Anti-Tax Dumbness

Howard Jarvis gave California Proposition 13, the cap on property tax assessments that has created chaos out of state budgeting for 30 years. It is the source of the 2/3rds majority requirement for tax increases, in addition to capping property assessments at the time of sale plus a little more than 1% annual increases maximum. The results were predictable at the time - gross inequalities in assessments of identical neighboring houses, with the new buyer paying much more, a transfer of wealth from young to old, from newcomer to old-hand, and endless controversy around the support of basic public services. The current Assembly speaker wants to have a blue-ribbon commission to study the problem, but the one thing she'll keep off the table is the straitjacket known as Prop 13.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn writes me regularly, and their materials shows how the middle-class can be encouraged to fall on its sword. Their only figures are a "Homeowner's Property Tax Savings Chart" - if you bought a median house in 1993 ($188k), as I did, you have now "saved" $88k by having an assessment of 1% instead of 2.6%. What's missing of course is all the money we've paid out in other ways - for houses grotesquely overpriced in part due to suppressed assessments, for private services, e.g. private schools to get around crappy public ones and for big cars to avoid bad public transit. What's also missing are the costs for renters, for the state, for new businesses - for California society which is increasingly divided and still controlled by an entrenched landed class.

As a model for a "new economy" this is really really dumb.