California is a deep blue state when measured by party affiliation, and voting 65% Biden at last count. Yet here is how California's propositions came out, per LA Times and the google search for "California propositions."
Prop. 14: Bond issue for stem cell research. Wins.
Prop. 15: Raise property taxes on business. Loses.
Prop. 16: Remove language in the state constitution that "the government and public institutions cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting." Sold to allow race-based and other preferences in university admissions, contracting, etc. Loses.
Prop. 17: Parolees may vote. Wins.
Prop. 18: 17 year olds may vote. Loses.
Prop. 19: Property tax reduction. Wins. Note, it allows people who have multi-million dollar houses to keep the low property tax base when they move, and pass it on to heirs. So much for "tax the rich."
Prop. 20: Complicated. Stricter parole, crime classification. Loses.
Prop. 21: Allows cities to impose rent control. Loses dramatically. (Per Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, "...rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.")
Prop. 22: Exempt Uber and Lyft from the employee-vs-independent contractor legislation that was expressly aimed at Uber and Lyft. Wins. (Too bad Uber and Lyft didn't have the guts to just overturn the whole stupid law.)
Prop. 23: Requires on-site physician at kidney dialysis centers. (Pushed by SEIU union.) Loses.
Prop. 24: Data privacy regulations. Loses. Passes.
Prop. 25: Eliminate cash bail. Loses.
I have rarely had the pleasure of seeing so many of my preferences confirmed by fellow citizens. (To be clear, all of these propositions are highly imperfect, and none is close to how a conservative libertarian would approach these issues. By preferences, I mean just how I chose given the menu at hand.)
There is a deep lesson here, that Democrats might wish to pay attention to. Their brand and mood affiliation is strong. But even in California, there is little enthusiasm for looney-left policy, or even mainstream-Democrat policy (more taxes, rent controls, stricter labor legislation). Perhaps nationally, Democrats wondering how their candidate is not absolutely trouncing an opponent of such... how shall I put this... singular personal qualities, might wish to contemplate the lesson here.
Update: Thanks to a commenter and just checked, deep-blue Illinois turns down a progressive state income tax. Will miracles never cease? Maybe Illinoisans are secretly libertarian too.
The election seems to be heading to a never-Trumper Republican's dream: Biden wins by about 1 electoral vote. Trump rides into the sunset. (Starts a new show on Fox?) The Senate stays Republican. Republicans pick up a good number of seats in the House. The Senate says no no no to anything but reasonable governance for four years. The Supreme Court looks askance at ambitious executive orders. The New York Times editorial page and lots of Very Annoying People fume about the Senate "resistance." Umm, they will have to pick another word.
More broadly, the big news of the election seems a clear rejection of the far-left agenda. (Big news. We know all about Mr. Trump, good and bad.)
Damon Liker expresses the view well, in "the left just got crushed." Read Sergeiu Kleinerman in Newsweek, or listen to Jodi Shaw from Smith College (A link. I can no longer find the original via Google, a bad sign.) There is no love for Trump here (Liker is savage), but they're not swallowing the kool-aid, nor, apparently, is the average voter.
I know you fancy yourself a libertarian, but maybe this should help you realize you're really just an upper middle class populist with math.
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly here identifies him an "upper middle-class populist"?
DeleteAnother example of one being free to speak no matter one's incivility.
Delete@David Seltzer To believe in free speech is to spend your time defending statements and behaviors you often find reprehensible or even horrifying. This is almost a tautology because censorship only applies to opinions you don't like.
DeleteHowever, I regard any demand for censorship to be a profound sign of arrogance. On what ground do you judge of what others are allowed to hear, watch or see? Because, the other side of the coin of silencing some people is to prevent the audience from making their own choices. Given that there are tens of millions of people on, say, Twitter, I invite you to contemplate the scale of the tyranny when someone looses their access to an account or see their posts censored. Of course, at least some of it is legal, but it is nevertheless quite the signal of the weakness of one's position: the only reason you can possibly demand that others be silenced is a deep conviction you wouldn't win in the court of public opinion.
Besides, it's not because you think people should be allowed to talk and be heard that you must agree with them or condone them. For example, I think the comment Ibram Kendi made about the SCOTUC nominee was vile and deeply racist, but I would not want him to be silenced. No. What you saw him write is typical commentary on the far-left. You might have noticed the equally revolting comment about Hispanics trying to ascend to "whiteness" made by far-leftists today over their support for Trump?
