Then move.

Any place within California will do, though it would be great if you could relocate to a city or county near yours. Or, even better, stay in your own neighborhood and make the leap to a different apartment or house nearby.

Why am I asking you to go through the hassle of boxing and unboxing, and the emotional challenges of leaving one place for another? Because moving serves both private and public purposes. It often improves your circumstances—finding a place that better fits your needs, or helping you take advantage of a job or educational opportunity. And a state full of people in better circumstances is a better state.

California needs you to move now because our state, which once prided itself on perpetual motion, is stuck in neutral. Californians have never been less mobile than they are right now. In the near term, our increasing tendency to stay in place means our housing market is gridlocked, with too few vacancies. In the long term, our stasis may leave us in a disadvantaged position as our climate, our economies, and our demographics shift.

Our current lack of mobility is a failure of both government and culture. As a matter of policy, California actually discourages moving.

Californians and their representatives have long clung to a tax system based on Proposition 13, which discourages owners of homes and businesses from selling by keeping their taxes relatively lower the longer they hold onto their properties. Meanwhile, state and local governments decry an exodus of people and jobs—and in response, routinely waste millions in subsidies to rich California enterprises, including Hollywood production companies and Silicon Valley start-ups.

But the premise is all wrong. As the indispensable Orange County Register columnist Jonathan Lansner tirelessly points out, we Californians have the lowest outflow rate of residents of any American state—which means a lower percentage of population moves out than anywhere else. California’s real problem is that it’s the worst state at attracting new residents.

You might say our democracy has become a stay-ocracy, with our leaders relentlessly devoted to keeping people right where they are.

California progressives often oppose actual progress because of their desire to help Californians stay where they are. Housing and community activists routinely protest against badly needed new housing because it might replace existing residents. Momentum is building across the state for new rent controls or anti-eviction policies that privilege existing renters over those still looking for places to live. And then there’s the latest extension of let-them-stay logic: some Californians argue that shutting down dangerous homeless encampments, and coaxing camp residents into more stable housing, constitutes a “war on the poor.”

California’s many protections for existing residents may be well-intentioned, but they come at a high price, and not just in property tax discounts to elderly homeowners. California’s tendency to address its problems by keeping people in their existing housing actually makes the housing shortage worse.

Why? Because fewer people moving creates gridlock, according to a recent paper from USC scholars.

Mobility, and the vacancies created when people move, are essential to a functional housing market. Each move creates a chain of vacancies, which allows other people to move and find housing. For example, an older person who moves to a retirement community puts their house up for sale, which people who had been renters buy, leaving their previous apartment open for another renter—and so on.

This churn is far more important to mobility than new construction. The USC study estimates that over the course of a year, turnover of existing housing stock supplies more than 14 times as many vacancies, with the opportunity for a move, as those derived from new construction.

Vacancies are at a premium in California and across the country. Back in 1985, one in five families moved each year. But now fewer than one in 10 do. And over the past decade, mobility has slowed to a crawl at the local level—meaning that far fewer people move within their own neighborhood or city.

There are many reasons why people are staying put. Housing construction came to a standstill during the Great Recession, creating a shortage just as large numbers of young adult Millennials entered the housing market. With more people chasing fewer homes, vacancies plunged and have stayed low, while rents and home prices keep rising. Those people who want to move often can’t find anything affordable, or anything at all—so they just don’t move.

One obvious answer to this predicament is to build much more housing, which the state is starting to encourage. But it will take many years to make up for the shortage. In the meantime, California should stop subsidizing people to remain in their homes and instead devote more energy and money to making it possible for more Californians to move.

That means ending the tax discounts and other subsidies that keep older people in homes that they no longer need. (It also means building more housing for seniors who are departing their home.) Let’s take the state’s surplus funds and money saved from ending Prop 13 protections, and use it to help more people move from renters to buyers, with low-interest loans and down payment assistance. Let’s also subsidize both the rent and moving costs of lower-income people so they have more housing options.

