California Voters Weigh New Tax On Rich To Boost EV Adoption (apnews.com) 133
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Should California's richest residents pay higher taxes to help put more electric vehicles on the road? That's a question the state's voters are weighing in the election that concludes Tuesday. Proposition 30 would place a new 1.75% tax on incomes above $2 million, which is estimated to be fewer than 43,000 taxpayers. It would raise billions annually, with most going to help subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles and construction of charging stations. Twenty percent of the money would go toward boosting resources to fight wildfires. The ballot fight comes as California races to reduce emissions from transportation -- by far the largest source -- and meet its ambitious climate goals. Wildfires, meanwhile, are spewing more carbon into the air as they become larger and more destructive, threatening to set back the state's progress.
Though Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed for a policy that bans the sale of most new gas-powered cars in the state in 2035, he does not support Proposition 30. That's pit him against the state Democratic Party and a number of environmental and public health organizations. Newsom has called it a taxpayer-funded giveaway to rideshare companies, which under California regulations must ensure nearly all trips booked through their services are zero-emission by 2030. Lyft supplied most of the "yes" campaign's funding; competitor Uber has not taken a position.
Backers of the measure, including most major environmental groups, say the state needs a dedicated, robust source of funding to set up infrastructure that can handle more plug-in cars and to help Californians of all income levels to buy them. The money won't go exclusively to passenger cars; the state could also tap it to put cleaner delivery trucks, buses and even e-bikes on the roads. A portion of the money must go to help people in low-income or disadvantaged communities buy or access electric cars. [...] Rideshare companies like Lyft do not own the vehicles their drivers use, but they are still on the hook to ensure that trips booked through their app will be zero-emission. Proposition 30 does not include any provisions that exclusively benefit Lyft. But Newsom and other opponents say the measure would allow Lyft to rely on taxpayer dollars, not company money, to help its drivers transition to electric cars. Supporters of the measure, though, say an effort to raise taxes on the rich to boost electric vehicle adoption was in the works before Lyft got involved.
Though Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed for a policy that bans the sale of most new gas-powered cars in the state in 2035, he does not support Proposition 30. That's pit him against the state Democratic Party and a number of environmental and public health organizations. Newsom has called it a taxpayer-funded giveaway to rideshare companies, which under California regulations must ensure nearly all trips booked through their services are zero-emission by 2030. Lyft supplied most of the "yes" campaign's funding; competitor Uber has not taken a position.
Backers of the measure, including most major environmental groups, say the state needs a dedicated, robust source of funding to set up infrastructure that can handle more plug-in cars and to help Californians of all income levels to buy them. The money won't go exclusively to passenger cars; the state could also tap it to put cleaner delivery trucks, buses and even e-bikes on the roads. A portion of the money must go to help people in low-income or disadvantaged communities buy or access electric cars. [...] Rideshare companies like Lyft do not own the vehicles their drivers use, but they are still on the hook to ensure that trips booked through their app will be zero-emission. Proposition 30 does not include any provisions that exclusively benefit Lyft. But Newsom and other opponents say the measure would allow Lyft to rely on taxpayer dollars, not company money, to help its drivers transition to electric cars. Supporters of the measure, though, say an effort to raise taxes on the rich to boost electric vehicle adoption was in the works before Lyft got involved.
Turnabout is fair play (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a stupid policy and a bad idea in general, but it at least considers balancing the books.
Re: Turnabout is fair play (Score:4, Insightful)
The subsidies on BEVs are nothing compared to the subsidies for gasoline and diesel.
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Re: Turnabout is fair play (Score:5, Informative)
Removing subsidies for gasoline will force us to pay the same rates as Europe. No politician would ever sign off on that, Biden is already getting enough grief over the fact that the oil companies have been gouging the public for the last year and raking in record profits.
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Removing subsidies for gasoline will force us to pay the same rates as Europe.
Interesting words. I wonder how you came to that conclusion.
If there are no taxes or subsidies at all on fuel, the price is about a 1/4 of what Americans pay at the pump. I have paid those prices in the real world. Less than a dollar per American gallon. Subsidies would reduce that price even more.
