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Right, and this is completely screwed up. The fact that it ended up biting some "homesteaders" in the ass due to property value declines is nothing more than sweet justice.
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And how often does that happen ?
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This can be achieved more fairly through a revenue-neutral property tax collection scheme.
The bottom line is, in a state system when you keep someone's taxes artificially low, someone ELSE has to make up for it.
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Originally Posted by le roi
Good post, and this really sums up the "blame the boomers" argument at the national level. They spent much their social security contributions on dividend tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, and capital gains tax cuts.
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Originally Posted by le roi
I have nothing against homeownership, what I have something against is a tyrannical majority legislating that everyone else make up their share of the tax burden.
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Prop 13 has nothing to do with lowering tax revenue as a whole. It simply shifts the burden away from certain taxpayers.
I especially like the "tyrannical majority" label. Very amusing. Please try and educate yourself about how property taxes are levied for the state before you comment. Either you live in California and don't own property OR you live in another state altogether because if you lived in California and owned a house, you would know exactly how Prop 13 works.
This thread isn't about Prop 13 anyway and it's gotten so far off the track of the original post about boomers ruining their children's future as so many of these types of threads do.
i assume if you had something of value to say to me you would've spit it out already. you've already demonstrated you have consumed the kool-aid regarding prop 13.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the lone dissenter on the court when it upheld Prop. 13 in 1992, called California’s pre-Prop. 13 landowning class “the Squires” whose tax advantages are “a privilege of a medieval character.”
i assume if you had something of value to say to me you would've spit it out already. you've already demonstrated you have consumed the kool-aid regarding prop 13.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the lone dissenter on the court when it upheld Prop. 13 in 1992, called California’s pre-Prop. 13 landowning class “the Squires” whose tax advantages are “a privilege of a medieval character.”
I won't take your word for it and although the article is interesting, it's three years old and it touches only on homes in the bay area and more expensive areas of California.
I don't recall finding anything in the article that mentions how high the taxes climb when the property is sold. Sure, there are some that stay in their homes for decades. They plant their feet in and they stay put. And why not? It's their dream home, they probably spent several years "buying up" so that one day they would be in a place where they could spend the rest of their days.
That isn't the case for the majority of Californians, though. If it was, there wouldn't be rich realtors.
As for the property tax rates, everyone in California that owed a home prior to the bubble and was paying a higher rate should have seen their rate go down through a re-assessment. If they didn't they were either quite lucky their home didn't lose any value or they live in a county with a very lazy assessor's office and should have been applying for a reduction. One person here has stated that he has been in an appeal process for a while now and is getting no where (which is incredibly unfair to him).
So, keep your "kool-aid" remarks to yourself. You know very little about Proposition 13, why it was established, why it stands today and why it will be death to this state if it's ever abolished. As for my emoticons in place of comments, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
As for my emoticons in place of comments, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
given your inability to elucidate your views beyond trite, dismissive insults towards me, i'd say that a picture of an animated face is indeed worth more than a thousand of your words.
I have nothing against homeownership, what I have something against is a tyrannical majority legislating that everyone else make up their share of the tax burden.
You do realize there were not enough home owners to have passed Prop 13?
Also, Prop 13 would have never come to be had the legislature refused to simply index the home owner exemption to inflation... at one time, the exemption had real value when a modest home sold for 10 to 15k... means almost nothing now homes sell for 25 times that and much more...
The only way it passed was because it enjoyed a popular groundswell of voter approval... both property owners and non-property owners.
My uncle and my grade school teacher were both renting at the time and they voted for Prop 13... maybe, they hoped to be property owners someday... they both also saw their rents decrease.
When you think about it... the government presented a no holes barred, full court press against Prop 13 even to the point of sponsoring a competing measure and the voters say right through it.
I have no bitterness to my long time neighbors... they are the reason the neighborhood is the nice place it is and I fully intend to be one of the seasoned citizens looking back years from now...
They more than paid their dues... they had to retire bonds for sewers, roads and street lighting that I can enjoy simply by buying into what they have long ago paid for.
Some against Prop 13 are just naive or uninformed... others are just letting their greed show with no respect for what those that came before us built.
Just for point of reference... the elderly couple that sold me their home they built in the 50's were paying $1200 a year property tax and I pay $9000 and my new neighbors a block away are paying $6500.
What makes it more than fair is we all pay taxes based on the value at the time we willingly bought...
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Prop 13 has nothing to do with lowering tax revenue as a whole. It simply shifts the burden away from certain taxpayers.
In the simplest of terms... Prop 13 established a modicum of predictability by eliminating property assessments based on someone's opinion of value...
It set up the framework that gives the voters the power to decide and not politicians and one that I fully support even though Oakland voters seem to pass assessments on things I don't always support... Democracy in action.
i assume if you had something of value to say to me you would've spit it out already. you've already demonstrated you have consumed the kool-aid regarding prop 13.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the lone dissenter on the court when it upheld Prop. 13 in 1992, called California’s pre-Prop. 13 landowning class “the Squires” whose tax advantages are “a privilege of a medieval character.”
My family comes from peasant stock and early on, even as a child, my parents instilled in us the value of owning the roof over your head... no matter how humble...
That's the great thing about the new world... people from humble beginnings, from every walk of life can and do own property...
You've got it backwards...
Thankfully, the Supreme Court found Prop 13 did not violate equal protection and 35 years later it has stood the test of time.
I live in the heart of the SF Bay Area... Oakland California.
Anyone that says $9000 annual property tax on a 1725 square foot 1956-57 ranch style house is too little is out of touch...
Just how much more should I be paying?
And no... I am not foolish enough to believe my taxes will go down should my elderly neighbors have to pay more... there will never be enough to satisfy no matter how much there is...
