581–590 of 622 posts
HP and Oracle don’t exactly represent the heart of Silicon Valley today and what makes it special/unique. I actually think zombie corporations like Oracle, companies that haven’t innovated in decades and instead rely on an army of sales people to sell legacy software, are somewhat the antithesis of Silicon Valley which is really about real technological innovation and disruption at it’s core. I know there are lots of…
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Prop 13 allows the tax rate to be inherited. Fixing this loophole will be a simple first step for fairness.
> Prop 13 allows the tax rate to be inherited. No, it allows transfer of property to certain relatives without full-value reassessment. Rates aren't any different than anyone else in the same jurisdiction pays, it's the assessment that is the issue.
HP and Oracle don’t exactly represent the heart of Silicon Valley today and what makes it special/unique. I actually think zombie corporations like Oracle, companies that haven’t innovated in decades and instead rely on an army of sales people to sell legacy software, are somewhat the antithesis of Silicon Valley which is really about real technological innovation and disruption at it’s core. I know there are lots of…
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I think they said “the environment”. Whether that’s important to you is - as always - completely up to you in this country. I don’t understand the animosity between different states; we can all go wherever we fit best and that’s a great thing. Nothing wrong with wanting a big house, but also nothing wrong or coercive with mentioning it has environmental impacts
Well, the USA was supposed to be a union of states where they could more or less govern as they see fit based on their own ideology but come together when they need to. But unfortunately the Federal government has gotten involved in far too many things that should have been left up to the states and so there isn't as much diversity or tolerance for other ways of life anymore.
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> Imagine property tax is 0. Why would anyone ever sell? All the land would effectively be owned by hereditary feudal lords. You'd sell for the usual reason, i.e. you'd prefer having money rather than that particular piece of land? That money would be then spent on either consumption or an investment with higher yield than land-holding. In my home country Poland the land tax is negligible and yet the market for land…
Your home country Poland is primarily agricultural - at least compared to the BA - and has much lower demand for housing. I suspect if you pick apart of the BA housing market you'll see some very large landlords with huge property portfolios. While they're not literally "feudal lords" they might as well be in terms of their self-serving influence on housing policy. Perhaps not coincidentally, some of them are FAANGs.…
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Net positive only if your measure for success is “able to buy more widgets for less money”
Plenty of other criteria on which it is a positive. Raising millions out of poverty. More people working on hard problems. As to the latter criterion: consider the symbolism of Aricebo collapsing in an uncontrolled fashion on the same day a Chinese spacecraft departed te moon (and a Japanese one prepared to deliver its second sample of an extraterrestrial sample). When the Bush administration restricted stem cell res…
Though, I personally don't think these companies moving to Texas matters that much, but if there was a mass migration it could certainly shake things up in ways that some may appreciate and some dislike.
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> I actually think zombie corporations like Oracle, companies that haven’t innovated in decades and instead rely on an army of sales people to sell legacy software. Those army of sales people are probably now selling you the latest and greatest in vendor lock-in on behalf of AWS [0] and GCP [1]. There is no escaping the sales army :) [0] https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/aws-takes-aim-at-oracle-by-hi... [1] https://www.…
Are you suggesting Oracle wasn't a vendor lock in ploy from the start? I feel like they've just gone from one vendor lock-in to another.
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The political climate in California is astonishingly toxic and disconnected from the realities of the market. I for one cannot wait to leave this place for greener pastures. California's answer to everything is raise taxes. And everyone cheers. And nothing gets fixed.
> California's answer to everything is raise taxes. Really? It's almost the end of 2020 and California hasn't passed a single tax increase. Let's look at 2020 ballot measures: * Requires commercial and industrial properties to be taxed based on market value and dedicates revenue? REJECTED Source: https://ballotpedia.org/California_2020_ballot_propositions And legislation? * AB 2088 - Wealth Tax? REJECTED * AB 1253 -…
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Makes gaming the system harder. Once you're rich enough you could only take compensation every other (3rd/5th/etc) year and pay property tax only then. Unlike compensation once the property tax year's gone it's gone, there's no deferring situation (eg, vis a vis deferring comp where the big chunk in later years would still be taxed) It's not an unusual situation in urban CA for an elderly person to have bought a hous…
"Once you're rich enough..." Which means you had to recieve that money at some point and it would have been taxed. I'm sure rich people can avoid or find a way to deduct property taxes anyways. For example, setting up an anonymous Wyoming LLC or some form of trust. It sounds like the system you are describing for the elderly is specific to CA.
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I totally agree and I think property taxes are way more fair and equitable for a society than income taxes. Usually we tax behaviors we want to curb. Income taxes disincentivize people from earning more, whereas property taxes are a consumption tax. In my mind this makes way more sense, and there's good data to suggest property taxes are the best/most efficient way to gain needed revenue for a city but do the least "…
How do income taxes disincentivize people from earning more? It's always better to make more money than to make less, even if you're paying a percentage of it to the government (or whomever).