🚀 go-pugleaf

Chuck Karish (karish@pangea.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: It's my understanding that retired homeowners can stay in their
: homes through means like reverse-amortization mortgages and
: deferred tax payments.

These financial instruments do NOT address the problem that Prop 13
addresses and could be rendered useless by that problem. Prop 13 addresses
the problem caused by all the fools who believe in the greater
fool idea. The idea is it does not matter how much you pay for  
the house as there will always be a greater fool who will pay
more for it later on. This drives up the prices of homes which
drives up the property taxes. The problem is that the higher house
prices is PAPER money while taxes have to paid with REAL money.

As people have found out in New England, Texas and recently here,
house prices can go down as well as up. So anyone who believes
in this idea is the fool. People who just want a house 
to live in rather than an investment to speculate in, were being 
penalized by speculators. Prop 13 alters the economics by placing 
the burden of higher taxes from speculation onto the speculators.
In the long run, people who buy houses to live in come out ahead.
People who complain about their higher taxes because they are new
home owners would have even more to complain about without Prop 13.

: They're being used as the poster kids in defense of the commercial
: real estate owners who receive a large proportion of the Prop 13
: tax protection.  Recent home buyers are being taxed in a manner
: that's more bizarrely unfair than any rotten assessment practices
: I've ever heard of elsewhere.

Prop 13 won because RECENT home buyers kept seeing their taxes
go up by percentages that far exceeded inflation and their pay
raises. They could see that what was happening to retirees was
also happening to them. Those who do not know their history are
doomed to repeat it. Those current recent homeowners who are 
complaining about Prop 13 are really asking to be screwed by
speculators. 

			   Danny Low
    "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You"
	   Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley
	     HP NSD   dlow@ppg01.sc.hp.com