> I.e. It enables people who have normal labor income from active involvement to keep the houses they were able to afford rather than being penalized simply because a nearby industry booming.
Working the same job you've always worked even as (relative) demand for your industry drops is the opposite of active involvement. No-one should be entitled to unearned money for life, or excess wages for life, or low property taxes for life, just because they got there first. They're blocking out other people who work harder or need it more; it should be a level playing field for everyone, which means fair market rate for the job you're doing, fair market prices for the things you buy, and nondiscriminatory taxation.
> It impacts these people far more beneficially than any negative that comes from not penalizing the people for whom the tax would not be a problem.
But you're not accounting for the people who can't move in because of people sitting on undertaxed properties. Once you add up everyone, prop 13 does a lot more harm than good.
> You give the appearance of to preferring labor involvement over passive investment, and yet your entire argument is based on how unfair it is that you didn’t get to benefit from a passive investment. It seems like you would actually like that for yourself, no?
I mean of course I'd like a pile of free cash. But it's unjust to be giving out public money (which is ultimately everyone else's tax dollars) arbitrarily, and it's doubly unjust to be giving it out to the people who already won big on passive investment.
> If you want to buy a home and your income comes from labor in the Bay Area, then Prop 13 is the only thing protecting you from being displaced if prices continue to rise.
Sure, but for everyone who's displaced there's another person who's now able to afford a better place to live. Likely more than one person actually, since in practice it's more often a case of empty-nesters in a big house that could be subdivided for several working people. (If people want to stop themselves being displaced in a fair way, the right answer is to allow more homebuilding - unfortunately homeowners are incentivised to pull up the ladder behind them so as to increase their own home price, and prop 13 just makes that worse). If I can't pay my fair share of property taxes, I'll sell my place on to people who can - and given how much money I'd be pocketing from price appreciation for that to happen, I wouldn't be particularly sad about it.
Working the same job you've always worked even as (relative) demand for your industry drops is the opposite of active involvement. No-one should be entitled to unearned money for life, or excess wages for life, or low property taxes for life, just because they got there first. They're blocking out other people who work harder or need it more; it should be a level playing field for everyone, which means fair market rate for the job you're doing, fair market prices for the things you buy, and nondiscriminatory taxation.
> It impacts these people far more beneficially than any negative that comes from not penalizing the people for whom the tax would not be a problem.
But you're not accounting for the people who can't move in because of people sitting on undertaxed properties. Once you add up everyone, prop 13 does a lot more harm than good.
> You give the appearance of to preferring labor involvement over passive investment, and yet your entire argument is based on how unfair it is that you didn’t get to benefit from a passive investment. It seems like you would actually like that for yourself, no?
I mean of course I'd like a pile of free cash. But it's unjust to be giving out public money (which is ultimately everyone else's tax dollars) arbitrarily, and it's doubly unjust to be giving it out to the people who already won big on passive investment.
> If you want to buy a home and your income comes from labor in the Bay Area, then Prop 13 is the only thing protecting you from being displaced if prices continue to rise.
Sure, but for everyone who's displaced there's another person who's now able to afford a better place to live. Likely more than one person actually, since in practice it's more often a case of empty-nesters in a big house that could be subdivided for several working people. (If people want to stop themselves being displaced in a fair way, the right answer is to allow more homebuilding - unfortunately homeowners are incentivised to pull up the ladder behind them so as to increase their own home price, and prop 13 just makes that worse). If I can't pay my fair share of property taxes, I'll sell my place on to people who can - and given how much money I'd be pocketing from price appreciation for that to happen, I wouldn't be particularly sad about it.