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Comment by Casseres | Hacker News Reader

Native Texan here. I and many other Texans I know welcome newcomers with open arms.

We all just have one message though: Please do not turn Texas into the places y'all are leaving. There's a reason y'all are leaving after all.

EDIT: Newcomers: We generally don't care what anyone does or thinks, we only care when people try to force us to conform to their beliefs, including what to do with our money, eg) raising taxes.

Wow, the back-and-forth on upvotes/downvotes is crazy. Sorry, didn't mean for this to be controverisal.

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I suspect Texas will wish it had California's problems in a decade. California is experiencing a brain gain [1] as the best and the brightest relocate to the state en mass. Texas is meanwhile experiencing a brain drain by experting college educated and college-seeking citizens en masse. A quick look at industries in decline (oil, coal, meat) and industries on the rise (automotive, tech, healthcare) does not suggest that Texas is the place to be or that these people leaving for Texas are doing so voluntarily.

[1] http://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-brain-gain/

Texas is growing, lots of large companies leaving other states to move there. So to say their is a large brain drain is disingenuous. All of those companies you listed as "on the rise" are relocating to Texas, a few examples: State Farm, Toyota, and soon Amazon HQ2(Amazon hates taxes). This is a small sampling, there are many more companies moving to Texas all the time.

On the east side of Washington in Spokane, the houses are going up due to the influx of Californians. Average price was around 120k, now you can see houses in the 300k for entry level with basic kitchens.

Also, lots of modern brew pubs are popping up that easily charge Seattle prices for food and beer. (Way too expensive for locals)

Had a co-worker who's family moved up from California and bought a 600k house on 10 acres. The price per acre has been going up like crazy, use to be 2-3K per acre in the rural areas,its upto 10K+ now, even 20K, for forest land in the sticks, when 5 acre lots going for 100k, thats nuts, no well or power...

Crazy, since the local wages don't even support those price.

Bend, Oregon has been that way for a while.

Who wants to do a startup that finds and invests in the 'next places'? Some days I'm hopeful we can fix things, and others I think maybe we should just try and sell people on the 'new hotness' and make a buck from it.

I joked about doing this back in 2013. I was watching Portland, OR and Bend, OR real estate on it's steady climb back when homes in both of those cities were what I'd consider/call affordable. I know of a few "next places" but I try to hold them close to the chest just in case I convince my wife to finally leave California. My point is that it's quite disheartening seeing the so-called value of land and homes rise at such high rates in basically _every_ city and town west of the Rockies.

Ex-native here. TX isn't anything like what it was before the Bible Belt migrated in and took over the suburbs/electorate.

Too bad Texas is too progressive to have a Prop 13 - I can't go back anywhere in TX w/o people whinging about their property taxes or toll road fees.

Prop 13 is what ruined California. Not only did it institute rent control for property owners with all its associated problems, but it also tied the hands of legislators for funding government programs, directly leading to the initiative-based rigid monstrosity of a state budget California suffers from today.

Economic growth in California happens in places with a lot of new construction and a robust real estate market, where each real estate transaction resets the assessment price. In some areas of California the prices still haven't recovered to the pre-housing crash levels.

You'd only get significant advantage from Prop 13 if you bought during the 80s and held. While there are some places like that (Berkeley?) the state is hardly over-populated by elderly people clinging to their 40+ year old housing.

You ignored the main detrimental effects of Prop 13 I described in my comment and addressed only the rent control aspect.

How did it tie the hands of the legislators?

Any new taxes, even revenue neutral ones, or increases in existing taxes require a 2/3 majority vote in both houses, which was essentially impossible until very recently. A consequence is that loss of revenue from one source could not be made up by taxing other sources. Conservatives even tried to argue that Cap and Trade was a new tax and was not allowed by Prop 13: http://legal-planet.org/2017/04/06/court-of-appeal-confirms-....

The only way to fund new programs was by ballot initiative, which requires a simple majority vote. Ballot initiatives don't pass unless all funds are earmarked for the specified program, even if revenues for the proposed tax or costs of the proposed program change over time. Ballot initiatives that issue bonds are even more likely to pass because they don't require an immediate tax increase. The result of a few decades of Prop 13 is California's ongoing budget problems with high taxes and poor allocation of revenues.

It closed a loophole where Prop 13 (and other tax-restricting props) could be circumvented by introducing new taxes with slightly different names.

