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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?

#681

Post by pandaman »

RangerScience wrote: post #643
axaxs wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely sympathize with you, if this were a true story. Believe it or not, I'm not a registered Republican, after all. To be fair, I've never heard of conservative folks overtaking a liberal city, only vice versa. If you have a true story to share, I'd love to hear it. Instead, it feels like you're just reversing everything I said for argument's sake.

Reasonable. It's anecdotal, and no, none have been "taken over". What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place. The few examples that come the most to mind are what "Keep Venice Weird" is reacting to, and the lament…

>What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place.

Why would you think so? For example California used to be if not a Red State then a heavily leaning Republican: since 1880 until 2000 it has not voted for a Democratic president who has not also won the national election (and the 1880 election was extremely close). In the same time period it voted for a Republican candidate who lost the election multiple times (e.g. it voted against JFK and Carter).

Do you really believe that California had not been desirable before it started voting exclusively D (in 1992 the earliest)? I had not been living in the US at the time but judging by the popular culture it does not seem to be the case.

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

#682

Post by mbesto »

kelnos wrote: post #390
standardUser wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway from a visit to Austin a few years ago: "Everything seems so liberal, except for all of these massive pickup trucks that keep trying to run me over!"

To be fair, in CA it's massive SUVs that keep trying to run me over.

Or Prius's.

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

#683

Post by harimau777 »

asdff wrote: post #597
harimau777 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets built next to someone's home can affect their quality of life (e.g. due to noise, pollution, increased traffic, blocking sunlight, blocking views, etc.). So I don't see why they shouldn't have a say. It's no different than any other negative externality.

If you want to preserve your sun, traffic, views, whatever, you are free to buy it. Nothing is stopping you from buying your entire neighborhood and leasing to your neighbors, other than your lack of capital. Why should you get something for free that has nothing to do with what you paid for, the parcel and the air 30 feet above it?

It has everything to do with what you paid for. The environment around a home effects the home itself.

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

#684

Post by harimau777 »

GhettoChild wrote: post #270
harimau777 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets built next to someone's home can affect their quality of life (e.g. due to noise, pollution, increased traffic, blocking sunlight, blocking views, etc.). So I don't see why they shouldn't have a say. It's no different than any other negative externality.

Now that I live in Houston which does not have zoning in the typical sense I prefer that things get done ASAP instead of people arguing for years for the right to build more housing on a lot that they already own. This contributes to the obscenely high cost of living in certain parts of the country.

In my experience (granted I only lived in Houston for about three months during an internship), the lack of planning makes the city a nightmare to get around. I always considered Houston an example of what not to do.

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

#685

Post by RangerScience »

pandaman wrote: post #681
RangerScience wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonable. It's anecdotal, and no, none have been "taken over". What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place. The few examples that come the most to mind are what "Keep Venice Weird" is reacting to, and the lament…

>What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place. Why would you think so? For example California used to be if not a Red State then a heavily leaning Republican: since 1880 until 2000 it has not voted for a Democratic…

> Why would you think so?

Well asked! I've been trying to understand why I do.

I think it comes to this: Good places to live come from encouraging and empowering people to make those places their own, as communities.

What it means to be a democrat or a republican changes from place and decade to decade. What is effective in actualizing that community participation then also changes as a place changes over time (ironically, that's also why it's important to have that community participation).

AFAIK, the Republican party _used_ to stand for small, decentralized government; now they stand for ineffective and centralized government (despite the talking points).

I'm less clear on what the Democrats "used to be" (except racist, way back in the day), except that in this era and in these places, community participation is hampered by unaffordable housing, unaffordable and/or inaccessible healthcare, and a lack of living wages.

I know I haven't fully answered your question, but I've been at this for far too long. Thanks for asking so effectively!

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

#686

Post by pandaman »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #440
Izkata wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second one, as far as I'm aware (not from California): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

Prop 47 is a ridiculous red herring. It raised the threshold for felony [whatever] to $950. To my knowledge that threshold hadn't changed in my lifetime, which is to say that the intent of the original statutes was that there should be a significant barrier to a felony charge. Meanwhile a misdemeanor can be punished by up to 364 days in jail. However police are generally unwilling to enforce misdemeanor statutes. A c…

Not enough information about your vandal to speculate on his or her motives but there are reports of gangs of shoplifters raiding shops and taking less than $950 worth of goods each e.g. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/14/shoplifting-cal...

