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Comment by artsrc | Hacker News Reader

California has a lot of issues and potential. I just don't feel this article really convinces me that they have selected the important ones.

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.

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California's problem is that they regulated retail but not wholesale electricity and banned the construction of new powerplants. Basic supply and demand, there's less so it costs more. So the local electricity companies have to buy supplies from out of state and can't pass on the cost, creating deep structural problems.

About California's only hope is mass nuke building before it's too late.

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

Thank you so much for posting this comment. I love watching ideologically-picked solutions smash into the unyielding fabric of reality.

Be careful that you don't mistake passion for dogmatism. I have seen a few pro-nukes who treat it as a happy death spiral, but they seem to be the exception.

(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 was pro-nuke and I'm still more pro-nuke than I am pro-coal.

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.

It's definitely possible to make nuclear plants earthquake-proof, so long as you choose a site that isn't located directly on top of a major fault like or something. The French EPR, for example, comes this way standard. Or if you want to look at really radical solutions, consider floating reactors like the ones Russia is working on:

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.

Why on earth would we ever try to build a nuclear plant anywhere near any general area that's prone to earthquakes? There's plenty of other real estate available for any we decide to build.

You might live on an earthquake-prone island nation like Japan. Or the easiest access to cooling water may be in someplace with an earthquake risk.

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.)

90% pensions for workers retiring early are lavish even if they are "cop and teacher" pensions. The teacher's unions are one of the worst at resisting political reforms.

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?

Property and sales tax in CA are both very high(varies by county but most are up there). The LA county sales tax is 9.75%! You are right that CA has a lot of potential. The double whammy of decreased revenues from the recession impacted construction industry coupled with the soaring cost of entitlements over the last half decade are probably the two major factors in the states current situation. They are not the ONLY ones, but they are the most signifigant.

Property taxes are actually at the root of much of the problem, but not because they're too high. Thanks to Prop 13, which prevented property taxes from increasing except when a property is sold, they're very unevenly distributed. In essence, we have a subsidy on old homeowners paid for by new homeowners. Not only has this starved local governments of revenue traditionally used to pay for schools, police and other municipal services, but it has badly distorted the housing market.

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.

Without repealing Prop 13 and making our tax system more equitable, we cannot reduce the high property/sales taxes

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?

That's exactly right. The property tax rate (the percentage of the value of your home that you must pay every year) cannot be reduced, because many property owners are paying that percentage on the values of their homes twenty years ago or more. This makes the tax rate very unfavorable for new owners and very good for those who have owned since Prop 13 was passed in 1978. If everybody paid tax based on their current home price (an order of magnitude difference for some properties), the tax _rate_ could be reduced for everybody (though many would end up paying more tax).

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.

I encourage people to read into Prop 13 if they are not informed about the issue.

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.

How is this different than 'most every other tax? One way or another, it's always one group of people subsidizing another group. Why the call for tax equality here, when in pretty much every case we hear calls for "progressive this" and "helping disadvantaged that"?

Showing income tax alone seems one sided. What about property and sales taxes? Are these lower than other states?

See the Tax Foundation's "Tax Burden" report. It examines several types of taxes. California is ranked sixth highest for the year 2008.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/336.html

Here is some basic information on the total taxation http://retirementliving.com/RLtaxes.html

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