TL;DR, Europe taxes gasoline a LOT because it is a lucrative revenue source. It has nothing to do with mitigating climate change, it is steady revenue because demand is ineleastic (I am NOT changing that to 'not e
Re: Welcome to the IMF world view (Score:2)
The big subsidy is Mideast military adventurism. Post-70s oil crisis, we've had our finger on the "trigger" so to speak to compel lower and stabler fuel prices to secure the functioning of our oil gobbling military.
That's phasing out with domestic production ramping up. Now we are fucking with oil markets in a whole new way: Russia.
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The big subsidy is Mideast military adventurism.
That's not what the word "subsidy" means, Humpty Dumpty.
I don't support military adventurism, but misusing words doesn't help. The US military is a jobs program as well as a payback to contributors to both political parties, but it's not a gas subsidy for any useful definition of the word subsidy.
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In a roundabout kind of way it is. It's spending public money with the goal (among others) of keeping oil prices low. Or at least that's the claim.
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We shouldn't be subsidizing that either.
Agreed, but it isn't so simple. Government support for ICEs is mostly structural rather than specific cash subsidies that can be easily repealed.
Government support for ICEs is also very popular since the alternative is more expensive gasoline.
A greater error doesn't cancel out or remove the folly of a smaller one.
Actually, it kinda does. If X and Y are direct alternatives, then subsidizing both equally helps keep the competition level.
The best way to help EVs is higher gas taxes, but that is a political non-starter.
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Given to the set of Wealthy people, set W, where W can be defined however you damn well please. I have a plug-in vehicle, and I'm not what most would consider wealthy. Yes, I make more money than a farmer in Alabama perhaps but less than most of my farmer relatives in California (who drive absurdly expensive F150s). My income is mostly from salary, not from inheritance or investments. There are EVs cheaper than my plug-in hybrid, do not assume that all EVs are like first generation Teslas deliberately m
Trading safety for cost (Score:2)
There are EVs cheaper than my plug-in hybrid ... There are EVs cheaper than your Honda Civic out there
If you are referring to EVs not coming from traditional US, EU, Japanese and South Korean automakers, then those EVs are often extremely dangerous to ride in according to crash testing. They are minimalist and trade safety for cost.
Re: Turnabout is fair play (Score:2)
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I'm willing to bet that the bottom half of tax payers purchased nowhere near half of the electric vehicles that received tax credits or other forms of government subsidies in the past.
The bottom half of taxpayers don't purchase new vehicles period. Trickle-down economics is a failed concept in general, but it does still apply well in some circumstances. Giving incentives to people who can afford something to help push policy is far more effective than giving incentives to people who can't and thus won't. The goal of such policies is not to push poor people into buying expensive cars, it's to ensure more cars get purchased (by whomever) in order to boost economies of scale.
And that policy
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If you own 80% of the economy, you should pay 80% of the taxes due to run that economy. Sloughing responsibilities ends in lots of dead people.
Re: Turnabout is fair play (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla not only makes a profit on their cars, they make a larger profit per car then most auto manufacturers.
They've always made a profit on each car. In the past the company as a whole was only profitable because of the emissions credits, but that was only due to them spending everything they could to build new factories and design new cars.
They've been profitable as a company for awhile even without those credits.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Busine... [nikkei.com]
This is incorrect (Score:2)
It's from 2021. Tesla made some short term profits in 2020 (this articles numbers don't include them) because of massive car shortages due to COVID that allowed them to jack up prices. That won't last now that competition is setting in.
