Re: Re: [Pen-l] California Fiscal Bait and Switch

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

David B. Shemano wrote:
>> My father, a barber who never went to college and die hard Roosevelt democrat who would never vote Republican, was a strong Prop 13 supporter. The inflation of the 70s caused assessments to skyrocket, which meant that people like my father, who had no cash but paper capital gains on their house, were in real danger of losing the house.  I was 13 years old at the time, and remember the debates well, which I would characterize as a class war between the middle class private sector taxpayers and the middle class public employees.<<

Michael Perelman wrote:
> David, the most powerful interests often acted as if they were speaking for the middle class, but that was pure pretense.  You are absolutely correct that there were inequities in the property tax, but Proposition 13 was a meat ax aimed at the entire fiscal system.<

The powerful interests appealed to the short-term interests of the
middle class ("get a tax cut now!"), but went against the latter's
long-term interests (say, in having half-decent public schools, ones
significantly better than in Alabama). By the way, there were a lot of
powerful interests -- e.g., the Bank of America -- who opposed Prop.
13.
-- 
Jim Devine / "If heart-aches were commercials, we'd all be on TV." -- John Prine
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