Such subsidies should be exclusively for current Californians. (If someone moves in from out of state, they don’t create a vacancy chain here). Subsidies should also be more generous for people moving within their own city and county, because such local moves produce longer vacancy chains.

Creating a system that encourages more Californians to move could have benefits far beyond today’s housing needs.

In his new book, Move: The Forces Uprooting Us, the international relations expert and FutureMap director Parag Khanna foresees a future where moves aren’t a choice but a necessity. Khanna argues that, as climate change, political upheaval, economic crises and technological disruptions challenge existing communities and structures, we all may need to move to more livable places. That will require governments to have “collective resettlement strategies” for the world population.

“We can no longer afford to be passive observers of how human geography unfolds,” writes Khanna, adding that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be stuck in place anymore. After all, “a staggering share of our personal and professional lives hinges on mobility. Society only functions normally if we can move. Once you stop pedaling a bicycle, it quickly falls over. Our civilization is that bicycle.”

The post Let’s Pay Californians to Move appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The new “Cal 3” ballot initiative, which would create three states, has roots in pre-Civil War days, when the proposal was to split us into a pro-Union north and pro-slavery south. In these and all other cases, would-be splitters of the Golden State make the mistake of using the map to divvy us up, putting some regions into one new California and others into another new California.

Why can’t the splitters see that this geographic strategy is self-defeating?

After all, the fundamental reason for splitting California is that so many Californians feel stuck in a place with too many people who don’t understand us—simply because they are too different. So the splitters seek to tap into a hope—that we would get more of what we wanted if only we lived in smaller Californias where more people were like us.

But this logic simply doesn’t apply here. Our regions are too much like our state—too vast and too diverse. Even with three geographically drawn California states, millions of us would remain trapped with too many people with whom we don’t agree.

To split the state, it’s better to do this democratically, not geographically. Let every Californian choose their state, based on their dreams, not their address. Since California is a state of mind, doesn’t each mind deserve its own state?

The hard part of splitting California would be divining the right categories for division. To start, let’s stipulate that we shouldn’t be divided by age, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, or race, since forming states on a discriminatory basis is probably still unconstitutional, even under President Trump.

When I pose the question of how best to divide California non-geographically, the most frequent answer is, by income. Why not give the billionaires their own state, since they like to decide everything? Wouldn’t states based on income at least solve inequality? Unfortunately, no. Nothing would stop the billionaires from imposing their values and skewing the income curve in the other states that would serve the millionaires, yuppies, the poor, and whatever is left of the middle class.

Housing might offer a more effective divide. We could divide the place up by preference on that most divisive of issues—density—with those who like tall buildings near transit no longer forced to share a government with devotees of the single-family home.

Or why not exploit the way that Prop 13 has divided us by property taxes, with new homeowners paying more and effectively subsidizing longtime homeowners? You could divide the state according to the decade in which your current home was purchased, and the tax base set. Renters would get their own separate state.

Negotiating traffic is something that all Californians have in common, but how we do it is a point of contention. Why not one state for those who drive to work alone, and others for carpoolers, bicycle riders, and scooter enthusiasts? A small state could also serve the 5.3 percent of Californians who use public transit.

And if the internet is polarizing American democracy, why not deepen the digital divide by setting up states based on our preferred social media platform, smartphone brand, or by whether you rely on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or—the inhumanity!—basic cable.

Health is another area where Californians have both high standards and very different practices. Take exercise—practitioners of traditional yoga, hot yoga, barre exercises, jogging, and walking all deserve their own states. So do smokers, nonsmokers, pot smokers, and vapers. And why not stop fighting about food and just let vegans, vegetarians, meat eaters and devotees of the latest faddish diet all govern themselves? We might divide up the state based on childbirth preferences—with competing states of Doula and Midwife and Ob-Gyn.

