
California Is Deteriorating into a Feudal Society of Inherited Land Wealth - SQL2219
https://slate.com/business/2018/08/californias-proposition-58-has-created-a-whole-lot-of-second-homes-and-rental-properties.html
======
raincom
Props like 13 and 58 were passed in the name of poor grannies; when we look at
differential benefits, it is actually rich grannies who end up benefiting 10
folds better than a grannie living in San Bernardino county.

This has parallels in other laws: in the name of terrorism, many laws were
passed to spy on everyone—ranging from anti money laundering, know your
customer, enhanced due diligence, forcing private companies to be active
partners in spying.

One way to kill the beast is by partial repeal of commercial properties. Apple
claimed its real estate value’s worth is $200.

~~~
djrogers
> One way to kill the beast is by partial repeal of commercial properties.
> Apple claimed its real estate value’s worth is $200.

That has nothing to do with Prop 58 - it’s accounting rules and depreciation
there...

~~~
manfredo
Could the government use this as a basis to purchase this property for $200
via eminent domain?

~~~
godzillabrennus
Sure. Then Apple would use its money to replace the government. They’d end up
with a $2B payday from the government and their land back when the new regime
took power.

------
djrogers
FTA: “All in all, the state preserves old assessments on 60,000 to 80,000
inherited properties each year”

There are roughly 13 Million homes in California. It sounds like this is a
fairly small problem to be evidence of a ‘feudal society’. Am I missing
something?

“or 2.5 percent of total statewide property tax revenue”

Oh, nope - not missing anything. It is a small problem.

Overheated rhetoric like this article title is extremely unhelpful if your
goal is to actually solve small problems. Then again if your goal is to
inflame classist tendencies and generate clicks, I guess it’ll do just fine.

~~~
yodon
The whole point is it's not about the individual home owners. It's about the
trusts and businesses that own huge amounts of property and which pay
easentially zero property tax because they were covered under prop 13.

------
fuzzfactor
Well, California's been in the United States a lot longer than any of us.

Back when it was in Mexico an interesting thing about the land grants is that
they could be thought of as deliverance from poverty or toward wealth
depending on your point of view or actual outcomes.

As a certain amount of wealth or poverty has always been ordained by the
ultimate taxing entity whose original claim to authority traces back to
discovery of undocumented territory, often including a large component of
violent conquest.

Then with the march of time you progress through subsequent entities and add
layers of middlemen much more reliably by purchases and dealmaking rather than
violence, but the iron fist is never completely off the table.

When taxpaying subjects are traded between jurisdictions the prevailing party
can profit handsomely from that point onward with only a small margin added to
the perpetual cost for the occupant to remain, or the newcomer to arrive.

Seems to me that's where the exponential growth in non-productive occupancy
costs begins, which will always be devastating eventually. And the day of
reckoning is accelerated or delayed based on the greed or benevolence of each
successive regime. With accompanying incompetence or deception being deducted
wholesale from any benevolence, and directly augmenting the damage resulting
from the greed factor.

It would have been good if the quaint 20th century propositions had been
crafted to excuse all California citizens from the risk of eventual property
seizure. Shameful that the politicians were not of adequate caliber. At least
they were able to protect their most valuable citizens, the ones who paid to
persuade the voters.

My question is when exactly was California improved beyond a feudal society of
inherited land wealth anyway?

Documentation please . . .

------
google_censors
Something I find interesting is that so many states that are heavily democrat
have such high income inequality. I've always hoped that states like
Massachusetts, California and New York would do more to help the poor
considering that they seem to have enough voter support to do that.

[https://www.axios.com/income-inequality-blue-red-
districts-6...](https://www.axios.com/income-inequality-blue-red-
districts-641c4e96-327c-4237-91a5-6613ad80cff5.html)

~~~
JBlue42
We do. We send our tax dollars to help support the impoverished red states.
;-)

~~~
dang
Tossing political flamebait into HN threads like this is vandalism. So is
perpetuating the flamewar after you started it.

We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, regardless of which color the flames
burn. Please don't do this again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
JBlue42
How was the parent comment not similar?

How is anything politically-related on this forum, supposedly for discussion
of startups, not in some way inflammatory? What about the post itself? Not to
mention that I and another user backed up my (yes, off-the-cuff) comment with
references? I don't see how that 'perpetuates a flamewar'?

Vandalism is a rather strong word.

Feel free to ban this account. I can always make another if I decide there's
any discussions worth participating in.