Furthermore, the fact that they're only pulling in a few hundred million isn't a sign of how successful they are, it's a sign of how doomed they are. That number is shrinking because auto manufactures don't need to pay them to make compliance cars. Tesla gets
We lose money on every sale (Score:2)
Tesla might be growing in terms of manufacturing capacity but they're not innovating anywhere. All the innovation is in batteries and that's coming from Panasonic
Go look up how patents from University projects work. The government doesn't own the work it just funds it. Typically the patents are jointly owned by the professors that discovered them and University they work at. That would be fine if the money was going to reduce tuition costs and the way that state and fede
Tesla isn't innovating? (Score:2)
Tesla might be growing in terms of manufacturing capacity but they're not innovating anywhere. All the innovation is in batteries and that's coming from Panasonic
Say what? You must have a very strict definition of "innovating". To most of us, inventing stuff counts, even if it is "off the shoulders of giants" - IE if you trace any technology development back, and stop when it hits university research, no duh, most stuff developed "comes from university research".
Most innovation is evolutionary more than revolutionary, after all. You work off the work of others, and yes, that includes university research, which by their nature, can be more theoretical in nature th
Re: Turnabout is fair play (Score:5, Insightful)
If we switch 100% to EVs.....one good solar flare and whew....we're all stuck for years and years till the grid comes back up.
You think that refineries and gas stations are going to operate without electricity?
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Gas stations will be in trouble, but at least some refineries bootstrap their own electrical needs.
Re: Turnabout is fair play (Score:2)
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Biodiesel might work, but you need to be able to make methanol and sodium/potassium hydroxide. That means distilling wood alcohol without poisoning yourself (good luck) and burning tons of wood to make enough lye from the ash. You won't have electricity to produce lye via electrochemistry.
And fin
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And you have a still at home that can produce at least 90% ethanol?
Oh, that's easy. You can distill to high purity if you just have some benzine which you can get from... D'oh!
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Quality reflux stills are easy enough to find [clawhammersupply.com]
Where I live (in LA) things like sugar cane are quite plentiful.
But c'mon, you can find sources of sugar in nature just about anywhere.
Those folks in the 1700's and so (Whiskey Rebellion) years and earlier didn't seem to have problems finding things to ferment to distill.
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Quality reflux stills are easy enough to find [clawhammersupply.com]
Sure. Just pop into PostApocalypzone and have a 2-day zombie deliver it to you.
Those folks in the 1700's and so (Whiskey Rebellion) years and earlier didn't seem to have problems finding things to ferment to distill.
1 gallon of pure ethanol (that's about 6 kg of sugar) is enough for a typical car to travel, what, 10 miles? You won't be able to grow enough sugarcane to provide any meaningful amount of fuel. Heck, even corn (which is more efficient) is barely energy-positive with large-scale mechanized agriculture.
I would hope I was smart enough not to try drinking any methanol I distill....
Yup. Consider yourself dead if you actually _try_ to do that. The danger is in the vapor, which is MORE dangerous than ingested met
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Did you miss the part where I mentioned home distilling for fuel.....and also, there's conversions for bio-fuels....maybe bio-diesel vehicles...?
I'm a little confused. In your apocalyptic scenario, _what_ are people meant to be distilling into fuel at home? The supply chain broke down. Are we fermenting the leftovers after we eat our neighbors?
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Most ICE vehicles would be scrapped in the event of a major solar flare of that nature.
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I don't think any sort of vehicle itself would be damaged by a solar flare, given they're pretty much faraday cages.
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Eh
It's maybe not too hard to shield an ECU if you put your mind to it, but most common consumer vehicles are not properly shielded. There have already been portable EMP devices that can frag an ECU at fairly close range. Another Carrington event would not be kind to automotive computers.
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As has been pointed out, a solar flare is not an EMP. It can cause electrical problems in the grid, but most isolated electronics should be fine.
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A few emergency ICE vehicles...old fashioned ones set aside would be a good thing.
Only if they're MFI diesels or have carbs & points ignition, otherwise they'll be just as dead from the solar flare as the EVs.
Cars are actually pretty EMP resistant (Score:2)
In addition to this, most cars are actually pretty EMP resistant, due to the necessity of them being tough enough to stand the vibrations, temperature swings, heat, etc...
Plus, well, something designed for 200+ volts DC at something like around 200 Amps, is also going to sneer at most EMP bursts short of "float a frog".
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The power grid is made to deal with those events, specially that you can have minutes of warning before the thing even hits earth.
