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Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

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Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#391

Post by jorblumesea »

bronco21016 wrote: post #250
smsm42 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Petty crime is increasing, and state laws are only enabling this - people are sick of it. I wonder if people considered voting the politicians who made these laws out. Judging from CA voting patterns, probably not. And then when it gets really bad, they move to another state and likely vote for the same policies that caused them to move in the first place.

I first heard of this phenomenon the other day from a coworker that lives south of Atlanta, near the major movie/tv production area. People, from what are typically blue areas, are moving in and radically changing the political landscape according to him. He wasn’t necessarily against liberal ideas but his complaint was that they seem to vote for taxes just for the hell of it because every tax proposed is still signi…

But that's not what the data shows. People from blue states are moving to blue cities in red states. Left leaning people are moving to similarly left leaning areas. Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, when was the last time these were Republican bastions? Look at the areas experiencing huge population growth. Texas might be red but the populations centers haven't been for years.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#392

Post by xyzzyz »

andrewprock wrote: post #325
xyzzyz wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 has effectively created a vicious cycle of escalating property values. Sure, but without any numbers, this is simply a just-so story. House prices in Seattle metro have shot through the roof in past 5-6 years, despite Seattle not having Prop 13 law. If house prices can demonstrably go up a lot in a place with no Prop 13-like law, but otherwise rather similar to California when it comes to attitudes towards wh…

I don't know what you mean by a "just-so" story. Can you expand on that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

Humans are really good at crafting narratives explaining complex and uncertain reality. However, just because something sounds superficialy plausible, doesn't mean it is true: it is usually easy to craft an alternative theory, just as plausible as the one at hand.

For example, the narrative of Prop 13 being the root of all California's housing problem very much depends on exactly how much it affects the decision making. It could be a lot, it could be a little, but without knowing exactly (or at least approximately), we're simply in the dark. Maybe it's not Prop 13, but environmental activists running amok? Maybe it's a cartel in the construction industry colluding to keep the construction prices up? Without putting numbers on these, you can't tell which of these has significant impact, and which is irrelevant.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#393

Post by harryh »

xyzzyz wrote: post #313
andrewprock wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 reduces the supply of housing massively. The carrying cost for any property that was bought more than 20 years ago is negligible. This reduces the incentive to sell when you no longer need the property. This in turn raises prices by reducing supply. This likewise reduces the incentive to sell. As prices go up, the incentive to allow new construction also goes down. Prop 13 has effectively created a vicious cy…

Prop 13 has effectively created a vicious cycle of escalating property values. Sure, but without any numbers, this is simply a just-so story. House prices in Seattle metro have shot through the roof in past 5-6 years, despite Seattle not having Prop 13 law. If house prices can demonstrably go up a lot in a place with no Prop 13-like law, but otherwise rather similar to California when it comes to attitudes towards wh…

Seattle has certainly had historical NIMBY problems, but is finally undergoing a building boom and it's having a noticeable effect on prices.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-re...

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#394

Post by jvanderbot »

ericfrenkiel wrote: post #389
yongjik wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would actually work in favor of Republican-inclined voters, though not necessarily the party itself. By allowing anyone to vote, Democrat candidates are incentivized to be more moderate, because a vote from a Republican is as good as another from a Democrat. Without open primaries, a Democratic-only primary pretty much decides the winner, and a candidate only has to appeal to fellow Democrats.

Yeah, no. Reality doesn’t bear out with your theory.

IMHO because R's instantly become disenfranchised. Only if voting were compulsory would it work as prev suggested, and thats not realistic.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#395

Post by triceratops »

kelnos wrote: post #368
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are paid on the sale price. It is not a punitive tax to fund new entrants. An example: Consider a 75 year old senior couple on fixed retirement income living in their fully paid 40 year old home. They paid the 300k mortgage and the house is worth 1 million.They raised their kids who attended public schools for 12 years each. Property taxes are used for public school education. 45% of California budget…

> Property taxes are paid on the sale price. No, property taxes are paid on the assessed value, and assessments don't just happen at sale time. Only CA has this weird freeze-taxes-at-time-of-sale thing. > It is not a punitive tax to fund new entrants. No one is claiming it is. Hell, it isn't great even for homeowners who are "protected" by Prop 13, because if they want to move (say a widow/widower whose kids have mov…

> because their new property -- even if it's smaller! -- will destroy them with higher property taxes.

