CA Proposition 47 Unintended Consequences

[fskimospy]

Old people are attached to place. They have social support networks and families etc. They belong. You don't seem to care, thinking only about the money they would get if they sell. You do so because you ate footloose and fancy free and have no roots anywhere. You are not normal. Most of the people on earth are rooted in places. I think your attitude is rather cavalier. Attachment to place is a form of the sacred.

Why should an elderly person's sense of attachment trump the ability of other people to afford to live in the same place by artificially reducing the available housing stock, force other people to pay more in sales taxes, lead to financial instability for the state, and everything else that I mentioned?

This isn't just a money vs. roots debate, the decision to give elderly landowners huge tax benefits has very real costs to everyone else that they have to bear. What about the next generation of people who never get a chance to establish roots there because they can't afford it due to all the preferential treatment given to old, established property owners?

 

[Moonbeam]

One could take an equity line of credit to pay for the property taxes if one doesn't want to move.

That said, I would prefer prop 13 reform to revocation. Property subject to a commercial lease for any portion of a year should be subject to full reassessment. Residential leases should trigger a full reassessment whenever the tenant changes. Finally, a home not used as a primary residence for at least two of the past three years should be fully reassed. For purposes of this law, a primary residence must be identified by address on an individual's CA tax return.

The answer I would prefer is that property tax be fixed at the time of sale so that it isn't allowed to rise when homes values shoot up.

 

[fskimospy]

The answer I would prefer is that property tax be fixed at the time of sale so that it isn't allowed to rise when homes values shoot up.

This would be very, very damaging to the neighborhoods involved. Basically it would make it so that renters and new property owners, ie: the people who tend to have the smallest amount of wealth and income would shoulder most of the tax burden. It's an incredibly regressive policy.

 

[Moonbeam]

Why should an elderly person's sense of attachment trump the ability of other people to afford to live in the same place by artificially reducing the available housing stock, force other people to pay more in sales taxes, lead to financial instability for the state, and everything else that I mentioned?

This isn't just a money vs. roots debate, the decision to give elderly landowners huge tax benefits has very real costs to everyone else that they have to bear. What about the next generation of people who never get a chance to establish roots there because they can't afford it due to all the preferential treatment given to old, established property owners?

Let those who have huge tax burdens pass their own tax exemptions. One used to be able to go to Berkeley for a few hundred a semester. What happened? Today only young college grads in tech fields and some others with massive college debts can afford to live decent lives. For the average or older person it's time to fuck everything and burn it down. Time to vote for Trump. I was raised to give preferential treatment to the old. It's a conservative morally superior value liberals often don't understand but which conservatives are gut certain makes them superior.

 

[Moonbeam]

This would be very, very damaging to the neighborhoods involved. Basically it would make it so that renters and new property owners, ie: the people who tend to have the smallest amount of wealth and income would shoulder most of the tax burden. It's an incredibly regressive policy.

No, it would mean that you would set down roots in a place you could afford to stay in and not be driven out of later in life. You are the new property owner paying the highest rate when you buy. You only get screwed when you buy, not later in life.

 

[Drako]

Wow, another thread that devolves into the evils of Prop 13. 😀

 

[Zaap]

Just have to comment... Moonbeam stepping out of character a little and making perfect sense.... wow. 😀

 

[Darwin333]

Shrug, I agree with them on the drugs part (actually doesn't go far enough but its a start) but not for theft or shoplifting. First of all there are actual victims with theft and shoplifting and if you only get caught a third of the time the fine is just a cost of doing business.

 

[fskimospy]

No, it would mean that you would set down roots in a place you could afford to stay in and not be driven out of later in life. You are the new property owner paying the highest rate when you buy. You only get screwed when you buy, not later in life.

So to be clear you think it's better for people to pay the most in taxes when they have little or no money instead of paying the most taxes when they have lots of money.

How does that make sense?

 

[Drako]

Eski's head will explode if he reads Prop 60/90. 😀

 

[realibrad]

Society gains from educated voters, but the individual voters do not gain. (assuming the education is for the sole purpose of voting) This is mostly because individual votes are effectively meaningless anyway.

An expectation that voters would invest additional time for no increased utility is an expectation that they will behave irrationally. We can't make a system based on that.

The idea of public education is that educated people make better decisions. Not all, but the net of the investment is that it will likely make everyone better off. The individual cost per education is high and the returns are slow. The reason we do it is over the long run the returns are large and compound.