And it is in a way a explosion fan like yourself would enjoy.
Re: Turnabout is fair play (Score:2)
I really doubt you have even the slightest understanding of what EMP does. EVs are no more vulnerable to such an event than ICE. If such an event were to occur, the components most likely to fry are the semiconductors. Every car made since the 80's has many of them and doesn't even work without them.
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I wonder, what the window size would be for the magnitude of such a flare that would be big enough to destroy the power grid for years but not toast all humans on earth, destroy the world food supply, catalyze basically every volatile chemical compound on earth, etc...
I imagage the odds being pretty low that we would need an ambulance
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With sufficient warning, the grid can be made robust against flare activity, significantly reducing damage and recovery time. We're working on the 'warning' part: https://www.esa.int/Space_Safe... [esa.int]
Re:Turnabout is fair play (Score:5, Informative)
They don't actually make any money selling the cars themselves they make money through that government program that lets major car manufacturers pay them to build electric cars in exchange for not having to build them themselves
From Tesla's 10-Q filing for 2022Q3 [sec.gov]:
Automotive Sales: $17.785 billion
Automotive regulatory credits: $286 million
So I guess you're right, except for being off by 62x. They even made 5x on energy and storage (solar - $1.117B) than they did on regulatory credits.
But hey, everyone loves a good lie that aligns with their political interests.
You're quoting their sales (Score:2)
Oh, and the reason that number is only $286 million is Tesla is losing those contracts as car companies transition from paying for compliance cars to making their own EVs.
Tesla'
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Did you not even look at the regulatory filing I linked? Literally right there, and shows that you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Net profit: $3.292B
Revenue from regulatory credits: $286M
Please explain how they turned a profit that is over 10x the amount of the subsidy, but how they aren't profitable without the subsidy.
Also explain how you whiffed it so bad on what is incredibly obvious math, and feel free to come up with entirely different justifications for the conclusions you have made
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I'm also seriously skeptical about much of what you're presenting as some kind of fact. Other posters have already called much of it into question and p
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That aside, the reality is that electric cars are still a luxury product.
The reality is that the early adopters have to pay the high initial costs for those lithium batteries, so targeting an early adopter luxury market makes sense. Once the technology for batteries matures and less expensive battery options are available the economics changes radically and electric cars become broadly economical.
Re:Turnabout is fair play (Score:5, Informative)
That aside, the reality is that electric cars are still a luxury product.
The list price of a Nissan Leaf is $27,400. A Honda Civic starts at $24,600. It's true that you can get even cheaper cars - as low as $13,600 for a Chevrolet Spark - but it's hard to see the Leaf as a luxury car.
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The reality is that I'm currently in the process of buying an EV and the loan payment to do so is going to be covered by the saving in fuel costs. Now that sum works out because of the difference in cost between electricity and petrol where I am, combined with the low fuel efficiency of our old car, but we are getting very close to the point where the TCO of an EV is lower than an ICE.
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Exactly which government program allows GM to pay Tesla so that GM doesn't have to comply with CAFE standards?
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It's actually built into the CAFE standards. Basically it's a "Cap and trade" system.
It doesn't allow GM to completely not comply with CAFE standards, by the way.
But it's more that, through contract, Tesla vehicles can count as GM or other purchasing auto company vehicles for the purposes of CAFE.
The idea is that congress wants lower emissions, more ZEVs, etc... However, without a trading system, there's no incentive for companies to do more than the bare minimum. Also, it's possible that a company can't
Re:Turnabout is fair play (Score:4, Informative)
That's not a problem with Tesla. The issue you're raising is the concept of carbon credits and cap and trade schemes. They've always been smoke and mirrors designed to enrich "green" companies that are endeared by the Left and get rich off of "environmental" legislation.
