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Comment by Justin_K | Hacker News Reader

How would ruining the financial plans for millions of homeowners solve the problem? It's so easy to say "just increase taxes" but the reality is our spending is insane.

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Even a sane prop 13 could be neutral on property taxes, just not give such a bonus for never moving. There is a lot of value society loses when people have an incentive to never upgrade/downgrade their property because the transaction costs, essentially, would be astronomical.

California does have high overall taxes, but not the highest. Part of the reason income taxes are so high is because property taxes have a very low effective rate.

You're comparing income tax to a sorta wealth tax. CA properties tend to be worth more than in other states, so even if the % property tax is lower, it can be a higher $ or % income amount.

California is ranked 15th in dollars collected per house by property tax.

In terms of "property tax as a percentage of personal income" it is only 24th.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/us-property-taxes-by-sta...

But 24th makes it in the middle.

California has the lowest rates of home ownership in the country at 18%. More people are subsidizing the current system than are benefiting from it.

You're way off. The California home ownership rate is 55%. But some other states are significantly higher.

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/rates.html

Apparently the stat I gave was the ratio of homeowners to Californians which is something like 18% and the lowest in the nation, but if we use the % of households which own their home we get something like 55% which is still very close to the lowest in the nation.

I feel like homeowners in California are giving more than they are taking overall.

Agree that spending needs to be cut. But my understanding is that before Prop 13, California's tax revenue was more balanced between property, sales, and income taxes, and thus less subject to the boom and bust cycles that we see now (https://calmatters.org/explainers/california-budget-whiplash...).

As long as people continue to think in dichotomous terms, nothing will happen.

Por que no los dos? Put fiscally conservatives on the task of cutting, and put a progressive in charge of reform.

sunset it over 10-15 years...

Don't even have to, just tweak the maximum increase from 2% to some number that better reflects the growth of CA property values.

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