Seems sad and foolish to me that a question about contraception got an abstinence-only response. Whether ignorance or mindset, it's an unfortunate perspective for teenagers to have to live with.

One comment here comes from someone who bought a $1M home that came with a $10K annual tax bill who thinks there's something cruel in the fact that their rich relative pays so much less in taxes on a home they've lived in for MORE THAN 45 YEARS! Jeez... I wonder how that relative became rich (and what being rich has to do with it).

And there's the homeowner of 1 year who complains about their neighbor who pays less because they've lived in the same place longer (though they presumably have been contributing income and sales taxes for that longer period, as well).

Then there's the comment about the $1.6M (or thereabouts) home owned by parents versus their poor kid with the $600K property paying more in taxes. I wonder if that kid realizes that their parent's property taxes would very likely exceed $50K each year, based on pre-prop 13 tax rates? Or that their own taxes would be anywhere from 2X to 4+X their current $6K?

But with a means test, we can make everything work out, right? I wonder how much that means test will be like Medi-Cal's? I'd hope not much.

Me, I'm not convinced that it's a great idea to let the real estate market's whims and lunacies determine whether or not my taxes increase 10%, 20% or 30% each year. Again using pre-prop 13 tax rates for the local area, the annual property tax on my 10 year old house would have peaked at more than TWICE what I pay annually in principle and interest on a fixed mortgage. Could I possibly be the only one who thinks that's crazy?

And that's without questioning the wisdom of handing over that much more money to the politicians. As a life-long Californian, I've paid plenty in income, sales and property taxes. I wouldn't mind so much except that every time I visit another state, I leave wondering how California's roads and services are in such sorrier condition. I'm pretty sure it's not because the taxes are too low.

"If your property taxes went up a little, mine would go down a little."

I could buy "could" but my experience is that "would" is highly unlikely.

I also have a problem with the suggestion that today's system is arbitrary or that it "affects property owners without reference to their ability to pay." When you buy a house, I hope you take into account whether or not you can afford the property taxes along with the mortgage and other costs of ownership. That decision has nothing to do with your neighbor's tax bill.

My neighbor pays much less in property taxes than I do because he's been here much longer. I've never considered that unfair. Why should he have to pay more in property taxes because of my ability and willingness to pay $100Ks more 10 or 20 years later than he did then or could now? That, to me, would be arbitrary. And it was arbitrary with real consequences where real people needed (aka "forced by circumstance") to sell their homes of many years (decades) because of property taxes.

So how would you raise my neighbor's taxes in a non-arbitrary way when property values are a factor?

"You and I may have a fundamental disagreement over what's fair."

Yep, we have different ideas of fair.

Your idea of fair is that everyone pays the same tax rate for the same services applied against what your neighbor decides the home next door is worth. That some people would be forced to sell their homes because of unforeseen and unforeseeable tax hikes inherent in that system is just part of your fair system.

My idea of fair is that everyone pays the same tax rate applied against what they were able to pay for that home. I'm not comfortable expecting that financial means must keep pace with newly arriving neighbors as a requisite for keeping that home.

Also, I think the leap to "you pay less taxes for the same services" is a bridge-too-far. Or, at least, overly simplistic. The services we have today are, broadly speaking, what services have been built over time that the community could afford. Presumably, you come along, like what you see and want to move into a community. But you'd discount the contribution your neighbor has been making for years/decades toward building the community you found inviting. Instead, you'd saddle that nice neighbor with hugely increased taxation because that would be "fair" to you. Never mind that those increased funds won't go toward lowering your tax bill but, instead, will be spent on buying more services for the community. Maybe those services will be beneficial; maybe not (a little town where I bought my first home installed traffic lights in vacant fields with the extra money they received. That was more than 20 years ago and those damn lights are still an unnecessary nuisance.).

I understand your motivations and how you see what's fair. I just disagree.

Oh... and Republican my ass!

US military personnel at Bagram AFB have no or very few constitutional rights. Why would prisoners?