Ideas matter in California, and the personal can be political. So we could split up under the competing banners of Second Wave, Third Wave, and Fourth Wave Feminism, with yet another state for those who say they’re pro-woman but just don’t like the word “feminist.”

And for a state so devoted to leading in climate change, a split based on energy usage feels like an opportunity for leadership. You could live in a different state depending on whether you prefer solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, or fossil fuels. This wouldn’t be much of an adjustment. People who live in the Petroleum State already have long commutes and high mortgages that keep them breathing exhaust, while the people in Solar State have subsidized panels and enjoy the good vibes of government-bedazzled credit. Residents of the Nuclear State could just leave the AC on all the time to keep their cores cool.

Now that I think about it, consumption so defines Californians that it might be the best way to separate us. Why not a different state—Ralphs, Vons, Safeway, Dollar Value, Albertsons, Whole Foods, Stater Bros—depending on where you do your grocery shopping? (I’d happily live in Trader Joe’s.) Or in coffee-crazed era, we could separate based on allegiance to Starbucks, Peet’s, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and McDonald’s—with a breakaway republic for those who prefer the hyperlocal.

Since Californians take their entertainment so seriously that we elect stars to high office, why not four different Californias, each ruled by a stunning musical diva? I’d live in Beyonceland, but would respect those who chose to reside in KatyPerryville, TaylorSwiftopia, or The State of Rihanna. We also could split into four states called Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix, and “Sorry, But I Actually Have a Girlfriend and a Life.”

The fairest way to create new Californias would be to assign each of us to a different state by lottery. The downside of such random splitting: Each of those states would end up looking like a smaller version of the California we have today.

And if you don’t like any of these ideas, why not try placating Tim Draper, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist bankrolling the current “Cal 3” ballot initiative?

I saw Draper recently in San Mateo, where he had closed down 3rd Avenue outside his private entrepreneurial university (Draper University for Heroes) for a “Blockchain Block Party.” Draper, like most rich people, thinks a lot about money. He’s a big believer in digital currency, which he sees as a positive force for disrupting economies to spur new ideas. Breaking up California geographically would inspire similar new thinking, he says.

At his party, he handed out chocolate Bitcoins (which were delicious) and revealed a giant banner reading, “Tim Draper Predicts…. Bitcoin Will Go to $250,000 by 2022.”

Of course, Bitcoin trades at $6,500 as I write. But this is California—to each their own. We could give Draper and his cryptocurrency disciples their own state, while also having states for those who pay with their phones or with credit cards.

The post Let’s Split up California Into Separate States of Mind appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Barring some wild technological advance, all Californians eventually will die.

But why can’t our property tax discounts live forever?

That’s the question raised by your glorious new idea: a ballot initiative to make our state’s famously generous Proposition 13 property tax savings even more generous—and portable.

Your “People’s Initiative to Protect Prop 13 Savings” is a proposal as perfectly Californian as the Golden Gate Bridge. It provides a concrete symbol of an undeniable reality: Limiting property taxes is the fundamental organizing principle of postmodern California.

Under our Prop 13 regime, the taxable value of every California home was frozen to its value as of March 1, 1975 (when Olivia Newton-John won the Record of the Year Grammy for “I Honestly Love You”)—or whatever subsequent date Californians first bought their houses. From that original base, the assessed value of a home cannot increase by more than two percent annually—no matter how much its actual value goes up.

In this way, Prop 13 provided homeowners an ever-escalating discount on property taxes as the value of their homes rose—in effect, it created a guaranteed subsidy for homeowners. And groups like yours have made this subsidy the most heavily protected part of our state’s finances. Californians will cut public school funding, or local government services, and they will raise the state income tax or sales tax, but property tax savings are untouchable. Over time, the imperative to protect those savings has shaped the state’s overall tax and budget systems—and how Californians think about state government itself.

But is Prop 13 sheltered enough? Something so fundamental to our state can always use more protection. So your new initiative shores up a fundamental weakness in the current regime: Homeowners don’t get to keep their low property taxes forever. Tragically, they lose the human right to that discounted tax assessment once they sell their property and move on to a new home.

