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Comment by owlcompliance | Hacker News Reader

As a former staunch Republican, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that both parties have sold us out. I disagree with a lot of the Left's policies and many on the Right as well, but both parties advocate, in theory, for several things that would benefit all Americans -- yet it never happens. Republicans advocate for fiscal responsibility -- never happens. Democrats advocate for things like healthcare and cancelling student loans -- never happens. The Democrats held the House, Senate, and Presidency in 2021 for two years. The Republicans currently hold the House, Senate, and Presidency right now.

They're in power for themselves and their disregard for us is by design.

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What did Republican appointees on the Supreme Court have to say about student loan forgiveness?

Who not only fights tooth and nail against healthcare improvements but actively took money from existing programs to fund a national police and detainment apparatus?

Which party produced the most meaningful (albeit not far enough) healthcare reform of the 21st century in the US?

Those examples in particular are quite rough to try and both sides.

Where I live (California) there are basically no republicans in power. For a long time now. And we have more money and a better economic base than just about anywhere on the planet Earth.

So to all the partisans out there who are sure things would be better if "their side" had total control, I ask: what the hell is going on with California then?? We should be modeling the best governance in the country and even the world, but yet, our government is basically dysfunctional and our state is great despite it.

That's easily answered. They think California is a hellhole that everyone with means is fleeing. "Vote for Democrats to turn your state into California" is a great way to get people on both sides to vote for their own preferred side.

California has structural obstacles that don’t fit into partisan politics. Proposition 13 limits property tax collection, which warps housing development and many other factors. Also, California has high incomes, which means Californians pay more federal income tax, and the state receives less back in federal benefits, to the tune of almost $100 billion a year. Those are significant headwinds that the state would still have to deal with even if it was governed well.

Prop 13 is brought up a lot but it never made any sense to me that it also applies to commercial real estate used for businesses. I can see an argument for single family homes (primary dwellings) but property that large corporations own ? It makes no sense.

Occams razor: it was never about the SFH owners...

It was created by and for homeowners, but businesses aren't going to pass up a gift like that. It's actually worse for commercial property - building are owned by separate single purpose corporations, and if you want to sell the building, you sell fractions of the ownership in the corporation over time so there's never a big enough change to trigger a tax reassessment.

You really think california localities have a revenue problem? Prop 13 dos not limit property tax collection: it changes the distribution of it. It means I pay 40x more than my neighbor and that is very dumb, but whenver the city needs more revenue they just raise the rates.

Low turnover, political and financial opposition to building, and structurally higher costs. It's a tangled mess.

1. People are disincentivized to move - the longer you've lived in a home, the larger the effective subsidy (vs average property tax payer) becomes.

2. New homes are on the other end of that - you pay much more in taxes than the average. So the cost of new homes is higher.

3. The average home pays less than it costs the local government. This is largely true everywhere because of the cost of public schools, but Prop 13 makes it more pronounced in CA. So local governments have a huge disincentive to approve any housing, especially larger apartments or condos where school aged children could live.

4. Govs make up for the lower tax per home by charging very high development fees for new construction, which raises prices and lowers rates.

The problem with Prop 13 is not about its effect on tax revenue.

Prop 13 is no different from rent control. It distorts the market and limits supply.

If a property owner can't afford the tax on their land, it means the land is under-utilized. SFHs should be replaced by townhomes which should be replaced by multi-family buildings and so on. That doesn't happen because people who bought a house 50 years ago for a few beads and pieces of gum don't have this market signal in the form of a higher property tax bill.

Yeah it distorts the property market. It doesn’t create a budget crisis as suggested.

Where was it suggested that it caused a budget crisis? This started from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47938121 which said "Proposition 13 limits property tax collection, which warps housing development and many other factors."

I don't think "What the hell is going on with California?" is a great example. I've lived in many states throughout my life, from deep red to navy blue, and now I live in California. It's definitely the best place I've ever lived, and neither me nor anyone in my family wants to leave any time soon. Is California a flaw-free utopia? No. Does it have its shit together in more ways than most other states? I'd say yes. Also, being a few hours drive from the ocean, a few hours from a city that's a major cultural center, a few hours from the beautiful Sierras and winter sports, and a few hours from many other pristine and interesting outdoor amenities is and added bonus. Extra bonus, year round decent weather, relatively clean air, clean water, a great university system. Extra extra bonus, nobody in my house has to worry about being hunted down because of the color of their skin or their national origin or their sexual preferences, or because they had a miscarriage.

