It is a stain on my fellow well-off non-Donald Trump voters that support for Prop 13 is actually more correlated with class than it is with political affiliation.
Prop 13 is the CA law that means that a rich person living in a $10 million house that they inherited from their parents can pay far less in property taxes than someone who was born poor, worked hard, and saved up to buy a $1 million house.1 Not only is it regressive: Prop 13 also disincentivizes the construction of new housing by effectively penalizing people for selling their home and so has contributed greatly to California’s current housing crisis. “It’s great that the value of my house is now 10x!! But I don’t understand why labor costs are going up.”
Coastal elites love to hector working class people about the only issue that really affects elites–political correctness–while ignoring the one issue that matters most, i.e. class. Two-faced2, they actually support Prop 13 at even higher rates than their mortal enemies: those who self-identify as evangelical and/or born again. In this table I’ve ordered categories of people by increasing support for Prop 13:
| Category | Approve | Disapprove |
|---|---|---|
| $0-50k income | 29% | 57% |
| $50-100k income | 37% | 52% |
| Democrat | 37% | 54% |
| High school-educated or less | 40% | 52% |
| All respondents | 40% | 50% |
| Republican | 43% | 50% |
| College-educated | 44% | 45% |
| Evangelical and/or born again | 45% | 50% |
| $100k+ income | 57% | 37% |
Check out California Voters’ Views on Proposition 13 by Prof. Carl Stempel at CSU East Bay for more information.
As a postlude I invite you to consider this excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica’s article on the Russian Revolution:
Reprisals would in any case have proved ineffective. The only measure which might have tranquilized the countryside would have been the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly and a guarantee that it would enact land reform. The government, composed as it were of landlords and capitalists, could not and would not take this step.
No, I am not making a mistake re: inheritance rules. Consider that one of the favorite tactics of today’s rich can be applied here as well, viz. having your lawyer create an LLC to own the house. I have honestly wondered whether making it ridiculously easy for anyone to form an LLC and abuse tax laws in the same way as the rich would be a good way to DDOS the legislature into taking action.
Harvey Dent: “Remember that name you all had for me when I was at Internal Affairs? What was it, Gordon?” Lt. James Gordon: “Harvey, I…” Harvey Dent: “Say it. Say it!”