Thursday, November 5, 2020

Campus still blue

California may be secretly libertarian, but not the Stanford campus.  Several thousand faculty, staff, and students who live in Stanford Campus Housing are registered to vote in Stanford’s exclusive 94305 zip code. Alvin Rabushka puts together their votes: 

                      Biden               Trump          Others 

Stanford     1,860 (94.7%)    68 (3.5%)    37 (1.8%)

California     (65.3%)            (32.9 %)       (1.6%)

I'm actually surprised that it's as high as 68. On proposition 13, raising the property tax for business, 

                              Yes                            No

Stanford          1,664  (86.4%)          262  (13.4%)

California             (48.3%)                   (51.7%)

This is not about Stanford per se, but just a nice hard data point on political diversity in a typical university, relative even to a deep-blue state. 

I note that our employer, Stanford, is a nonprofit which does not pay tax, though it makes voluntary contributions, and that people in Stanford housing not only get houses that cost typically half or less of market value, but most thereby pay less property tax than the rest of us.   

Far-leftism does indeed seem to be a plaything of the very wealthy, government workers, nonprofits and universities. Which are supported, in part, by your taxes, both through explicit federal and state support and via their tax-exempt status. 

19 comments:

  1. Is the notion that Stanford employees pay less property taxes than the rest really true? I've heard that the county tax assessors there value the Stanford employee houses at market value rather than purchase value like you'd see in most cases?

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    1. Second hand (I don't live on campus). This is true of new campus housing, not older housing. Older housing also benefits from the prop 13 limit, since it's assessed at the original price.

      The whole campus housing business is an interesting dodge around taxable employee compensation, one of the many distortions that arise as people and institutions avoid very high marginal income tax rates.

      An institution full of "tax the rich" types operates a campus housing program whose entire point is to avoid paying federal and state income taxes on the money it would cost to pay people so they in turn can pay market rate housing. Pay $500,000 million, let them buy houses, but after 55% marginal tax rate. Or Pay $250,000 provide low cost housing which somehow does not count as taxable employee compensation.

      Stanford really comes out ahead, as salaries are about the same as elsewhere, but people would demand much more money to move here if they had to buy houses and much much more money if they had to pay taxes and then buy houses.

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    2. No fringe benefit tax in the US, I assume?

      BTW, I'm not sure I'd consider voting for Trump to be a 'secretly libertarian' act. From a libertarian perspective, I'd have thought both choices offered very slim pickings.

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  2. you should write a piece about the lifestyle nonprofit area a favorite of the left. Make up some charity say the Clinton Fund, BLM, tc...which explicit purpose is to pay(or expenses paid) for liberals to get together and group think while paying the expenses of those involved...all tax free...with a healthy dose of HIGH PAY for those working there or them being paid by them!
    When was the last time an Obama or Clinton..paid for their travel on a private jet?
    Non-profits should be required to pay or reward no one more than the average US WAGE! Instead people make millions...in a basic fraud!

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    1. It's a good point. Make sure, though, to include churches and other religious organizations that are "non profit" but where leaders make a ton of money. Both sides exploit these things.

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    2. let me know when you find a priest making $500k or throwing a million dollar party with private jets.

      hence why there should be a means test!

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  3. I guess a silver lining in that number is that the turnout seem to be low given that Stanford has over 15k students. Maybe the college kids/staff are still deciding to sitting out the elections (good) or (bad) they voted absentee back home in states where it actually mattered.

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  4. Stanford is also an intellectually elite institution. (duh!) Institutions that are intellectually elite sometimes fall prey to idealism, despite an impressive hard research history.

    Correlation between IQ at places like Stanford and idealism? R squared of 0.8? Wouldn't be surprised.

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  5. I would personally be much more interested to know how they voted on proposition 16. The far-left that I have been closely watching for the better part of the last decade is extremely identitarian, so I am wondering which brand of leftism floats at Standford.

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    1. I commented on the linked post with what I could figure out. (It may be sitting in a moderation queue for the moment.) Mostly copying from that comment, https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CA/Santa_Clara/106043/web.264614/#/detail/90 seems to indicate -- if I merely guess at which are the two precincts in question -- that Proposition 16 received significantly more "No" votes at Stanford than it did votes for Trump.