Not exactly the hell hole red staters make it out to be.

Totally, like I said right there, it is a great state!

But the governance is not great. That was actually the whole point I was making. And getting back to that: The getting things done is abysmal. Taxes are high. Spending is loose. No progress is made on things the state takes on as priorities (housing costs, high speed rail, homelessness). It's just not well managed. But from the "one side good, other side bad" POV it should be great, no pesky republicans to get in the way. I don't know if there's a lesson there but it's an intersting question to ask.

Is there any example of good State governance to point to, though? Every State is on the spectrum of dysfunction. I'd argue (and I am aware that it is a blatantly partisan point of view) that every additional republican you add to the mix will increase dysfunction. The party's entire M.O. currently is to increase chaos wherever possible, grief the other side, and generally troll everyone not like them; and I say this as someone who voted (R) decades ago. The (R) of today have no governance principle besides sowing chaos and ending effective governance, and CA would be even worse if Sacramento had to deal with having a significant number of them around gumming everything up.

I thought Larry Hogan did pretty well in Maryland. Debate about the surplus he left being a sleight-of-hand or not, I didn't feel that Maryland was dysfunctional.

Baltimore however, yes. Hoping this latest mayor can finish his term without getting arrested for corruption, as is tradition. The city council is worse.

You clearly have a low opinion of republicans. I do too! Where we differ is that I have a low opinion of democrats too. I see many dem partisans say how much better they are than republicans and overall I’m not seeing good governance.

Yea, I definitely wasn't clear: With (D)'s we see a spectrum from incompetence to uselessness, and bad outcomes from good intentions. With (R)'s, the spectrum instead includes malice, griefing, cruelty, and deliberate sabotage of governance. Neither are good for governance, but I know which one I'd rather have.

Yeah there are a lot of pathologies on both sides.

Democrats, for example, have loved to stoke the class war for the last 10+ years. Every week you hear a new take on how billionaires could solve homelessness or cancer or something if only they were taxed more. The left wing radicals are just as bad for America. Partisans hate it but the only true path out of this mess is centrism.

> And we have more money and a better economic base than just about anywhere on the planet Earth.

Because of the massive historical defense, tech and entertainment industries all under one roof for decades, bringing in crazy money. The blue politicians that built California as the defense, tech and movie powerhowse decades ago, have nothing in common with those running California today, so California staid successful despite it's current blue leadership not because of it.

It would be amazing for things to be as simple as "vote blue and become rich like California", but that's not how it works. It's more like rich people tend to vote blue, rather than voting blue makes you rich.

When the private sector brings trillions in revenue and local taxes, then the current political competence decline, corruption and mismanagement, inflicts a much smaller splash damage than in places that have less money so there's no one size fits all magic solution.

yeah keep voting red and look like Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana...

Really not what my point was, but thanks for showing me how far your thinking skills go, so I know not to waste my time debating further with you.

Also agriculture and tourism. We truly enjoy an abundance.

Bwuh yeah imagine living in a meteorological paradise that happens to be the world’s strongest economy with the nation’s best state school system with a diversity of culture bringing tangible everyday benefits like delicious food. Sounds horrible.

Sure, our streets are shit, our legislators are actively trying to ruin the tech industry, we spent $130B on 300 yards of train, policing in large cities is a disaster, and the "best state school system" translates into an education level at 29th/37th country-wide, building housing is impossible due to the world's worst permitting process, but otherwise...

Look, I don't mind paying a lot of taxes. If there's service you get for it. And I'm deeply in the blue camp. But CA leadership (state/county/city) is still an utter disaster and needs to be tossed out on its ear.

Yeah I don’t mind Californians shitting on California, by all means, strive for perfection. But… have you been to eastern Kentucky? There’s levels to this.

Also, low key, visit eastern Kentucky. Gorgeous countryside, Red River Gorge. Genuine people, I once stayed in someone’s cabin over Thanksgiving and they insisted on bringing me a fresh Thanksgiving meal, a gesture I’ll never forget.

You're so right! Imagine complaining about government inefficiency and corruption when there is all this bread and all these circuses!

I love it here, California has been good to me. But it really is OK to hold government to high standards.