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

#687

Post by pandaman »

RangerScience wrote: post #685
pandaman wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What I'm predominantly responding to is this weird way people seem to look at these liberal cities and go "oh, they've succeeded in spite of their liberalness" instead of those being part of why they became desirable places to live in the first place. Why would you think so? For example California used to be if not a Red State then a heavily leaning Republican: since 1880 until 2000 it has not voted for a Democratic…

> Why would you think so? Well asked! I've been trying to understand why I do. I think it comes to this: Good places to live come from encouraging and empowering people to make those places their own, as communities. What it means to be a democrat or a republican changes from place and decade to decade. What is effective in actualizing that community participation then also changes as a place changes over time (ironi…

If you think it's just the parties that have changed, then how about actual policies? Prop 187 has been passed in 1994 with 59% majority, can you imagine anything like that happening in California nowadays? No matter how you see DNC and GOP of 1990s, you surely can see that the California's attitude towards illegal immigrants has completely reversed now.

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

#688

Post by milesskorpen »

dragonwriter wrote: post #588
milesskorpen wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ranked choice voting isn't what's stopping a third party. Majority-wins / first-past-the-post is. There's ranked choice voting in San Francisco, and there's not a new party.

> Ranked choice voting isn't what's stopping a third party. Majority-wins / first-past-the-post is. Uh, ranked choice / IRV is a different system than majority / FPTP. Having the former means not having the latter (for any given office.) But state and federal offices don't use RCV, and local offices are formally nonpartisan, so there are no partisan offices that SF's use of RCV effects.

Maybe I used the wrong terminology. More specifically, I think our issue is with winner-take-all, rather than proportional representation (see: all(?) parliamentary systems).

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

#689

Post by inferiorhuman »

davidw wrote: post #233
harimau777 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, then I think it would be reasonable to criticize them. Although, it still seems to me that it wouldn't hurt to put something in the law that specifically says that they won't build giant tower blocks.

The more you read about this stuff, you realize that there's some real ugliness there - now and in the past. Maybe not everyone, but it goes well beyond the original intent of zoning to keep housing away from factories and tanneries and such. https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/25/a-century-of-exclusion-... Of course, in places like San Francisco and Portland, people are mostly smart enough to not "say the quiet part o…

Long form piece about racist housing policies in San Francisco:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90242388/the-bad-design-that-cre...

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

#690

Post by qqqwerty »

syshum wrote: post #646
qqqwerty wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13, one of the major factors in the CA housing crisis, was a Republican led initiative passed in 1978. This may come as a surprise to you, but CA was Republican leaning until fairly recently (remember Arnold Schwarzenegger?). A lot of the factors that are contributing to the current housing crisis were established long before CA turned solidly blue.

In what possible way does having a Cap on property taxes, and requiring 2/3 majority to increase taxes cause a Housing Crisis? >>but CA was Republican leaning until fairly recently (remember Arnold Schwarzenegger?). Arnold Schwarzenegger was a RINO, Around here we would call him a Democrat, California Democrats are the extreme of the extreme Left. So anyone Right of Stalin is a Republican in California. Further since…

It is a complicated issue and there were number of unintended consequences. But the main one is that long time property owners (NIMBYs) are insulated from (if not down right incentivized to support) anti-development measures. Because their property tax rates were frozen at time of purchase, they do not feel the impact of rising property prices. It also has a chilling effect on housing 'liquidity', because moving out of your existing home to upsize/downsize would mean you loose your preferential tax treatment.

I added a link below that goes into some of the other issues that it created [1]. And in case you think I am trying to blame Republicans for the housing crisis, I am not. Local politics rarely align cleanly with national partisan fault lines. In California, the NIMBYs tend to be more conservative and have aligned themselves with liberal anti-gentrification and anti-development environmentalists. And the liberal leaning millennials (who are heavily impacted by the housing crisis) are aligned with right leaning pro-development groups.

Regarding your RINO comment. I think this link is relevant [2]. The current Republican party would be considered extremely right wing in any other time or in any other first world country. Universal Healthcare receives bipartisan support in every advanced economy in the world other than the US. ObamaCare, the 'radical socialist left wing policy', was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation[3]. And Universal Basic Income was originally proposed by none other than Milton Friedman, the champion of free market economics[4]. So these 'socialists' that you deride aren't socialist at all, but rather centrist democrats pushing center-right policies.

[1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11700683/too-few-homes-is-proposit... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-republican-party-ha... [3] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/apr... [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-19/univer...

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