Their conclusion about density is bullshit, supported by bullshit assertions. Population-Weighted Density is what people experience, not geographic density. Nobody moves out of their 10 acre farmhouse in San Bernadino county because Long Beach is too crowded. Even the Census acknowledges as much. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2012/10/americas-tr... Furthermore, there are plenty of dense cities that are growing more densely as well as in absolute. In fact, the city that is densest (by a factor of 2x), is doing exactly that.
The great California Exodus
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: The great California Exodus
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's California's stupid fault for picking that tax system. It's not like residence-based income taxes were decreed by God as the only way to fund a government.
residence based taxation is a stealth wealth tax. us is illegal wealth tax directly. problem was in 1970s, people bought 10k house on 3k/ye wages. 10 yes later, it was million dollar house. 3k/wages cannot pay taxes on million dollar house. so that is why they passed such a law. otherwise, people would have all had to sell house for capital gains and move out of california in 1970s. This is not justifying system, but…
You will have to excuse me if I don't sympathize with the taxation problems of people who are sitting on unrealized million-dollar capital gains.
Re: The great California Exodus
#43The Manhattan Institute is an explicitly conservative political organisation. That doesn't inherently invalidate any of the conclusions they draw, but readers should be aware that they have been made with a pro-free market, anti-big government mindset. Others may draw quite different conclusions from the same facts.
> The Manhattan Institute is an explicitly conservative political organisation. Are we going to do this for all submissions? Newspapers' leanings, political donations of blog authors...? And if so, would it be reasonable to expect examples of actual bias? Or at least credible sources for that kind of information?
> Are we going to do this for all submissions? Newspapers' leanings, political donations of blog authors...?
Well, this isn't an institution that most people are familiar with. For example, most people know the New York Times is liberal and that the Wall Street Journal is (moderately) conservative. We wouldn't need someone to point that out. But in this case, the OP's information is helpful in analyzing the source for any bias.
Re: The great California Exodus
#44It seems like there are several additional ways one could spin the data in this report. From a selfish standpoint, should I, as a Californian in a booming industry that looks like it will remain a central part of the economy for the forseeable future, be too broken up about a lot of people moving elsewhere for jobs? Should I want the metro area I live in to be seeing double-digit-percentages population growth over de…
It's perfectly fine to live in California as a salaried employee, you're likely not to get screwed. For an entrepreneur, where you might subside 7 years on Ramen noodles to (maybe) have a large windfall during the 8th year, California places an unreasonable penalty on that once-in-a-lifetime event. Therefore from selfish standpoint, if you start a business, grow it fast somewhere else, and then, when growth plateaus,…
This makes about as much sense as someone living in a trailer voting to ensure their own tax rate is higher than a billionaire's, "because I might win the lottery one day".
Re: The great California Exodus
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are also numbers that suggest the more conservative states, such as Texas, are becoming more liberal over time. I would almost wager that Texas, at it's current growth rate, could be a swing state by the 2020 Presidential Election.
What do you mean by becoming more liberal? If anything the white population of texas has become more conservative and solidly republican over time. Until the hispanic population reaches a tipping point texas will be as conservative as any deep southern state. Just based on population data that really won't happen until 2028 at the earliest.
Many people are saying that the Hispanic population could swing the state by 2020. It's not just population data that matters, it's also election engineering. In states like Florida, no one predicted the results that we saw in the recent election because they didn't pay attention to the Obama campaign's Spanish-language get-out-the-vote effort that targeted non-Cuban Hispanics. In Ohio, Obama's victory can be partly attributed to his success in getting the black population to vote at a higher rate than the white population (a highly unusual phenomenon) by using gathering places in black communities, such as barbershops and beauty salons, as local campaign branches. There's much more to the story than raw demographics.
Such efforts didn't exist in Texas this time around because it wouldn't have been enough for this election for Obama to have a chance there. But things could be very different in 2020. Of course, it will also depend upon the two candidates and the general political climate at that time.
Re: The great California Exodus
#46The Manhattan Institute is an explicitly conservative political organisation. That doesn't inherently invalidate any of the conclusions they draw, but readers should be aware that they have been made with a pro-free market, anti-big government mindset. Others may draw quite different conclusions from the same facts.
The article has an agenda to promote low taxes. It casts the net flow of head count out of California as bad. In the Bay Area where I live, I personally see that when people talk of leaving they complain of the cost of living, but that is a consequence of how prosperous the Bay Area is for some industries. If the top destinations include Nevada and Arizona then I imagine we are reading of a migration of retirees as well people in softening industries. It is natural for societies to have premium destinations.