Define "For a long time now". The Republican party controlled California for 75% of the 1900s with the Democrats coming in power in the last quarter of the century. This is well after California established itself as an economic powerhouse which was greatly aided by the wild West attitude and things like Santa Clara being the location of 20 superfund sites due to all of the ground pollution caused by the semiconductor industry. California is also home to the greatest environmental disaster known as the Salton Sea. You are either going to have to concede that either the economic base of California was established by Republican and exploitative pro-business practices or that Democrats manufactured some of the worst environmental catastrophes.

> Define "For a long time now". The Republican party controlled California for 75% of the 1900s with the Democrats coming in power in the last quarter of the century.

50 years seems like plenty to justify "a long time now"

California has an identical problem to Texas: Local big money industry responsible for a large part of the state's GDP, and ample money to take total control of the local Single Party machine. New York was like this once, possibly still is.

> what the hell is going on with California then??

Only being the 4th or 5th largest economy in the world.

California's own voters did the housing crisis to themselves by passing Prop 13. You can't pin that on any political party.

I don't know who's responsible for the clusterfuck that is PG&E.

Water supply and farmer water rights are another contentious issue. The seeds for that were sown in the late 19th and early 20th century. It's got nothing to do with Democratic domination of state politics today.

Other than expensive housing and electricity, and a sometimes precarious water supply, the state is basically fine. What's this political dysfunction you speak of?

I think we are so far apart on our world view that I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Maybe. I don't follow state politics that closely.

That was executive orders that got shutdown and its because congress controls the purse and they did not pass a law.

Well, the Dems tried but the GOP shut that plan down.

I'm sorry, but what kind of CalvinBall allows this argument to be made in good faith?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...

I had Claude dig through the orders to pick out substantive examples where the courts ultimately allowed the order to go through USAID's dismantlement is the top instance which has an affirmative legal ruling. However unilateral grant freezes, tariffs, and other issues are still progressing in the courts.

While I'd certainly like to return to the world where congress handled the democratic duties of law making, budget, and war declarations. I must acknowledge that we no longer appear to have separation of powers.

That certainly doesn't seem to apply to Trump

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I'm not a big fan of Democrats, but at least they're somewhat trying. Obamacare should have at least had a public option, but they got a big thing done there. Student loan cancellation was done poorly but it was attempted. And each of the last three (at least) Democratic administrations have reduced the deficit, so they've got the fiscal responsibility thing going as well.

Keep in mind that the Senate de facto requires 60 votes to pass almost anything these days. In this millennium, Democrats held enough seats to overcome that for about two months, and there was no margin at all. Hence the lack of a public option: Joe Lieberman didn't want it, and without him the whole thing didn't pass.

I am trying to assume good intent, but this is like a template for when they say "Foreign actors are being paid to sew discord". They always open with "I used to be a big believer in X" about a binary situation but rather than explaining the reason they now believe in Y they return some vague nihilistic viewpoint. Nuts to that. The Democratic Party in the US sucks like an Electrolux and I will still happily vote for them because we are, for better or worse, in a two party system and it's what we've got. Saying it's all the same is misguided at best, a knowing lie at worst.

> Democrats advocate for things like healthcare and cancelling student loans -- never happens.

That's a lie.

> Republicans advocate for fiscal responsibility -- never happens.

Happened under a Democrat.

> As a former staunch Republican, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that both parties have sold us out.

Ahhh, it makes sense now.

> Democrats advocate for things like healthcare and cancelling student loans -- never happens

Obama got Obamacare done in the single 6-month window in this century when Democrats could pass legislation without Republicans blocking them. Biden tried to cancel student loans and was blocked in court because surprise, surprise, Republicans wouldn't allow it to go through Congress.

> The Democrats held the House, Senate, and Presidency in 2021 for two years

Read up on the Senate filibuster to understand why Republicans could block student loan cancellation (and anything else Democrats wanted) despite this.

In theory both parties are part of the same system and complicit and corrupt. In actual practice one party is much worse than the other. By a lot.

Republicans win elections by blocking anything that's good for ordinary Americans, and blaming Democrats for their lives getting worse as a result. Voters are too dumb and distracted to see the con.

> Republicans win elections by blocking anything that's good for ordinary Americans

This. Mitch McConnell literally was on camera, and said, quote, that Republicans would block any bill Obama or the Democrats tried to pass, even if it was good for America and Americans, because the Republican's priority was to make Obama's term ineffectual.

Not to govern the country. But to actively prevent governance of the country. Even at a cost to its people. They didn't care. And they were open enough about it to say it on the record.

* https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromis...

