Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

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Among myriad of issues, one is that the tax rates for the very rich are not high enough.

And the absolute parrallel there is - people probably wouldn't feel their money is being spent effectively.

I really do feel that rich Californians would accept higher taxes if the money was really well spent.

Impossible to talk about is the 'low end' - where you have (and bringing in) people in very, very low skilled and economic classes even on a global scale, who really can't 'participate' in the regular economy to legitimize a solid minimum wage.

And so you get 1M people working 'under the table' where the supply/demand bears a low price.

It might be heartless to hear, but consider that it may be far more efficient to have US companies invest in developing Mexico, and have those people have wage jobs there that provide them a modicum of dignity - as opposed to coming to Cali and being jammed into the 'bottom'.

The 'cartels' (very complicated issue) is an example of how, systematically everything gets oppressed.

Cali has never been about 'equality' (i.e. communitarian, hard work, self discipline, charitable giving, good governance, responsible social spending, community cohesion aka Sweden) more like the 'dreamy feeling of equality' where if everyone just 'pursues their thing and acts kind it will all work out'.

Throw in a national crisis in healthcare and housing and you have your mess.

It takes everything: taxes need to be a bit more for the rich, schools need to be a bit rigorous, parents need to parent, the border needs to be responsibly managed, need to have intervention in healthcare pricing, police need to act fairly and appropriately, city councils need to stop being corrupt, DA needs to stop being populist, don't elect a 'pretty playboy' to lead government instead elect rationalists who are competent and can lead, we cannot allow petty crime to go unheeded, we cannot allow absolute poverty to go unheeded, we cannot allow corporate corruption to go unheeded, we cannot allow government inefficiency to go unheeded. People need to stop being dreamy and delusional and ideological on all fronts. 'TED Talk' thinking does not solve any problems, it misleads us to thinking there is an idea, or a technology that can change - I say rubbish, we need to be responsible and conscientious on all fronts, that's what makes civilization.

California politicians need to break away from the hold of the progressive left. All I see in the bay area are politicians arguing over who is more progressive rather than anyone actually suggesting how they will practically and concretely solve the problems that are so obviously in front of us. But even just acknowledging that there is a problem seems to be impossible for any politicians here. Without any actual challenge from the right, politicians will just keep moving to the left, even when that doesn't really mean anything other than how you virtue signal to certain causes.

Just because you don't kowtow to the woke ideology, doesn't mean you can't be on the left and push for improving your state and locality in a practical way and until we get some politicians that actually stand up and say we're going to actually fix some of this, then we aren't going to have any meaningful improvements.

Yes, that's becoming clear, but it's only one of many issues.

And FYI 'the right' has been equally compromised by a populist fringe that has no interest in legitimacy either.

I grew up in Mississauga, ON, Canada, somehow the city was able to integrate people from anywhere on the planet, give them a sound place to live, some kind of job, low crime, safety, healthcare etc.. It's not the most glorious place, and I have no reason to ever want to live there, but for 95% of the people who ever did live there, they came from utter dysfunction (i.e. cold war E. Europe and later E/S Asia) - and 'it works'.

It's the 'opposite' of California in that it's utterly a un-aspirational place, but people have jobs, homes, food, education, healthcare, dignity etc..

The city has the same mayor for like 30 years, ruthlessly pragmatic. Kind of everyone's gradma. Nobody would mess with her or bother trying to run against her.

California needs a Hazel McCallion [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_McCallion

California doesn't have problems with their Russian and Asian immigrants either. The amount of problems areas have with immigration very strongly depends on the education level of those immigrants, Canada mostly takes in highly educated people so doesn't face many issues, California on the other hand have over 2 million undocumented immigrants who are significantly less educated than the average immigrant in Canada.

I'm genuinely confused at what reasoning you are using to conclude this since CA already has the highest income taxes in the nation by a large margin. ...And they have higher taxes in a lot of other categories as well.

This just seems like the same progressive denial and pipedream which has led to the very bloated bureaucracy and regulatory environment to the detriment of CA which we are presently discussing.

More tax dollars won't change anything. The state government already has more money than it needs. It just doesn't spend it well. If we give the government more money, it won't spend that money well either.

More money could facilitate universal healthcare of some kind.

And yes, fully agree, there are efficiency problems, which is kind of my point.

It bothers me a lot how so few YC startups are trying to solve economic asymmetrical issues in Healthcare.

> Among myriad of issues, one is that the tax rates for the very rich are not high enough.

I'm curious-- why is this your conclusion?

California has a $40-70B surplus. California's got one of the highest tax burdens in the nation.

california is among the highest state tax rates in the country...

> california is among the highest state tax rates in the country...

Yes, but it's not even enough to offset the maximum federal tax subsidy to the top from the preferential treatment of long-term capital gains (that is, the federal top LTCG rate plus the top California income tax rate is less than the top, or even second, and almost third, federal income tax rate alone—and that's not even considering the additional federal taxes on labor income.)

USA generally has lower tax burden than other nations, but I don't think taxes on the bottom 90% need to change so much, the issue is in the massive surplus of those earning capital gains.

Surplus in California is not generated via income. It's capital gains - I think we need to rethink that.

i.e. what Picketty has been saying for a decade.

... and real estate in particular due to historically low interest rates.

> Surplus in California is not generated via income. It's capital gains

Capital gains are income (just income that is federally taxed at a lower rate than “regular” income which, due to payroll taxes, is in turn taxes a lower rate than labor income.)

Because investors > people getting money from random sources > workers.

Capital gains are traditionally taxed at a lower rate due to the risk involved.

Businesses can carry over losses and get a tax shield from it, individuals cannot.

One solution to the problem may be to make it so that if individuals want to claim capital gains, they have to do it in a separate account - maybe something that every bank can offer as easily as a chequing account. And allow gains looses to be rolled over or something like that - but while taxing at a higher rate.

It'd be a neat idea to simplify the system and get institutional buy in so that everyone just has simple accounts: current, retirement, cap gains, and transactions on them are recorded in a way that taxes can be filed just with that data alone.

California taxes capital gains as a source of income without the IRS’s differentiation between long-term or short-term gains so they are one and the same to California.

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