It is still circumvented (Mello-Roos, special assessments, bond measures which shift the bond payments to a special tax that acts as a property taxes, but is not called one, versus servicing payments through property taxes revenue) but through well-defined legislative routes versus political backrooms.

The broader goal was to limit the maintenance costs.

Areas with no new residential construction and no changes in ownership would experience predictable rise in maintenance expenses. Areas with high growth will have modern-day assessments and be able to operate at higher budgets necessary for higher growth.

It's the case with any other industry that has cost-of-living adjustments. Why shouldn't it be the case with public finance?

> It closed a loophole where Prop 13 (and other tax-restricting props) could be circumvented by introducing new taxes with slightly different names.

No, property taxes are local. Prop 13 tied the hands of the state government. Prop 218 then applied the same shackles to local governments, which ensured that California would see the wave of municipal bankruptcies during the great recession and which prevented local governments from switching to progressive water usage rates during the drought.

> through well-defined legislative routes versus political backrooms.

The only feasible route that is allowed is ballot initiative, which is why we're in this mess. Every other state and local government in the country has a representative democracy that allows its representatives to manage state taxes and budget.

  the wave of municipal bankruptcies

"Wave"? The Legislative Analyst's web page mentions only one completed bankruptcy (Vallejo), with only 3 other attempts.

"Completed" means they finished debt restructuring. Your "attempts" are actual bankruptcies that still hadn't exited bankruptcy at the time your LAO document was written.

Prop 13 tax rates can also be passed on to family members if they purchase or inherit the house. It’s a great deal for those who can take advantage of it, but it is also unfair and decreases mobility.

Property owners voted for Prop 13 and knew what they were getting. Few, if any, would change their vote.

I've seen the past and I see Texas' future - they'll either go to an initiative system or income tax. Check back in 10 years.

> and knew what they were getting

The discussion in the sibling thread shows that this isn't the case.

  Not only did it institute rent control

No. Prop 13 did no such thing.

> for property owners

Keep reading. Then look up "analogy" in the dictionary.

This is my fear as well. As a Californian who's looking to move to Texas at some point in the future, I really hope the people leaving aren't taking "California values" to Texas with them.

One of the greatest strengths of the Texas legislature is that almost everything is written in to the constitution, thereby being almost impossible to change. So for this reason the (proven disastrous) legal and business theories that have messed up housing costs in California would have a very hard time taking root here.

Of course when the bad ideas bear their dark fruit, they will be hard to change too.

But more seriously can you expand more on this "almost everything is written into the constitution"? Is this a back-door way of getting Swiss-style direct democracy. Skimming wikipedia it seems that amedments are passed by a referendum approving a legislative proposal (and this processes has happened hundreds of times).

if this is the only practical way of creating legislation, then you basically have the people as a third house of the legislature.

Amendments must win two-thirds of the legislature and a simple majority of the public. In some sense, it's a swiss-style democracy and-ed to one of the most conservatively designed legislatures ever implemented.

Regular laws don't have to pass the same gauntlet, but because the constitution is so expansive nearly every new law has to get it amended to prevent a contradiction.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/txp_media/html/cons/0405.html

> One of the greatest strengths of the Texas legislature is that almost everything is written in to the constitution, thereby being almost impossible to change. So for this reason the (proven disastrous) legal and business theories that have messed up housing costs in California would have a very hard time taking root here.

Prop 13 is a constitutional amendment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...

CA is virtually identical to Texas in the sense it has an extensive constitution that is almost impossible to change.

So, be careful what you wish for.

I think Alabama wins this contest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Alabama

> At 310,296 words,[1] the document is 12 times longer than the average state constitution, 44 times longer than the U.S. Constitution, and is the longest[2] and most amended[3] constitution still operative anywhere in the world.

As someone from Dallas here, the people from California that move here never fully adapt but they do conform to Texas after a year or two. That being said there are places that are much more "California like" than Texan like popping up on occasion.

My parents came to Houston, Texas from California because of job opportunities. Even after 15 years they still whine very loudly about Texas policies and want to move back to California.

Conform? Barely. Fully adapt? Hell no. I hope my parents are the exception though, for Texas' sake. This place is way better than California (I visit plenty of family who still live there) and I would hate for it to be gutted in such fashion.

> the people from California that move here never fully adapt

I wonder if you can share what that looks like?

I've lived in California most of my life, but I lived in Georgia, Arkansas, Mississppi and Missouri for 16 years.

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