      Precinct 0002542 (the one that seems pretty sure to be one of the two) is at 317 No, 815 Yes. I'm not sure which of precincts 0002545 (just south of 0002542) or 0002002 (just north of 0002542) is the other one. 0002545 is at 385 No, 1201 Yes. 0002002 is at 688 No, 1153 Yes. Either way, you're looking at Stanford voting No/Yes at roughly a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio, not the 1:27 ratio for Trump/Biden.

      Stanford is, unsurprisingly, fairly identitarian. But there does seem to be a good deal of people who may have voted against Trump, yet did not vote the identitarian position here.

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  6. I was a Milton Friedman, Bill Buckley Republican until the Rs lost their minds and principles. Vote suppression drives all serious conservatives out of the R party. (Except maybe for gaming in the primary.)

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  7. Diversity? And this is Stanford?

    In my youth, Stanford was known as a conservative Institution, in contrast to my alma mater, Berkeley. But then, back then we used Fortran cards in computing.

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  8. "Far-leftism does indeed seem to be a plaything of the very wealthy" ..... really, John, are you feigning surprise? ........ your reviled lefty intellectuals have always derived from the aristocracy, or at least the bourgeoisie. Fabian society? Bloomsbury group? Engels?
    For an amusing little commentary there's a particular one of the existential comics ....
    --E5

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    1. That would be existential comic number 366. "Philosophy During a Pandemic" ... lampooning Marx.
      http://existentialcomics.com/comic/366
      --E5

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    2. Hilarious. Thanks for the link.

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  9. The thinking here seems sloppy. How is support for Joe Biden - a centrist old white guy - evidence of "far leftism"? And why are the voting choices of Stanford, a select community of intellectually talented people, referred to as "playthings". It doesn't seem a stretch to imagine that they have thought through the issues a bit. Why call these opinions "playthings" and not informed choices? Finally, Californians in general voted to continue government subsidies of businesses which benefit from artificially low property tax valuations. Californians also voted to continue to subsidize - again via the tax system - wealthy people who move home or pass those homes on to heirs. This is hardly a libertarian result, it's voting to continue big government interfering in the private markets. Stanford voters opposed these measures - voting against government subsidies. Again, that's hardly looney-left stuff when thought through properly.

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  10. Quora has a nice commentary about the price of insulin and how both the Democratic party and the Republican party are opposed to free markets in order to favour their corporate contributors.
    I believe that, upon close examination, most lefties prefer the Libertarian attitude to markets over the current Republicrat one.
    "Why are insulin prices astronomically more expensive in the US than overseas? Isn’t it generic now? Don’t Republicans favor the competition?"
    --E5

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  11. The notions set out in the last paragraph of the blog article are offensive to the constitution and individual freedoms.

    If the senate and legislature of the state of California decide in their collective wisdom to increase property taxes on business-class properties, then there will be fewer business-class properties to tax in the future. Can we presume that the legislators know their business? Or, is it mere dogma that governs their decisions?

    An economist might, following Ramsey's example, postulate an efficient rate of tax on business-class properties to maximize property tax revenues from that class of real property. The social planner and tax authority might then set the property tax rate at that 'optimal' rate of taxation, and plan government expenditure levels based on the expectation of revenue from that asset class. Does Prop. 13 strive to do that? If not, then can it be said to be an error on the part of electors residing at Stanford Univ. to support that proposition? Surely, that is the test to be applied, not the simple proportion of Stanford Univ. residents voting in favor of the proposition--but whether those electors voted in full knowledge of the economic merits of the proposition or not.

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  12. Let it be noted, also, that the money contributed to right-wing (and slightly to their left, there is no left in America) political candidates comes from the entire population's spending in the marketplace. Apple's political contributions come from people who buy iphones and such. Koch brother contributions come from people who buy fuel for their cars.
    We are fortunate to have a few institutions, like Stanford, that provide for thinking people to think freely.
    --E5

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