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Comment by crdoconnor | Hacker News Reader

The states could raise property/land taxes and eliminate corporate tax cuts and tax loopholes.

That wouldn't be a 1% friendly solution though - too much of their wealth is tied up in land and equities. It might mean that landlords in the Bay Area couldn't collect rents of $6,000 a month for doing nothing. Most of that unearned cash would flow in to state coffers instead.

It's ironic, because the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer foundation (the group behind prop 13) tried to justify prop 13 by saying that raising property taxes would hurt the elderly. Californian voters believed them.

Now that their actions created a massive hole in California budgets, they advocate for stripping California pensioners of their money as the "fiscally responsible" solution.

People believe them now too.

Edit: For those erroneously believing propaganda that hiking taxes leads to an automatic exodus:

https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-tax...

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The 1% are not equally distributed, or indeed necessarily distributed at all, in all the places with excessive pension obligations. Taxing them is not a general solution.

The other problem is that we don't just need to come up with money; we need to find ways to convince/force governments to stop making these promises in the first place. A government promise about something it'll do 30 or 40 years in the future is not quite worthless, but it's just not an institution capable of reliably keeping it.

(Whatever politics you think drives me to say that, I mean that and I mean lots of other things too. If nothing else, in the general case, a legislative body can not truly constrain future legislatures, who can always just vote to not keep their old promises, made by people who are mostly not here anymore, for constituencies that were growing in power 30-40 years ago but are now dying off and not very useful to the current 30-40-year-olds in the legislature. Looking to governments to keep promises so many decades in advance is far more risky that many people seem to account for on all kinds of levels. The history of the 20th century suggests that counting on your government to even exist in 40 years is, in general, not the safest bet!)

> The states could raise property/land taxes ...

In CA specifically, I don't see the threat of bankruptcy being enough to overcome prop 13.

Plus if it was in the cards there would be a massive exodus that would further erode the tax base which would be a vicious downward spiral.

> ... and eliminate corporate tax cuts and tax loopholes.

Referencing "eliminating tax loopholes" is like saying "We need to do something about guns". It's meaningless without specifics.

> That wouldn't be a 1% friendly solution though - too much of their wealth is tied up in land and equities.

Equities aren't taxed by States or municipalities, at least not from a "wealth tax" perspective. If such a wealth tax was passed I'd immediately invest in U-Haul and other mover services.

Raising income taxes enough to cover these obligations would lead to an exodus of high earners as well. That doesn't address the municipal pensions either as they don't necessarily have income taxing ability nor high earners to tax.

> Now that their actions created a massive hole in California budgets, they advocate for stripping California pensioners of their money as the "fiscally responsible" solution.

The fiscally responsible thing to do would have been to not make promises to pensioners to buy their votes. Sadly that continues to this day. Try running as a politician that's going to address this problem with any form of austerity measures for the people involved and see what happens.

>It might mean that landlords in the Bay Area couldn't collect rents of $6,000 a month for doing nothing.

Other than provide housing in an extremely high demand area.

Property taxes are an interesting solution. Of course people who don't own property will still pay them indirectly through rents.

If it were primarily about providing housing as opposed to monopoly access to land, there wouldn't be a burned out house on the market in the Bay Area currently going for $800k.

The amount of free money yielded in real estate appreciation and rents in California is staggering. It could easily fill any state budget hole if the political will was there to take it from the people who did not earn it and give it to the people who did.

>monopoly access to land

Do you mean "ownership?"

>The amount of free money yielded in real estate appreciation and rents in California is staggering. It could easily fill any state budget hole if the political will was there to take it from the people who did not earn it and give it to the people who did.

People didn't earn the property they own? I hesitate to ask you the question, but if things are so expensive, and you don't currently own property, why live there in the first place?

I'm all for decreasing the wealth gap and the wage gap, but what you seem to be asking for is free shit.

If you bought property in the 1980s that cost you $50k and sold it today for $900k what exactly did you do to earn that $850k? Are you actually saying that it is not free money?

That's the effect that untaxing land (e.g. prop 13) has on property values. That's the money that would be going toward unfunded pension liabilities were the land not untaxed.

Paid for it, maintained it for 38 years, paid taxes on it for 38 years, paid interest on it for 30 years, paid insurance on it for 38 years, paid a realtor to sell it, made sure no junkies squatted it for 38 years, took the risk of the government force buying it for pennies on the dollar, took the risk of an earthquake destroying it, took the risk of other events completely devaluing it, didn't cash out for 38 years, etc.

Also took the risk of it decreasing in value relative to the dollar in 38 years.

I mean if it's free money, why don't you go buy up a $900K property and get some free money in 38 years? There is a little more to it, and of course, you realize, that it might not have increased in value over 38 years like it did the last 38 years.

Of course luck has a lot to do with it. I've lived in my house for about 15 years or so (not in CA). It's nearly doubled in value, but the interest payments alone over time cost about as much as the property, so it's a break even, then add inflation and I've probably lost some. I live in my house though, and I'm eagerly awaiting the day when I can live here without any more mortgage payments.

Indeed, if you invested 50k at 5% interest at 38 years ago, it would be 319k now. And that is the baseline if you spent zero on taxes and maintenance.

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