There are only two types of people who talk about "race traitors": neo-Nazis and the far-left. Much of their respective views on race are eerily similar -- and all of it is absolutely disgusting to me. Yet, I would rather let them speak and enjoy the opportunity to respond so those evils do not fester in the dark where nobody can see it.
Or the strength of the association between Democrat and "looney left" has been overestimated, artificially driven by you-know-who and his minions.
ReplyDeleteNope I'm in California and the elected Dems are loony left.
DeleteThe Uber prop was to overturn the loony left legislature on the issue, as just one small example.
Then how did this stuff get on the ballot in the first place?
DeleteNo it hasn't been overestimated. For the looney left politicians are the ones putting forward these propositions and laws. Oregon just decriminalized all drugs. Look for the looney left to do the same in CA.
DeleteDemocrat CA voters are OK with looney left laws, as long as it doesn't affect them personally. What these voters haven't figured out is that the people they vote in (often because they look nice and say nice things) are the ones threatening them with these looney left laws. One can only hope that some day the Dem voters figure this out. It's possible Asian Dem voters are getting it now given the looney left's desire to ace them out of UC admissions.
Actually Prop 20 was also in response to loony left decriminalization of shoplifting and other crimes.
Deletehttps://www.wsj.com/articles/california-the-shoplifting-state-11604361241
@Paul Topping Kamala Harris made a call to raise funds to post bails for rioters back in June. About a dozen people in Joe Biden's campaign team rose funds themselves to do just that. Some people in Portland got caught several times over, but are let to walk free by the DA. And we're talking about people caught engaging in theft, assault and arson 2 or 3 times in less than 2 months. I have heard Joe Biden denounce the violence, but I have yet to see him point the finger at extremists within BLM or Antifa, though people flying those colors and sometimes even self-identifying with either of those organizations have been caught engaging in anything ranging from vandalism to murder. The Black Live Matter website had explicitly Marxist policy positions on its websites all through the summer. What exactly is not "looney left" about "disrupting the nuclear family"? Yet, Democrats are funding the movement -- sometimes even illegally. Remember good ol' Bill DeBlasio? He used public funds to paint a BLM mural in the streets and to pay police officers to guard it (which is ironic). It lasted until people threatened to sue to paint other messages, but it seems to me like Democratic politicians were happy to play along with the extremists for the past months.
DeleteIt might be true that Democratic VOTERS are not the looney left, but many Democratic POLITICIANS sure as hell sound to me like they're confusing America with Twitter activists.
I completely agree. Look at Democrat candidates for President - Obama (centrist), H Clinton (establishment centrist), Biden (centrist). Look at what happened in the primary this year - there was a huge centrist preference split between Klobuchar, Buttigeg, Biden, Harris - and they all agreed to back Biden.
DeleteTrump and his people did not create our impressions of the "looney left" and the Democrats. Most media reports, citing the Twittersphere, gushed about the insane agenda of the left, and decreed that it was the voice of the Democratic party. Apparently, the party itself didn't choose to march in their parade.
DeleteWas going to say, nearly all of the ballots went the way I voted. Had the same reactions you did because I expected liberal CA to go the other way, especially rent control.
ReplyDeleteThe property tax one was especially sleazy in how it was written. 55 years old and up + disabled + victims of wildfire disasters...I guess that clever marketing worked.
While I normally vote for any sort of tax relief, I voted against 19 because of their deceptive "tax the rich" advertising, which argued that it would make trust fund kids who inherit property pay their "fair share". Any time you appeal to envy and resentment with a class warfare theme, you lose me.
DeleteI appreciated this post.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to try to think as a libertarian about the Prop 18 outcome for a moment.
On first blush, the result appears to be an arbitrary, blunt-instrumented, off-target impingement of freedom that libertarians ought to reject. "You mean to say that all 18 year-olds are 'responsible' but no 17 year-olds are? Patent nonsense!"
(My own liberal opinion: I approve of the Prop 18 outcome. Voting requires maturity, and an age-based policy is the best idea anyone has come up with to try to ensure it.)
I'm a Californian myself and the coastal cities are wildly different after you go 50-80 miles to the east. I'm in an area of Southern California, about 80 miles from LA and the attitudes here are wildly different than LA. Not surprised at the ballot measures that passed and failed. I may have grown up in LA but I'd never ever live there. No no no.