Nope. Prop 13 allows transferring assessed value of the old house to the new house if it's in the same county. Even inter-county if the new county allows it. The assessed value is also preserved when the property is inherited by children and grandchildren. The number of carve-outs it has to favor incumbent landowners is pure insanity.[1]

EDIT: These were allowed to die in December, 2018.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13...

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#396

Post by imroot »

Florida's upsides: No Sales Tax. If you're not looking for waterfront, housing is super affordable. Amazing place if you're single.

Florida's Downsides: Homeless are more aggressive than in SF. Florida Man. Frequently 10% sales tax in most places due to lack of income tax. Higher property taxes if you're in a really progressive area. You're swapping out earthquakes for hurricanes. A lot of "Keeping up with the Jones'" mentality here. Not a great place for tech.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#397

Post by gen220 »

GhettoChild wrote: post #190
mbesto wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - Austin is as blue as they come (and way less of the neoliberalism you see in SV). Houston from what I can tell has become much more liberal too (partly because a large influx of Katrina refugees). Hot take - with all of the migration to Texas, this state will be blue in the next 10 years. The only "conservative" things you find in those areas is (1) big trucks (2) guns (3) tobacco (4) sports. Not much different…

I actually used to live in rural California and now live in Texas and I found Rural Californians to be MUCH more conservative than your average Texan just that Texans love to over compensate a lot.

Grew up in California, know a bunch of people from Texas.

I think even suburban California culture is much more similar to Texas culture than it is to SV culture.

It makes sense. There’s a lot of shared history: Central American cultural influence/heritage, long history of intense and local economic booms and busts (Oil in SoCal and Texas, gold in NorCal), fiercely independent political history. It’s produced an interesting mix of conservative and progressive ideas. The only thing that California has that’s unique on top of that base mindset is environmental conservatism; because California is jaw droppingly gorgeous and Texas isn’t.

Totally agree with the point others have made, that Texas is a lot more blue than its gerrymandered districts let on. Similarly, California is much more “red” outside of the urban bubbles. They’ve a lot more in common than cultural memes would lead you to believe.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#398

Post by joshuamorton »

davidw wrote: post #236
sgustard wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article argues that segregation is prevalent in Houston. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/...

I don't doubt it. And at a statewide level, you'd have to look at news like the small-minded governor excluding legal refugees (something that other very red states like Utah haven't done). But look up San Francisco's racial makeup vs Houston's and... you can make the case that there's at least a place in the same city for a lot more people in Houston.

> But look up San Francisco's racial makeup vs Houston's and

They're practically the same if you swap the black and asian populations. This makes a lot of sense: Asian immigrant populations came from the west coast, usually SF. Black populations started in the southeast, and its much easier to migrate from Mississippi to Texas than Mississippi to San Francisco.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#399

Post by selimthegrim »

NoRagrets wrote: post #335
sjg007 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally property taxes are paid based on assessed value. Assessed value is a function of market value that is determined recent neighborhood/comparable sales. The problem with Prop 13 is that it doesn't allow for the taxes to capture increased market value.

Why should taxes capture market value? That’s surrender to the state to keep taxing us. To ask for higher taxation is asking for the state to take care of individual expenses through redistribution of wealth. Other states don’t offer as many services as California which is practically a nanny state. The young people are expecting the state to do the grabbing so they can be taken care by the state. This is mostly due…

All these seniors that paid their dues paid how much in UC fees/"tuition"? And now they want to tell this generation to pay when they didn't? Isn't that called pulling up the ladder behind them?

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#400

Post by kelnos »

GhettoChild wrote: post #275
chiph wrote: post #179

If you want to explore this exodus yourself, one of the things you can do is use the uhaul.com website. They have dynamic pricing based on availability and demand. At the current time, renting a 26' truck to move one-way from Mountain View CA to Dallas TX will cost you $4,230. But driving the opposite direction will only cost you $846.

At those prices one is better off just buying a trailer and keeping it.

Hell, I wonder if you could buy a used 26' truck in Mountain View, do the move, and sell it in Dallas for more than $4,230 less than you paid for it.
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