Always brought up and a bit of a red herring. Averaged out, yes. But prop 13 gives older generations are far lower tax burden. If you’re a young home owner in California, it’s absolutely the highest tax burden in the country.
It's not a red herring. If I think my taxes are too high, and I hear "California has the highest taxes in the country!", I will think, "Oh, California should spend less money so my taxes go down." But if I hear "California has extremely high taxes for people like me, but very low taxes for certain other rich people," I will think, "California should reform its tax policies so that it gets more money from those people and less from me."