So I apply that logic to voting. An educated voter will have to spend time on learning which will be a larger cost than the initial return of a vote on an election or law. The return over time will be large.

Are you saying that people are better off not spending time understanding issues because the individual return is low when they could just depend on a few doing all the work for them? If so, all you are doing is arguing against an open democracy. Democracy is inefficient but its the least bad option. There will be redundant work, but its the best we have.

Am I still missing something, because I don't think you the time to argue against democracy.

 

[woolfe9998]

Sure, but I mean we are talking about tax policy here.

Yeah, not so much conservative ideology on taxes as voting with your wallet. Tax cuts have a populist appeal. Isn't it ironic that conservatives complain that liberals try to buy votes by handing out public benefits while at the same time every last republican campaigns on tax cuts in every election, in order to buy people's votes...of course.

 

[Zaap]

Pfft. Like there isn't a profound difference 'buying' someone's vote with the promise of keeping more of their own money, vs. buying someone's vote with the (usually downright hollow) promise of someone else's money.

 

[Zaap]

So to be clear you think it's better for people to pay the most in taxes when they have little or no money...

In context of this argument, would those be people with little or no money buying grandma's house for 1.4 MILLION dollars?

lol.

 

[fskimospy]

The idea of public education is that educated people make better decisions. Not all, but the net of the investment is that it will likely make everyone better off. The individual cost per education is high and the returns are slow. The reason we do it is over the long run the returns are large and compound.

So I apply that logic to voting. An educated voter will have to spend time on learning which will be a larger cost than the initial return of a vote on an election or law. The return over time will be large.

Public education is both publicly funded and compulsory. Without funded, compulsory education about voting you can never achieve the same thing. Are you really going to grab up every voter every year and send them to a class on the issues? How could that possibly work?

Are you saying that people are better off not spending time understanding issues because the individual return is low when they could just depend on a few doing all the work for them? If so, all you are doing is arguing against an open democracy. Democracy is inefficient but its the least bad option. There will be redundant work, but its the best we have.

Am I still missing something, because I don't think you the time to argue against democracy.

I genuinely don't know how someone can argue that people are better off spending their time educating themselves about the issues, assuming the purpose of that education is exclusively to cast a more informed vote. Their vote stands such an infinitesimally small chance of affecting the election's outcome that even spending the time to go vote is an irrational decision. Add spending time reading about the issues before voting? That's just even more irrational.

Your vote doesn't matter anyway, so making a 'better' meaningless vote that comes at greater cost is just a further waste of your time. This isn't an argument against democracy, this is an argument for better public education and compulsory voting. Until you establish those two, reading up on the propositions to cast the 'best vote' is an exercise in self delusion and vanity.

 

[fskimospy]

In context of this argument, would those be people with little or no money buying grandma's house for 1.4 MILLION dollars?

lol.

I'm not sure, who do you think has more money, someone who owns an asset worth $1.5 million dollars and no debt or someone who owns an asset worth $1.5 million dollars with $1.2 million in debt? I'm no math wizard, but as best as I can tell $1,500,000 is greater than $300,000. Maybe you can do a quick check on that for me.

If your argument is that it's smart tax policy where the person with a net worth of $300,000 should pay more in taxes than the person with a net worth of $1,500,000 let's hear that argument!

 

[Cozarkian]

So to be clear you think it's better for people to pay the most in taxes when they have little or no money instead of paying the most taxes when they have lots of money.

How does that make sense?

Your premise isn't sound.

Some jobs (like physician assistants) start with high base salary but have no prospect of promotion. When they buy a house they have as much income as they ever will. They shouldn't be priced out of a house because 10 years down the road they won't be able to afford property taxes if the housing market remains strong.

Retired people also typically take a hit to income. Many of them will have less money than they did earlier in life but can end up with a higher tax burden.

By contrast, a new doctor might buy a cheap house after starting a new job and will later move to a mansion after years of work. This person's tax burden increases along with income.

There are benefits to prop 13. I just don't understand why moonbeam is overlooking the unnecessary benefits given to large corporations and owners of rental and/or vacation property when reform could remove those benefits without disadvantaging people who want to buy a home for life.

 

[Zaap]

I'm not sure, who do you think has more money, someone who owns an asset worth $1.5 million dollars and no debt or someone who owns an asset worth $1.5 million dollars with $1.2 million in debt? I'm no math wizard, but as best as I can tell $1,500,000 is greater than $300,000. Maybe you can do a quick check on that for me.