The true value of anything can only be determined when there is a willing buyer and seller... anything else is just a wild guess which is the way it was before Prop 13.
Those that come after the boomers will enjoy the same benefits then as the boomers do now... Prop 13 applies equally to all.
Last edited by Ultrarunner; 01-24-2013 at 03:27 PM..
My father paid a lifetime into Social Security and passed away having received 3 payments...
I'm very sorry for your loss and especially for your father's misfortune.
If anyone's wondering, as of 1990, the average male collects SS for 15.3 years (up from 12.7 in 1940) and the average female 19.6 years (up from 14.7). That doesn't strike me as much of an increase, given the improvements in medicine in the past 50 years. The issue is, however, there are more than three times more individuals collecting Social Security now as there were fifty years ago. Social Security History
Also for those interested, the news that baby boomers are going to bankrupt SS in short order is either a purposeful exaggeration or an accidental misreading of the data. According to Kathy Ruffing, speaking for the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, "Policymakers should act sooner rather than later to put the program on a sound long-run footing, but today’s beneficiaries and workers approaching retirement need not fear that their Social Security benefits are at risk. Alarmists who claim that Social Security won’t be around when today’s young workers retire misunderstand or misrepresent the trustees’ projections."
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it would be 2047 before the SSI had to reduce SS payments by 25%. And that is unlikely to happen because most members of Congress still hold SS in high esteem and will no doubt make adjustments, as they did in during the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s. One adjustment that could be made immediately, and ensure the programs solvency for many decades further, would be to apply the same payroll tax already paid by more than nine out of 10 Americans to those with incomes over $250,000 a year, who are currently assessed the same as those with incomes up to $106,800 a year. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has introduced a bill in Congress to make that happen, but to date Congress has shown little inclination to increase any tax burden on the wealthiest of Americans. Will Baby Boomers Bankrupt Social Security? Raising cap on social security tax best way to fix shortfall | Economic Policy Institute
if i remember correctly, you said you bought at the peak, right ? so that would mean you'd be paying less if they repealed prop 13.
Yes... near the peak but not at the peak.
Prop 13 makes no mention of age... it doesn't matter if you bought today or 25 years ago... the law applies equally to all and to say age makes a difference is misleading and divisive.
Here's the rub... Prop 13 provides for a temporary reduction of assessed value to correspond to lower values... with the operative word being temporary.
In 2008 I filed an appeal and the office granted a reduction...
In 2009 my value was bounced back to full amount. I missed the appeal deadline because I was working overseas... I called anyway and was told Alameda County decided not to count "Distress" sales which accounted for 19 of the 21 sales in my area.
In 2010 it was even higher with the 2% inflation factor even though property was selling for significantly less. Alameda Country was getting deluged with appeals and instituted a $50 filing fee...
I agian provided comps supporting a 27% reduction and this time paid the $50 fee... county has 2 years to decide on my appeal.
2011 it was reduced $9,000 so I again paid the filing fee of $50 to support at 21% reduction and again have to wait 2 years...
Meanwhile, I must pay the full amount billed.
Other counties have handled similar with one or two phone calls...
My county said it is in the counties interest to delay any reductions to last possible moment because it is money paid out.
So yes... I know exactly how the Assessor works in my county and it is very disappointing the abuse of the system.
So under Prop 13 or without Prop 13... my value should be lower... problem is the Assessor can take his sweet time... 2 years to even respond
Maybe it is time for a Prop that I can vote on to force a timely resolution... 2 years is ridiculous on so many fronts...
Yes... proof positive...
Last edited by Ultrarunner; 01-24-2013 at 07:27 PM..
I don't know, i suppose that the only way you can handle the reality is to ignore it or trivialize it.
You struggle with reading comprehension.
No one said the youth have "a lock on the national misery." Nor has anyone claimed that the boomers are all the same. We're simply talking about the net effect of the collective decisions made by all boomers over the past 20 years and the denial of responsibility that seems pretty pervasive.
The issue here is the inter-generational transfers that are occuring fiscally at the federal level, the debt that represents those transfers, and who exactly will be paying that debt. Boomers inherited structural economic problems from the greatest generation, especially with regards to Social Security, and proceeded to do absolutely nothing about it but make it worse by (A) Cutting taxes, (B) blowing debt bubbles, and (C) Promising themselves more Medicare.
I posted this earlier as clarification but evidently no one is interested in the opinion of The Economist.
There it is, "the denial of responsibility", for what, by whom? You ARE attempting to lay blame on such a widespread group of American's as to make me wonder (and laugh about) how someone can possibly see the problems in those terms. "ALL BOOMERS" didn't "inherit" anything except the same old power paradigm that has been around for ages, and "the net effect" you refer to, I'm assuming is, from all that legislation passed by high ranking pols and their masters on Wall Street over the last five decades. Did "the greatest generation" start the second world war? Did the lower class men of the 1800's start the civil war? Did my fathers and uncles start the great depression? "Boomers" is simply a media hyped term used to describe those born into a certain time frame, that's it, period....Those in power make the rules, the low men simply play the game.
Reading comprehension? What's to read in your post that hasn't been drug through the media machine a thousand times, bad things in America happen not because of a single generation but for the fact of larcenous individuals that may or may NOT be of a certain age. Something always serves as the reason for the demise of nations, ours may just be the lopsided aspect of our political/economic construct. I don't think you have gotten to the realization of empires waning, it has alway been and it will always be. The speculation that we may be living through what could be the beginning of this empires end is a very real consideration given the economics of our times. If you're still reading the kind of trash put out by the Economist it's no wonder that you struggle in your attempt to grasp the real import of all that you worry about.
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