ReplyDeleteOut here, it's conservative and there's not much social unrest. Why? Homogeneous population for the most part. Not a melting pot like LA.
You mean California isn't a Borg hive?
DeleteToo many in California are highly educated believers in conservative free lunch economics like those governed by conservatives for four decades and resentful that the median Californian consumer has so much income they drive up everyone's cost of living, if you don't seek sack cloth and ash deprivation.
For example, cutting property taxes only makes housing much scarcer and much more unaffordable because there is even less money to pay workers to build roads, water, sewer, fiber to the home, schools, public recreation to make a big of the 98% vacant unused land available to build housing people want at a bit over labor costs. Ie, for say $50,000-100,000 like in Kansas instead of paying $1,000,000 for an affordable house built in the 70s similar to what is built in Kansas today.
It can be done in California. See California City, which thanks to tax cuts and blocks on tax hikes in California and in Congress is almost as inaccessible to the California economy as Kansas. No money to build transportation to vacant buildable city lots.
And in Illinois the graduated income tax constitutional amendment appears to have been defeated... :)
ReplyDeleteAren't property taxes preferable to most other taxes? Frank Chodorov stumped for Henry George's "single tax" on the unimproved value of land, with Milton Friedman & William Buckley picking it up from him.
ReplyDeleteThe land value tax is strictly on the value of the land, whereas a property tax is on the value on the land plus the value of whatever improvements (buildings) the land has.
DeleteSo a property tax isn't ideal, but considering how much the value of urban real estate (and not the buildings themselves) has gone up, isn't this approaching a decent tax? The California government is still going to spend lots of money, and it has the highest personal income tax rate of any state in the US.
DeleteI personally feel a sales tax is best. It gives everyone some "skin in the game", and avoids having people who pay no taxes vote for taxes that someone else has to pay, thus encouraging fiscal responsibility. Yet, it is "progressive" in the sense that the free-spending wealthy pay more.
DeleteAll elections with an Incumbent can - and often do - become a referendum of essential recall, with the 2nd most likely to win getting the default affirmative as the Incumbent goes down by getting fewer overall.
ReplyDeleteIt is too bad the system degenerates into a top-2 without choosing "a leader" but only ejecting a failure. What is truly rotten is when only a plurality is what "majority rule" turns into.
Agree with your post but Prop 24 is winning.
ReplyDelete"conservative libertarian" oh my.
ReplyDeleteNationally, Democrats got trounced with Republican-Lite policies (will not ban fracking, no medicare for all, no defunding the police).
ReplyDeleteAs far as the CA props, 5 out 12 went the way progressives wanted them to (14, 17, 20, 24, 25). Note: your Prop 24 result is incorrect.
Results far from perfect, but this is the state that brought us Proposition 8 a little over 10 years ago.
You're not surprised the rent control measure failed? rent control like minimum wages is one of those things that it's easy to get lost in the morality of it. And I live in the Bay Area and even while home and rent prices were absurd pre covid, everyone seemed to see rent control as the solution.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering the same thing. The voters in CA like Democrats but not the things Dems want to do, especially if it affects them personally. At some point these voters need to connect the dots - that Democrats, the ones they vote in, are the ones who are pushing forward these propositions and laws that the CA voters don't like.
ReplyDeleteCA is still liberal, but some people are starting to realize the financial implications of all the liberal / socialist hogwash. Every time you turn around, there is a fee or tax. The anti-business attitude has caused many employers to LEAVE CA and take the tax revenue with them. A significant (not large, but significant) number of upper middle class and rich are leaving CA, and going to more business and tax friendly states. CA Politicians have over taxed the people to where some voters are saying enough is enough.
ReplyDeleteProp 24 passed.
ReplyDeleteProp 19 eliminated to option to pass the property tax basis on to heirs. This was already current law but now is not.
ReplyDeleteProp 24 looks like it passed: https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/returns/ballot-measures
ReplyDeleteI agree that these results are overall fairly refreshing for those of us who lean libertarian.
Perhaps this is a clue that "looney-left" liberals are not what you think, and are more reasonable on policy than you give them credit for. Perhaps fewer pejoratives couldn't hurt either.
ReplyDeleteLiberals and the far-left are not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination. Liberals, moderates and conservatives share a basic set of values such as freedom of speech and a disdain for political violence. The far-left loves censorship, they engage in violence or the threat thereof to advance their cause. The looney-left is the sort of person who thinks there are such things as race traitors (black conservatives are Uncle Toms or, more recently, Hispanics are just trying to "ascend to whiteness." If I picked people on the far-left and attributed some of their quotes to Richard Spencer, nobody could tell the difference.