If we had lower taxes like Texas, perhaps more retirees could afford to live here, but I would rather have a state with better infrastructure and better institutions. Why should we have poor state resources because because some can no longer afford to live in an area where their homes are now worth 5x the price of when they bought them? As a parent I want good schools.
Side note: I don't think it is a coincidence that one of the top searches for 'State Tax' is www.retirementliving.com/taxes-by-state, and that the Republican Party (the party of no-taxes-no government-except-for-medicaid) is the party for old people.
Re: The great California Exodus
#47I think this has a lot less to do with taxes than it does with the prices of real estate. Buying a house in California is prohibitively expensive for most people, which eats up a huge amount of everyone's disposable income. In Texas, you make less money, but houses and rent are a factor of 2-4 times cheaper for what you get.
I think there are two main reasons for this: proposition 13 and CEQA. Prop 13 keeps property taxes really low, which makes buying and holding onto single-family homes really cheap. This is a giant subsidy for people who have lived in California for a while, but jacks up the prices for everyone else who gets in after them, since low ownership costs translate to high upfront prices.
The California Environmental Quality Act has a different effect that also raises housing prices: empowering NIMBYs. Because any new development can be pretty easily be slowed down/made more expensive/stopped altogether by a bogus CEQA request, new housing isn't getting built in nearly as much as one would expect given the demand. This makes existing housing more valuable, which increases prices even more.
In addition, some municipalities, notably San Francisco, have an insanely regulated rental market that makes renting incredibly difficult for a landlord, which makes it more attractive for people to buy housing instead of rent. This means there's less rental housing to go around, which makes the rent in SF absolutely insane.
Re: The great California Exodus
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
residence based taxation is a stealth wealth tax. us is illegal wealth tax directly. problem was in 1970s, people bought 10k house on 3k/ye wages. 10 yes later, it was million dollar house. 3k/wages cannot pay taxes on million dollar house. so that is why they passed such a law. otherwise, people would have all had to sell house for capital gains and move out of california in 1970s. This is not justifying system, but…
You will have to excuse me if I don't sympathize with the taxation problems of people who are sitting on unrealized million-dollar capital gains.
The politicians were showing sympathy with the grandma on social security liing in her house she bough in 1940 with no plumbing, etc. It was not her fault NASA moved in next door to send men to the moon, etc. That, at least was the context. I don't have sympathy for entitled people either, particulalrly those we are talking about who "developed" and paved over CA with freeways. But before them was a genration of home-steaders, who had no income because they were modest people. They took a lot more risk and invested a lot of sweat equity to make CA a better plave to libe, so perhaps worth showing them some respect...etc. or not YMMV.
Re: The great California Exodus
#49This exodus is occurring in Illinois as well (shown). Both states share similar budget problems along with predictable leadership responses -- higher taxes and reduced services. What Illinois needs is genuine growth and that doesn't happen overnight. In the meantime, people get fed up and leave -- unless they have to sell their home or business.
I would disagree with your assertion that "growth" is what's needed.
The problems we're seeing, in many places, are the result of pursuing "growth" -- some seemingly-smart people show up and say that if only the local government will provide, up-front, a bunch of infrastructure and tax breaks right now, it'll all be made up in "growth" from businesses and people moving in and creating jobs and wealth.
Of course, what actually happens is the businesses and people move in, take advantage of everything provided, and then scream bloody murder about "expropriation" and move away when finally presented with the bill for all the services and breaks that enabled that "growth".
What is needed is a responsible expression of some kind of actual social contract, with obligations and benefits for both sides. But good luck rallying support for that on HN, where short-term lottery-syndrome has everyone blinded.
Re: The great California Exodus
#50At the high end of moving out (rich people), California is unappealing because it's budgetfucked. Education, transportation, public services, and everything else will suffer for a long time. This leads to their crazy high state income tax and crazy high sales taxes and municipalities doing insane additional taxes for businesses on top of everything else. The Bay Area may be the best place to create Show Me Your Food…
"In other words, the highest-income Californians were less likely to leave the state after the millionaire tax was passed." http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/working_papers/Va... By the way, the reason the state is "budgetfucked" as you eloquently put it is because of low taxes, not high taxes. You may be interested in reading about Proposition 13, a scheme under which people who are sitting on massively val…
>By the way, the reason the state is "budgetfucked" as you eloquently put it is because of low taxes, not high taxes.
This is utter nonsense. California has both a high income tax and a high sales tax, and while property tax rates are low, property prices are high. Where I live you can pay seven figures for a tract home.
Tax receipts in the state are quite healthy - the problem is on the spending side, specifically a large and grossly overpaid bureaucracy.