If your argument is that it's smart tax policy where the person with a net worth of $300,000 should pay more in taxes than the person with a net worth of $1,500,000 let's hear that argument!

I'm just curious why you think you're making an argument that has anything to do with poor people (other than the poor and likely old person that will be kicked out of their house they can no longer afford) when talking amounts like 1.5 million dollars.

You Joe and Jane poor are the ones buying grandma's house for that?

Your whole argument seems to be poor grandma who never paid that for her house and doesn't have the money to pay taxes on such a ridiculous amount, should just STFU and move out of the way, take her 1.5 mil and be happy...

... so that some 'average Joe/Jane' or even poor person can have her home...


... that is the average Joe/Jane/poor person with 1.5 million laying around.

LOL!

 

[realibrad]

Public education is both publicly funded and compulsory. Without funded, compulsory education about voting you can never achieve the same thing. Are you really going to grab up every voter every year and send them to a class on the issues? How could that possibly work?

My point was not about the compulsory aspect of public education. The logic behind making education compulsory is the point I made about society being better off. You do not need to force people to be educated but you can make a system where they bear the costs of being uneducated.

I genuinely don't know how someone can argue that people are better off spending their time educating themselves about the issues, assuming the purpose of that education is exclusively to cast a more informed vote. Their vote stands such an infinitesimally small chance of affecting the election's outcome that even spending the time to go vote is an irrational decision. Add spending time reading about the issues before voting? That's just even more irrational.

Your vote doesn't matter anyway, so making a 'better' meaningless vote that comes at greater cost is just a further waste of your time. This isn't an argument against democracy, this is an argument for better public education and compulsory voting. Until you establish those two, reading up on the propositions to cast the 'best vote' is an exercise in self delusion and vanity.

You are making an argument against democracy. You are saying that the only way to make voters important would be to force them into education and force them to vote. If your point that it was more efficient to have a few making the choices, then it would be a better system to educate a few and have them do all the voting. Democracy is not that system at all. Either you let everyone vote at bare the outcomes of their choices, or its not democracy. You have not explicitly said this, but you are supporting an oligarchy, not democracy.

 

[fskimospy]

Your premise isn't sound.

Oh it's perfectly sound, trust me.

Some jobs (like physician assistants) start with high base salary but have no prospect of promotion. When they buy a house they have as much income as they ever will. They shouldn't be priced out of a house because 10 years down the road they won't be able to afford property taxes if the housing market remains strong.

So your argument is instead they should be priced out of a house to begin with because prop 13 increases costs dramatically up front? This is an important point I don't think people understand. Prop 13 makes housing more expensive for people who have the least money. That means more people priced out of homes, not fewer.

If you repealed prop 13 not only would that PA see their sales and income tax go down, making buying a house more affordable, but the cost to buy would probably go down as available housing stock would go up. (no more turtling necessary!)

Retired people also typically take a hit to income. Many of them will have less money than they did earlier in life but can end up with a higher tax burden.

Even if I accepted the idea that we should give retired people a break on their property taxes, prop 13 does not discriminate based on age. If you want to help keep your grandparents in their house then make it only apply to people 65 and older or whatever.

By contrast, a new doctor might buy a cheap house after starting a new job and will later move to a mansion after years of work. This person's tax burden increases along with income.

Or maybe that new doctor happened to be lucky enough to buy a house in a neighborhood where property values shot way up. Then he gets to live in an expensive house for a fraction of what his neighbors pay, all while making way more money than they do.

There are benefits to prop 13. I just don't understand why moonbeam is overlooking the unnecessary benefits given to large corporations and owners of rental and/or vacation property when reform could remove those benefits without disadvantaging people who want to buy a home for life.

Prop 13 is actually a substantial obstacle to buying a home. People who have generally lower incomes and larger debt payments pay higher taxes than people with higher incomes and lower or nonexistent debt payments.

 

[fskimospy]

My point was not about the compulsory aspect of public education. The logic behind making education compulsory is the point I made about society being better off. You do not need to force people to be educated but you can make a system where they bear the costs of being uneducated.

In our current system we have people bear the cost of being uneducated on an individual level. Sure society faces costs from that as well, but the individual faces those costs much more acutely. There is no functional way that I am aware of to do that with voter education.