What an outrage! If Californians want to move to a more expensive home (the American Dream!), or relocate for a job, or switch to a condo that allows for assisted living, they have to give up the tax savings they accumulated over many years and pay property taxes at—gasp—the market rate.

Fortunately, this is an outrage your initiative would end.

Your proposal would allow anyone over 55 to sell their California house and carry those same low property taxes to their next home, no matter the new home’s market value, or its location in the state, or the number of moves they make. Your tax savings follow you, and not just your house, as long as you live in California.

This historic change would represent, to borrow a line from the Great Emancipator, President Lincoln, a new birth of freedom. Prop 13 offered limited liberty; it only protected older homeowners from being forced out of their homes by rising property taxes. Your Son-of-Prop-13 also defends the very opposite freedom; it mercifully frees older homeowners who might feel trapped in their homes by their unwillingness to surrender those property tax savings.

If your initiative passes, longtime homeowners will finally be free—to sell their homes at the huge profit they’ve run up over the years, without losing their property tax discount in the process

Your own reasons for this policy are beyond noble. By allowing people to keep their property tax savings, you’d enable more elderly people to sell their homes at a steep profit and bring those few young people who can afford to buy into the market. Yes, this would also create more sales and commissions for realtors, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

No Californian, in touch with the established values of our state, could oppose such a proposal. But—forgive me—I must admit to one concern: Your plan doesn’t go far enough

So here I propose—very modestly—an amendment: Please don’t limit these property tax protections just to those who are old and alive. To express the central importance of property tax discounts in our state, every California homeowner must receive a property tax savings that is immortal.

I propose that every California homeowner be entitled to property tax savings until the apocalypse. It would be up to you—and your estate—how to exercise it. You could transfer the property tax savings—as a whole, or divided up into pieces—to whomever you want, for as long as you want.

I, for one, think of the children—especially children of longtime homeowners burdened with all that housing equity. My proposal aligns with the new federal tax bill, which limits the estate tax, thus boosting the real lifeblood of this country—inherited wealth.

Now, I recognize that not everyone in California will see the genius of my plan, or yours. For one thing, your proposal would cost the schools $1 billion, and mine would starve the educational beats of billions more. For another, critics have argued that Prop 13 is generational theft. That, in providing tax rebates to older, wealthier homeowners, it shifting more of the costs of government onto younger taxpayers. That Prop 13’s property tax limits are one reason why the state’s taxes on income and sales are so punishing. That Prop 13 does little to encourage the building of new housing the state needs. That it effectively reserves for older homeowners moneys that would be better spent on improving education and building housing and infrastructure so that California—with some of the nation’s highest rates of poverty and inequality—could create a better future.

And since your plan and mine would expand Prop 13’s tax protections, the critics say, you and I would just be making all the above problems worse.

Of course, such critics mean well, but they don’t recognize what our state has become. Don’t they know that old Californians are the future? The old represent the fastest growing demographic in our state (the proportion of Californians 65 and older should double by 2030)—while the population of children is declining. Why prioritize the education of the next generation, when so few of them will ever be able to afford to buy a home here?

Now, no plan rolls out perfectly, and mine might need a few brakes. For example, if new technologies allow Californians to live much longer, people could start hanging onto their subsidies past age 100, instead of dying and passing them on. But we could speed that transfer of property tax savings by amending the state’s aid-in-dying law to allow not only a doctor but a licensed realtor to oversee an assisted suicide. This would not damage the deceased homeowners, at least tax-wise, since under my plan their discounts would be immortal.

Sure, some people would call this extreme. Some people might even suggest that my whole plan prioritizes property tax savings over all other concerns, including life itself.

Which is to say: Some people just don’t understand what California is all about.

The post My Modest Proposal to Make Property Tax Breaks Live Forever appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.