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One of the problems is that cities like Palo Alto have 3-4 jobs per housing unit. The Bay Area has a lot of buildable land, in the heart, but anyone can block any development for nonsense reasons. This article explains the lack of development well.
Same thing happens in the Chicago area. The Metra (mass transit rail) system has lines going in all directions North, South, and West of the lake, and are heavily used.
Bay Area transit is heavily used but we don't have job centers. It us not hub and spoke like Chicago or NYC. Those Silicon Valley giants are in office parks 3 miles from the nearest train station. And they aren't by the same train station. Transit isn't feasible for most because it doesn't connect. I live in Oakland, around 40 miles north of Palo Alto. A neighbor takes transit to PA. Her commute? 1 bus to SF, 30 minutes. A 10 minute bike ride to the train. 45 minute train ride (and this train doesn't run often on a nice predictable cadence.). 15 minute bike ride to her office. So that is 2 hours each way. If she misses the train, she either has to wait 30+ minutes for another express train or take a local train that takes over an hour. In the evenings, after about 6:30 the train runs hourly.
I can't actually work in "Silicon Valley". The drive is around 90 minutes. So I only look at jobs in Oakland or SF. My rent is cheap because I have rent control. If I wanted to move into my place at current prices my rent would double. Rents in Oakland have increased 50% (or more) in the past 3 years, since it was more affordable. This is pushing out other people into places 30 miles from Oakland where they endure 4+ hour commutes.
At the end of the day, it's a personal decision. People can stop being scared and come move to STL or some other spot in the Midwest. Not everyone gets to live on the beach like a king. That's life. You got to deal with it. Don't ask someone to pay so that you can live like a King. That's crazy.
At the end of the day, it's a personal decision. People can stop being scared and come move to STL or some other spot in the Midwest. Not everyone gets to live on the beach like a king. That's life. You got to deal with it. Don't ask someone to pay so that you can live like a King. That's crazy.
That's the thing. If this were to pass you would not be living like a king. More like in a basic 2 bedroom condo. Housing stock in the Bay Area is mostly 50-60s ranch homes. Not exactly the lap of luxury. Some spots add some Craftsmans and Victorians. But it is mostly Brady Bunch looking suburbia.w
That real estate agent makes my skin crawl, especially at the end of the video.
My heart hurts for that lady who has to get up at 5:00 AM every morning and has a 4 hour commute back home at night where she doesn't get home until 8:00 PM. What kind of a life is that?
I am shocked that UC Berkeley is predicting that the exodus from California isn't even halfway over yet. I knew it was bad but I didn't know it was that bad.
But the worst part of the situation is all the homes snapped up by Chinese investors that just sit empty. Meanwhile, people who grew up there are being displaced and forced to leave. There is something seriously, seriously disturbing about that.
I grew up in Bay, but my family got priced out awhile ago! My parents moved to the south for early retirement, unfortunately it was bad timing (not that I understood any of that as a young kid), it was right when housing prices crashed in CA in the early 90s. My family moved back before the dotcom boom, but things were escalating again price wise. My parents ended up moving to far out places - they had no need to be central to Silicon Valley or any other job center. My dad was a career mortgage broker and saw much of the change in the housing market from the 70s to now. He focused on first time and veteran buyer programs. Now they live in a rural city in the Central Valley - 90 miles away from Silicon Valley. And some of their neighbors make similar commutes to the woman pictured from the east.
Getting a home in the Bay Area is not for people who are trading up or have tons of family resources to pull from. Being well paid is nowhere near enough to get in. There are to many cash buyers, in all neighborhoods. There are tiny pockets of affordability that come with significant compromise - average buyers can pick one of three:
1. location / commute time
2. safety / crime levels
3. school quality
At the same time, 77 percent of the benefits from the mortgage interest deduction went to homeowners with incomes above $100,000, almost none of whom face severe housing cost burdens. Some 35 percent of the benefits went to homeowners with incomes above $200,000; taxpayers in this income group who claimed the deduction received an average subsidy of about $5,000.
So... explain the top 1%'s SIGNIFICANTLY higher total effective federal tax rate. Where are all the supposed "tax breaks" ignorant people keep insisting they're getting, and why haven't those "tax breaks" lowered the top 1%'s total effective federal tax rate to what the top 95-99% is paying?
Quote:
Originally Posted by InformedConsent
...why do we see such a HUGE disparity in effective total federal tax rates? Why are the top 1% paying an effective total federal tax rate of 33.4%, but the effective rate of the top 95-99% takes a HUGE drop to 23.8%?
Total effective federal tax rates, including payroll taxes, etc.:
" *Individual income tax rates for the lowest and second lowest quintiles are negative and are netted against the payroll tax rate. A quintile is one fifth of the population."
That's not a subsidy. It's a reduction in taxes. There is a huge difference.
Forget trying to talk sense. You're arguing with people whose mindset is that the government owns everyone's income and they just let people keep some of it.
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