"Democrats advocate for things like healthcare and cancelling student loans -- never happens."

You're blaming Democrats for things they try to do and are blocked by Republicans...

They need to make themselves feel better by believing could not have made a better choice.

It doesn’t matter that federal Democrats enabled the largest wealth transfer in the last 3 decades with ACA, by the smallest of margins. Or that a Democrat president increased the overtime exempt wage from $30k per year to $50k per year. Or that Biden tried to get paid parental leave and paid sick leave, but was thwarted at every turn by a Republican Congress.

The important thing is for the voter to not take accountability for their actions, so “both sides”.

I write this not as a “Democrat” (I despise them on the state and local level), just as someone who has seen Republicans literally only pass tax cuts and reduce women’s access to healthcare in the last 3 decades. Oh, and try to overturn an election and then pardon traitors.

And steal a SCOTUS nomination opportunity.

You can not have a for-profit system and a government subsidized one. It needs to either be single payor, or a free-for-all.

Anytime you have two markets, one will dominate the other. In our case, the subsidized market was forced to pay to play.

> You can not have a for-profit system and a government subsidized one

Have you told Australia? They seem to think they've been able to do this for a while now.

I definitely agree democrats are in general much better than republicans, but I also don't believe those things and many others being blocked can be blamed solely on the Republican party, but it is good PR and optics to make it look that way and I 100% believe many politicians are dealing across the parties to ensure much of the status quo.

Just like how Republicans will go on and on about protecting gun rights, and supporting farms and farmers, but the second those things seriously approach the legislative block and would effect them all or help the average person instead of them or their wealthy donors, all of a sudden there are tons of cold feet and whispers and votes shifting around within both parties so it still doesn't pass in a meaningful form or get diluted down to nothing. That doesn't work if a large portion of the democratic party isn't playing along.

Hell both parties have had a lay-up score on legalizing marijuana for what, 30 years now? The average voter supports it, the average voter of both parties support it, there are multiple ways for it to be addressed by the government by either party, it is sold openly in multiple states in defiance of federal law, we have presidents that openly admit to smoking marijuana. And yet only now are the wheels barely squeaking to maybe reduce its scheduling to a best a highly restricted prescription drug, maybe. Which to me is extremely clear evidence that neither party has an internal majority to support the people over benefiting themselves more exclusively and being corrupt.

> Hell both parties have had a lay-up score on legalizing marijuana for what, 30 years now?

Oh, I see. You’re a “single issue voter.”

> Republicans advocate for fiscal responsibility

The “advocate” only during election cycle and then add more debt and spend more than 10 Democratic Parties combined. Democrats are not great either but they try to push through what they preach

> Democrats advocate for things like healthcare and cancelling student loans -- never happens

Democrats passed the ACA under Obama. Republicans have been trying to get it repealed with only moderate success ever since.

Biden announced student loan forgiveness in 2023. The Supreme Court struck it down in 2023.

Democrats have been able to get done at least some of the things they said they would.

Biden forgave student loans and conservative SCOTUS stopped him. Dems passed ACA and expanded Medicaid and CHIP. Republicans cut them both.

I could go on but I'm sure you know all this. Dems aren't perfect. Nobody ever is and it's unreasonable to expect that. They have pushed legitimate progress. Republicans almost exclusively cause harm to protect the upper class. Retreating into cynicism is just a way to absolve yourself of any civic responsibility.

> Republicans advocate for fiscal responsibility -- never happens. Democrats advocate for things like healthcare and cancelling student loans -- never happens.

From what I've seen, Republicans don't bother trying. Democrats try and get blocked by the GOP; not sure if they can 'try harder' or find ways around the blocking. Biden certainly tried on student loans and got shot down:

* https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/white-house-press-...

After trying to be bi-partisan with the ACA/Obamacare the Democrats just went forward with it

As a libertarian I strongly agree with this in isolation. But your follow up comment (now flagged) is chock full of the standard Republican social media dementia, so this original comment is actually yet another instance of lofty ideals being dishonestly abused to run cover for something even worse.

For all of the actual criticisms that can be levied at them, Democrats aren't the ones throwing our institutions onto the scrap heap, alienating our allies, or cheering on autocracy.

This. Same team, different jerseys.

Two Santas

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/two-santas-str...

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It's almost like we're treated as a resource to be exploited instead of the foundation of a democratic republic.

No, both sides are not equal. Biden tried to cancel student loans.

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