Prop 13 is actually worse than the article mentions, in terms of perverse incentives. Because tax rates are effectively frozen and assessed vaule goes up slower than inflation, municipalities can only keep pace with inflation by ensuring that there's a steady stream of new buyers at ever-higher prices. Because of that, they vote to relax immigration requirements and promote new office jobs ("steady stream of new buyers") and restrict the supply of housing ("at ever-higher prices"). Because of that, California needs a constant supply of new industries where they can redirect an ever-greater flow of global income into the pockets of California residents, just to allow government expenditures to keep up with inflation.

Prop 13 basically enshrined a pyramid scheme into the state constitution.

And that has led to all sorts of social ills that people routinely criticize California for. The homelessness crisis is because of the revolving housing door: we don't build new housing, but we do higher more new highly-paid employees, so by the pigeonhole principle the lowest-paid Californians will be forced to either move out or go homeless. The "California conveyor", that Republican-decried phenomena where Californians move out of state and take their politics with them, is all because local governments are forced to limit housing and evict their long-time residents in order to keep tax revenues high. California's focus on high-margin industries like tech startups and entertainment is likewise because everything else doesn't generate the steady stream of new dollars and new workers needed to turn over houses and reset their property tax base. And the short-term focus of these industries, where they're willing to destroy society as long as they become a trillion-dollar company in a decade, also makes sense when you consider that existence within the state is itself a pyramid scheme.

Amazing that Republicans would want to copy that, considering how many of the social ills that they bash California for are direct consequences of it.

I found your comment enlightening.

> Amazing that Republicans would want to copy that, considering how many of the social ills that they bash California for are direct consequences of it.

Shipping out the poor and exporting conservative politics to seed elsewhere, all while property values skyrocket, seems to be just what Republicans might want! Don't you think so?

This part of your comment doesn't follow for me:

> municipalities can only keep pace with inflation by ensuring that there's a steady stream of new buyers at ever-higher prices. Because of that, they vote to [...] restrict the supply of housing ("at ever-higher prices").

Restricting housing supply would lower their income, not increase it. Two $500k homes pay 25% more property tax than one $800k home.

How exactly do municipalities vote to relax immigration requirements?

I mean, it would be a guaranteed win for R's if they eliminate prop tax (or subsidize states deciding to do so) and draw interests back down to zero.

It would be a loss for all of us in the medium term, but, politically, it's a glass-shattering slam dunk.