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Comment by bradlys | Hacker News Reader

Is there any reason to believe this will inspire change? My significant other is devastated as much of her childhood was spent in big basin.

> In rebuilding Big Basin, we hope it is a catalyst for a new movement, one in which we learn to coexist with wildfire and deal directly with the impacts of climate change.

The only way I can see us changing the severity of damage is by incorporating fire breaks regularly - but those seem radically unpopular (as evidence by the lack of them in all of California). Maybe more funding for firefighting but I guess that's probably unpopular too... I guess you would have to raise your property taxes.

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Would more fire breaks even help with fires like this one? Here in Southern California, fires fairly regularly jump freeways, which are quite a bit wider than typical firebreaks, and our fires are usually just relatively low brush, not entire forests.

With a strong wildfire, you would need massive firebreaks to completely prevent them being crossed, but the point of most of them is to slow things down to the point of being controllable. To cross a firebreak, the fire has to throw lit embers far enough to ignite on the other side. If the firebreak is large enough, the amount of embers that make it is lower, and it becomes more possible to control them.

We have no way to extinguish the heart of a wildfire. For example, notice that the airplanes and helicopters that are used for firefighting rarely dump their load over the heart of a wildfire -- they usually target the edges. So all our efforts are targeted towards controlling the edges of the fire, slowing it down and making it manageable, because that is all we can really control. Firebreaks are a layer of the defense, not the whole thing.

Perhaps the solution is not building homes in these areas so we can let the places burn more frequently.

People who know a lot more about forest management than I do seem to believe that the solution is more hands-on management and controlled burns (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/a-trailblazing...). Unfortunately, the biggest barrier to this right now is the California Air Resources Board, which idiotically allows for so few burn days that the agencies involved can't get the controlled burns done. The net result of this is an entire month or more each year where major portions of the state have some of the worst air in the world.

I generally think California manages things pretty well, all things considered, but if there's a sensible explanation for this policy I haven't seen it.

Very interesting. Thanks.

Homes can potentially still be built in these areas, but they need to use fire resistant construction, maintain defensible space, and accept the risk that it might still burn.

Some locales have adopted a (reasonable) policy of abandoning your house to the wildfire if you have not done your due diligence of defensible space.

where do our current taxes go? CA as a state has one of the highest (or the highest?) tax burden in US. The schools are still awful and we have to rely on prison populations for fire fighting? WTF?

Property tax burden is super low for the longtime wealthy.

If you were wealthy in CA > 25 years ago, you're likely not paying much at all in taxes. We instead rely on high sales tax and income tax.

you still are paying ungodly income and sale taxes.

If you own property and don’t pay (or pay very few) income taxes that means you probably wouldn’t be able to keep your house if your property tax base is reset.

Sales tax (VAT) in most European countries is around 20%. The top rate of income tax is typically 50% or more. That's just what it costs to have decent public services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax...

We pay 50% income tax in California and don’t have any decent public services.

No argument there! But 50% + 8.6% sales tax vs 50% + 20% VAT is definitely a difference.

Of course, the area under the curve matters, too. I have no insight into what effective tax rates people are paying in 50% top-bracket tax countries in Europe.

As a double-income no kids couple in Silicon Valley, I think we're still paying something like 18% effective tax rate federally.

Buy. Borrow. Die.

Those successful property investors never have to lift a finger or pay a dime

Worse, I understand you can pass the property and low tax rate. on to your children when you die.

Grandchildren, even.

If your property is worth that much more, you can sell it and get a smaller place in the same area and pocket a nice profit. Prop 13 discourages new development in much the same way that rent control does.

Our sales taxes are 8th in the nation, and, importantly very few states are much lower at all. Almost no states are 6% or below, to our 8.68% combined average.[1]

We've already discussed income tax in this thread, but the parent to your post was talking about "if you were rich > 25 years ago" .. implying the person is probably retired, and isn't paying the highest income tax rates. House paid off, don't need to draw a lot from your retirement, low property taxes.

1. https://taxfoundation.org/state-and-local-sales-tax-rates-20...

The roads are absolute shit and the electrical grid is falling apart. It was tempting to settle down and buy a house amidst the years crises, but I'm not signing up to be responsible for the problems in this state.

If not you -- who?

How about the folks who gained $1,000,000+ in wealth as their houses appreciated over the past decade or so?

Education, prisons, health and human services [0]. They actually cut schools by about 7 billion in the last budget. I’m also pretty impressed how we spend over 130B a year (And that’s just the state budget).

[0] http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/budget/2020-21EN/#/BudgetSummary

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_...

But to be honest this is one of those things where ignorance is bliss

I know about it and support it for personal residences.

If you know it so well, why do you still think we have the highest tax burden?

because we do

But we don't: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur...

CA has a higher tax burden than average, but nowhere near the highest in the US. Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio all have a higher per capita tax burden than California - among others.

Other states are able to do without it. It's also responsible for California's homelessness problem. Why in the world do you support it?

California per capita budget is around the middle of all states in the USA - somewhere around 20th highest. The state has high income and sales tax to compensate for reduced property taxes due to prop 13.

This is why many people think California has high taxes. Because they move here, get hit with a high income tax rate, then get hit with a standard property tax rate if they buy a home.

Meanwhile, my parents pay around 1k/year in property taxes on their million dollar home.

I wonder how much California nonsense would just go away if they repealed Prop13. It just seems like such a dumb law every time I hear it brought up.

The commercial aspect of Prop 13 is on the ballot for repeal this November.

This is some of the best news I’ve heard in a long time.

Landowners have held disproportionate political power for the entire history of American democracy, but if enough renters show up to the polls and vote their whole ballots, ridiculous policies like this can begin to slowly change.

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