it a speculative rodeo circus. let the Gov. fix THAT first.
California can be California, but the problem is more than some junk ranch house is selling for $3M. It’s bullshit that the whole country is essentially held hostage by “too big to fail” California mortgages that homeowners cab just walk away from.
Property taxes are paid EVERY year. What asset do you own that you keep on paying sales tax on?
The real estate market should be stable and for free market forces to aid that, we have to make many more fundamental changes before even touching prop 13.
1. Starting with children and grandchildren who inherit property not benefiting from the prop 13.
2. Secondly, a moratorium on all foreign investments in the real estate market in California.
3. A tiered tax rate for homes left empty while enjoying prop 13 benefits. Additionally, the primary home can also be entirely tax free wrt recurring annual taxes.
California’s problem is not low taxation. Our problem is our state budget and gross mismanagement of our tax dollars by our elected representatives.
I would like to see how they manage our current levies and with more transparency before we hand over a bigger portion of our pay check. If people don’t have disposable income to spend, the economy will crumble and collapse.
An owner with an identical property should be paying identical tax.
California property values rose dramatically. NY and NJ are the worst places to own property. The whole housing depends on landlords and rent controlled apartments. Where they make money from insanely expensive utilities by strangling the poorest people. It’s a different kind of scam. Upstate NY is a whole different kind of hell with seven months of gray and knee high snow.
This is why there was no Silicon Valley in NY. This is why NY didn't create as many millionaires out of middle class and provide upward mobility to citizens as well as opportunities to immigrants. What’s NY’s GDP? What’s NY’s population? What’s NY’s total state tax revenue?
I’ll tell you. NY’s GDP is comparable to South Korea and is at 1.7 trillion. CA’s GDP is comparable to Great Britain and is at 2.97 trillion(highest in USA) NY population is 8.5 million vs CA’s 39.5 million. As an aside: our Ag income alone is in excess of 50 billion and that’s just 2% of our economy. We also have non millionaires and retired people on fixed income. NY’s taxes were around 73 billion vs CA’s total taxes were close to 450 billion.
NY is swimming in red ink due to deficits shortfalls ..2.8 billion in 3 months due to covid. Our tax income increased. I don’t think NY’s budget modeling is something for CA to emulate ..with all due respect. NY should do what it does and leave CA to Californians to vote and decide. CA is not NY. We are a country on our own. Our problems can’t be solved by anything that works for other states. The struggle is real.
Blind comparison is not useful or helpful.
Note: California’s government probably could be leaner, but there is also broad bipartisan support for more prisons, police and firefighters. The California republican party’s focus on cutting spending overlooks the deeper problem that we aren’t getting good value on a lot of the spending and budget cuts only exasperate the problem. More meaningful institutional reforms are needed.
A commonly repeated falsehood. Is totally incorrect. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...
San Francisco absolutely has a Homeless industrial complex that isn't trying to solve the problem but just keep their cash flowing.
It seems pretty fair to say that being off by 10x is "totally incorrect".
SF is expensive for sure, but that expensive? Where is the money going to?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-rent/palo-alto...
It sounds dumb but IIRC it's an attempt to have teachers and police and city employees able to live there...
I live in SoCal so I thought you would even see more homeless migrants because of the weather. However, from speaking with homeless I would say in my experience most have lived in the area for a long time, with only one beach bum guy I spoke with who actually was "fresh off the bus". Until I saw the statistics though I was also under this misconception.
Anyway, hospitality isn’t really a question of weather as Alaska for example has relatively high rate of homelessness and NYC one of the highest. Mississippi on the other hand has the lowest rate despite mild winters and significant poverty.
The stigmatization and criminalization of not paying taxes to lease a deed of property is a big problem, this planet as a whole belongs to all forms of life inhabiting it, not just the primates that choose to play that game.
This problem was working much better in the 70s and 80s when their was a national framework for it. While SF and LA's government is flawed, this blame state/city is like blaming the individual ushers when the fans run on the field after a football upset. It was more of a structural failure than a local.
Or, the same data with a very hard to read circular bar graph visualization:
https://howmuch.net/articles/federal-budget-receipts-and-exp...
The numbers are actually pretty straightforward. "Expenditures is a broad category and covers a variety of things, including direct payments to people like Social Security, contracts for local governments, wages for federal workers and sub-contracting work."
From an accounting standpoint, gross money in be money out is what matters. Per capita makes sense to compare relative benefit, but realistically Montana is small potatoes on the Federal Balance sheet. Measuring per sq mile seems like some ludicrous ploy by Alaska’s senator to screw over New Jersey.
Infrastructure costs are U shaped where extreme density is expensive, but so very low density. Mail delivery is a clear example where ultra low density just makes things more expensive.
The selective "my tax dollars would never" is anti-american
Unfortunately I don't believe something like that is practical unless it's done on a national level.
See this recent documentary by KOMO News in Seattle about their problems, which are pretty similar to Portland's, SF's, LA's and a lot of other major cities with larger homeless populations. Crime is soaring. Most are homeless due to drug addiction. Until that part is solved and they can think clearly and rationalize normally again, giving them cash will likely only fuel the problem and keep them right where they're at. And with everyone walking around with $50k cash in their pocket, because they don't have bank accounts, crime would be even more rampant as they steal it from each other.
I don't really buy that money would fuel the problem, is there any study that indicates that? They'd still be drug addicts, but they'd be more comfortable, well fed drug addicts which makes things better for everyone.
If anything I think money for a place, clean clothes, and food would make it much easier to get off drugs.
Anyway, saying it's a mental health problem is really reductive. Plenty of people with the same problems aren't homeless; some of these people can potentially dig themselves out if given a chance, most importantly a place to live.
More money isn't always the answer. Maybe the answer lies elsewhere...
So move to Texas or the south east. They clearly need an influx of ... something.
> On the one hand, the people who live there are genuinely horrible.
> So move to Texas or the south east. They clearly need an influx of ... something.
No, we don't. Please stay the fuck out of Texas. Its clear that what you really mean is, "These people don't share my radical political and social viewpoints, so they're bad."
Don't come anywhere close to our state. Californians are already fucking up Texas, starting with Austin. I've only met one California couple that were likable, and he grew up in a desert city of 317 and she grew up in Northern California.
(I say this as someone who doesn't live in Texas, and doesn't actually know. It's just my impression from afar. Add the appropriate amount of salt...)
If California was well run, clean, and had otherwise lower tax, then .4% might be easy to ignore. But if you’re already on the fence, and not happy with things, and have been talking to real estate agents in Seattle, Austin, Miami, or Singapore, then this just the kick in the butt you might need to go through with leaving.