DeleteLiberals aren't racist and they aren't authoritarians. They just disagree with conservatives about the best way to solve some problems.
The policy initiatives were put on the ballot by someone no?
DeleteFunny. I expect Senate says no to everything, no matter how reasonable (such as no judicial confirmations, no COVID relief) and possibly no debt ceiling increases in an order to hurt the economy and then run against the damage.
ReplyDeleteThat's a hell of a bloody secret! :-)
ReplyDeleteHis name on the article is "Linker" not "Liker" (see your last paragraph). One of you is wrong.
ReplyDeleteLinker makes some good points, but I disagree with him on new states and splitting states. I'd like to see all the states split down to Wyoming sized populations. Any why not add Puerto Rico?
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile in Republican Florida, they've voted to increase minimum wage to $15 by 2026. So much for any delusions of pro-market Republicans.
ReplyDeleteBut California voters still will not allow sufficient building, and that tragically selfish and un-libertarian for their low income residents.
ReplyDeleteAnd in Arizona we just voted for a very ill-advised incoome tax surchage on the
ReplyDelete"wealthy". The funds can be used only for education. Did you all send have all of your left fringe voters move here?
San Francisco also approved a CEO pay tax, which will drive the last remaining tech companies out of SF, or encourage them fire their low paid employees. How to kill the golden goose -- or, rather, drive it away so you can't even cook it.
DeleteWe're a long way from sanity in CA. These were statewide not local initiatives, and looniness is more localized.
It looks like the transplanted Californians in Reno and Las Vegas may account just about for Trump's loss in NV, which may be Trump's loss nationwide.
Did California taxes drive you out of Stanford and back to the University of Chicago?
DeleteDr. Cochrane,
ReplyDeleteI would like to draw your attention to the fact that the passage of prop 19 will result in a tax increase and not a reduction as stated in your essay. Under the initiative approved in 1986, children that inherited a property from their parents were allowed to keep their property tax capped as approved under Prop 13...basically, not have the property’s assessed value adjusted to market as a result of the transfer. With the passage of Prop 19, if the property is not occupied by the children (not their primary home, rental or AirBnB) or is worth more than $1MM in value, the property will be reassessed to market, which will result in a property tax increase. In short, the tax loophole for wealthy homeowners has been closed. I believe this loophole was commonly called the “Lebowski” property tax break.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/libertarians-spoil-the-election-11604867668?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
ReplyDelete(Sorry for the WSJ paywall).
It looks like California isn't the only state that might "secretly" be Libertarian. Anecdotally, I have had some really interesting conversations in recent days with friends and family members who voted for Libertarian candidates in pivotal states (e.g., AZ) when they'd typically vote Republican (most of them spoke in anonymity, as I always do online, for fear of retaliation from our polarized friends on either side). Big green (?...not sure what the color is for the Libertarian party) wave might not be too far off :-)
An alternative explanation for many of these is the way these propositions come about and are advertised. What do you think of https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-05/analysis-ballot-initiatives-system-california-spending ?
ReplyDeleteSome relevant passages:
“What this cycle showed, maybe more than any other, is that you can pay for a law if you don’t like something that’s going on,” Democratic political strategist Gale Kaufman said. “With brute strength, you can buy yourself virtually any law you want or defeat any law you want.”
By election day, the Silicon Valley companies had championed the most expensive ballot measure campaign in U.S. history. While not every political campaign with money wins, the large war chest for Proposition 22 helped it break through the noise in an election season in which voters were focused on the presidency and the pandemic.
With enough money, the same battles can be waged over and over again.
A half-dozen of this year’s propositions saw powerful groups returning to familiar topics. Three ballot measures — the effort to broaden a property tax break for seniors in Proposition 19, to expand rent control under Proposition 21 and to more tightly regulate kidney dialysis clinics in Proposition 23 — were slightly amended versions of measures rejected by voters in 2018. Proposition 20, which sought to tighten criminal justice rules voters had just loosened in 2014 and 2016, was defeated.
> More broadly, the big news of the election seems a clear rejection of the far-left agenda.
Alternatively, the big news might be that every purple district incumbent who supported Medicare for All kept their seat?