You are making an argument against democracy. You are saying that the only way to make voters important would be to force them into education and force them to vote. If your point that it was more efficient to have a few making the choices, then it would be a better system to educate a few and have them do all the voting. Democracy is not that system at all. Either you let everyone vote at bare the outcomes of their choices, or its not democracy. You have not explicitly said this, but you are supporting an oligarchy, not democracy.

Of course I'm not making an argument against democracy, I'm making an argument about the individual rationality of voluntary voting and voluntary issue education. It's just math and there's no getting around it. This is a collective action problem where all of society benefits from educated and engaged voters but individuals do not benefit. Hence, society needs to alter the incentives. (enter mandatory voting)

Also, representative democracy is not an oligarchy. That's absurd. It is again a simple mathematical fact that we as a society do not have the time to make sure every citizen is fully informed on every issue. That would be a tremendous waste of effort. Instead, we elect people to do that for us. If they don't do a good job, we can elect someone else. Sovereignty always remains with the people doing the electing.

Now I think the US in its current form shows some oligarchical traits but that's an indictment of our system, not the representative democracy that basically every developed nation on earth uses.

 

[woolfe9998]

You are making an argument against democracy. You are saying that the only way to make voters important would be to force them into education and force them to vote. If your point that it was more efficient to have a few making the choices, then it would be a better system to educate a few and have them do all the voting. Democracy is not that system at all. Either you let everyone vote at bare the outcomes of their choices, or its not democracy. You have not explicitly said this, but you are supporting an oligarchy, not democracy.

He's saying that individuals have no logical reason to vote, but democracy as a whole benefits from higher voter turnouts. Hence, compulsory education and voting. I don't understand why you think that everyone being educated and voting = oligarchy. Explain.

 

[realibrad]

He's saying that individuals have no logical reason to vote, but democracy as a whole benefits from higher voter turnouts. Hence, compulsory education and voting. I don't understand why you think that everyone being educated and voting = oligarchy. Explain.

Democracy does not benefit as its a system not a person.

His argument is that he does not see a benefit to society to educate people and force them to vote because the cost of doing so is higher than the return.

From a utility analysis there is functionally no benefit to an individual voter educating themselves about the issue in order to vote better on a ballot proposition as their vote comprises much to little of the total for their education to matter. Expecting people to do this is expecting them to act economically irrationally and that's almost always a bad basis for a legislative system, haha.

So he is saying that its an issue where the cost to the individual is higher than the return. It would be inefficient to educate everyone when you could just educate a few and have them do all the voting.

 

[fskimospy]

Democracy does not benefit as its a system not a person.

His argument is that he does not see a benefit to society to educate people and force them to vote because the cost of doing so is higher than the return.

So he is saying that its an issue where the cost to the individual is higher than the return. It would be inefficient to educate everyone when you could just educate a few and have them do all the voting.

No, this is not what I was saying at all. I was saying it was irrational for one single person to educate themselves because it would have no effect whatsoever on the return as one vote is meaningless. If everyone were educated it would affect the return.

This is the same argument as to why you shouldn't take the time to vote. Your individual decision to go down to the polling booth is a total waste of your time from the perspective of having your preferred candidate get elected. It is most certainly not a waste of people's collective time if they do so, however. Hence, compulsory voting.

 

[realibrad]

In our current system we have people bear the cost of being uneducated on an individual level. Sure society faces costs from that as well, but the individual faces those costs much more acutely. There is no functional way that I am aware of to do that with voter education.



Of course I'm not making an argument against democracy, I'm making an argument about the individual rationality of voluntary voting and voluntary issue education. It's just math and there's no getting around it. This is a collective action problem where all of society benefits from educated and engaged voters but individuals do not benefit. Hence, society needs to alter the incentives. (enter mandatory voting)

Also, representative democracy is not an oligarchy. That's absurd. It is again a simple mathematical fact that we as a society do not have the time to make sure every citizen is fully informed on every issue. That would be a tremendous waste of effort. Instead, we elect people to do that for us. If they don't do a good job, we can elect someone else. Sovereignty always remains with the people doing the electing.

Now I think the US in its current form shows some oligarchical traits but that's an indictment of our system, not the representative democracy that basically every developed nation on earth uses.

You are saying that society would be better off if people were educated, but they dont have the incentive and thus they are not. If people are not educated, then they are likely making bad voting choices. You see this as being a collective action issue.

The solution to that would be to stop uneducated voters from voting as they are more likely to make bad choices. Further, you would be better off just having the most educated people make choices as they are the most likely to make better decisions. Is that not right?