California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers • Hacker News Board

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#81

Post by justinzollars » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:08 PM UTC

I did the math for Mountain View:

Average Home | Downpayment | Finance | Monthly payment (Loan + Insurance + Tax) | Necessary Annual income

$2,140,000.00 | $428,000.00 | $1,712,000.00 | $11,517.00 | $414,612.00

Mix that with high taxes across every category, very high crime, homelessness and extremely poor indebted government providing poor service. The state needs to hit the reset button.

Taxes are already high, and a negative feedback loop has started: capital flight, loss of income, increase taxes, which in turn causes more capital flight. The annual costs of the state are increasing because we must retire the boomer generation and pay for past promises.

I think the best path forward for California is default, and then start over. The current path is not good.

I wish California could compete with Florida and Texas, but it has real structural problems.

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#82

Post by ajmurmann » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:09 PM UTC

neura wrote: post #60

colpabar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Getting rid of it would bring housing costs down. You answered your own question. Housing costs coming down is a good thing for people who need housing, but it's not really a good thing for people who own valuable homes, and people who own valuable homes tend to have much more political power.

I feel that's mostly true, but there may be many other similar factors. If you make "affordable" housing ("for who?" is the correct question), then you have more people that can't afford to spend as much, while pushing out the people that spend more. Someone else stated it simply as "undesirables", which I think is the quick summation of your statement and other similar reasoning. It all comes down to "I get that peo…

Zoning usually gets decided on on a very local level. The people who show up to community meetings tend to be older, white home owners who don't want the value of their home to go down. Fear of "undesirables" of course also likely plays a role and when I've heard it in person, even that gets wrapped in fear of that bringing down home values and schools.

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#83

Post by tjr225 » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:09 PM UTC

smm11 wrote: post #64

The realclear group seems to have a certain slant. And given that California has Silicon Valley, and also the Central Valley that's full of farm-oriented immigrants, of course you're going to have this gigantic disparity in wages. Pick up Silicon Valley and put it in Iowa, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or North Dakota, what would happen then? Have other states stop shipping the destitute to California. What would happe…

Uh, yeah they have a certain slant, lol: https://www.city-journal.org/ivermectin-sparks-yet-another-c...

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#84

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

Maarten88 wrote: post #77

tablespoon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning. People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes. > Ever visit a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan and wonder why we don't have that? It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates! You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of [r…

> People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes. People like living in walkable neighborhoods with public transportation more, as proven by housing prices, but those are mostly illegal to build. Also I think that society is now much more complex than the single family American dream of the past. And the US should wake up to the reality that in their society the poor are subsidizing t…

[deleted]

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#85

Post by rayiner » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

I’m convinced that tax rates on the upper middle class (top 10%) need to be much, much higher. An interesting premise of Modern Monetary Theory is that taxes can and should be used to control inflation, and further that this can be done in a controlled way based on where inflation is occurring. If that is correct, one can reason that inflation for things like housing, education, etc., is caused by taxes being too low—specifically among the folks with high incomes competing for these goods.

More specifically, it appears that taxes are too low on the upper middle class specifically. In my neighborhood near Annapolis, the price of houses has doubled since 2016. We came here because it was a nice place where you could afford a house without being a dual professional household, but that’s increasingly less true. The problem, it seems to me, isn’t billionaires. The house next to mine wasn’t torn down and replaced with a new million dollar home by a billionaire. It was some upper middle class professional. The top 10% has been riding the coattails of the top 0.1% for decades and has significantly pulled away from the median American. Unlike billionaires, which are few in number, this is a large class of people who can use their growing incomes to outbid everyone else for homes, education, etc. At the same time, taxes on these folks are the lowest in the developed world, even lower today than after Reagan’s second round of tax cuts.

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#86

Post by jandrese » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #79

jandrese wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article starts out talking about homelessness, high housing prices, and people leaving the state in droves, but then pivots to pinning the high energy rates on green energy initiatives. California has such a huge housing deficit at this point that people really have no option except to move out. The point where they are losing the population equivalent of 3 mid size cities every year while still maintaining a hou…

> has such a huge housing deficit And, that housing deficit probably won't be filled with anything affordable. Starting 2023, title 24 requires solar panels that cover the full annual energy usage of the home , along with battery storage. But, guess that's a drop in the bucket for CA housing prices.

That only applies to "low rise" buildings, which would never solve the housing crisis anyway. The only direction for Californians to build is up unless they move away from the coast or adopt a subterranean lifestyle.

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#87

Post by TimPC » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #72

arbor_day wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities don't vote, people do. I own a single family home in the Palo Alto. If I wanted to living in a city like Paris, I would. I like it here. I don't care about the price of my house, since I do not plan to sell it this decade. I care a TON about my neighborhood. I love that my neighborhood is quiet, not crowded, and has easy parking. I will vote against any proposals or elected officials who represent me that woul…

Quoted post unavailable.

I used to think most of NIMBY was shallow. Then my city tried to approve four simultaneous development projects in one city block near me. The projects had tower heights of more than double the zoning. The traffic studies ignored all other development in the area and assumed a much higher use of public transit then is reasonable for an area poorly served by public transit. There were numerous other issues. I think many people (including myself) are not opposed to all development and see the need to build condos even in our own areas. We just see the shit we are expected to swallow from developers and want them to do far better.

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#88

Post by ffggvv » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #85

I’m convinced that tax rates on the upper middle class (top 10%) need to be much, much higher. An interesting premise of Modern Monetary Theory is that taxes can and should be used to control inflation, and further that this can be done in a controlled way based on where inflation is occurring. If that is correct, one can reason that inflation for things like housing, education, etc., is caused by taxes being too low…

astounds me people are still referencing MMT when its exactly what got us into this inflation mess in the first place. the tantalizing cancerous idea which will never die

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#89

Post by ffggvv » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:14 PM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #28

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 economi…

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

Re: California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

#90

Post by skrbjc » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 8:14 PM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #28

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 economi…

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.