As others have pointed out, Tesla is profitable on every car sold. They have higher margins than all the major car companies. They did greatly benefit from compliance credits, but not as profit, but as money spent on R&D and expansion. Going the luxury route was the smart move. With limited production capacity and limited battery supply, they could have built the same number of cheap cars or luxury cars and sold all they made (you could argue they could have built more cheap cars with less range, but factory capacity would still have been an issue). Going luxury gave higher margins and more funds to put back in to growth. The result was the same number of BEVs on the road, but also faster ramp up of more production and thus more displacement of ICE sales. When you want to grow a market, you start by targeting those with more money. Once you achieve mature technology and higher volume, you can build things cheaper and expand to cheaper products.
Re: Turnabout is fair play (Score:2)
Dude you're fuckin stupid; you have that way wrong. Compliance cars are made in order for auto makers to meet emissions quotas on the total cars they sell, so they sell them at a loss. Emissions aren't even relevant for Tesla, so they have no need to make compliance cars
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Mod parent up, and I guess I have to give you the requote against the censor trolls. I even feel like congratulating you for many (or most?) of your successes in pushing their panic buttons.
One of the major problems with Tesla is that it's discouraging the production of entry level electric cars in favor of high-end luxury electrics that exist to be compliance cars.
If you don't know a compliance car is a car built in order to meet government mandates for clean air instead of being a viable product. Companies like Ford, Toyota and GM love them because they don't want to invest in the r&d need it to make electric cars viable. And they know if they wait long enough the universities will eventually develop that tech for them.
Tesla's entire business is built on making compliance cars. They don't actually make any money selling the cars themselves they make money through that government program that lets major car manufacturers pay them to build electric cars in exchange for not having to build them themselves
with lift and uber force to make employees then th (Score:2)
with lift and uber forced to make drivers employees then they may as well supply the cars to the drivers.
and they can't rent them out to them (unless after rent fees they still at least make min wage (tips not counted)) and can't force them to pay for any damage / fuel / miles / cleaning / upkeep / etc)
California wants EVs to take over? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the wealthy of California, who probably already have EVs if they want them, can help pay for it.
Not really sure what the beef here is - this is actually helping one of the biggest barriers to adoption: higher up-front cost of EVs make it harder for lower income buyers to be able to buy.
I guess it's fine mandating what poor people must do, as long as you don't need to help them do it?
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I take it you don't believe that the wealthy of California won't just move across the State Line to Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona?
Only their residency needs to actually move (Score:2)
I take it you don't believe that the wealthy of California won't just move across the State Line to Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona?
And keep in mind only their residency needs to actually move, they can still have their "vacation homes" in California regardless of where their residency for taxation is.
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If they are dodging taxes, they aren't going to Oregon.
Re: California wants EVs to take over? (Score:3)
That's perpetually the right's argument about pretty much any new policy in CA, but over and over again the numbers show that it isn't true. The people who are leaving CA are people who can't afford to live here anymore, and their exit is more than made up for by new people moving in.
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I left California for another "high tax" state with better weather. I pay ~35% lower income tax and half the sales tax now; my property tax bill would be 3x as much in California as well for the same cost home. (I'm not on the Right either.)
You do get to a certain point where it feels like taxation without representation in California, and that does push a small percentage of high earners out.
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They'll move out as you mention. Additionally upper income people pay most of the taxes in California so they'll lose that revenue. The top 1% pays nearly 50% of California's income taxes.
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Why do lower income people need to buy? We're supply constrained on batteries. So long as every BEV manufactured sells, the net effect of BEV vs. ICE sales is achieved. Lower income people are also much more likely to lack sufficient charging access. BEVs make the most sense for those who own homes and can charge over night. People in apartments, condos, houses with street parking, etc are far off from having consistent charging options. That will change in time, but not near term.
Subsidizing lower inc
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This is Machiavellian, but correct. If the aim is to improve air quality and reduces money going to petro-states, so long as we sell all the cars we make, it doesn't matter who gets them.
The problem is that that's only half the equation, and, once the chip shortages are over it's likely car companies will be able to make more EVs than can sell at the price points they're selling them at.
The other half of the equation is that EVs are vastly cheaper to run. So giving the rich, for whom gas costs are immater
Wonder if the Rich will flee California? (Score:2)
1.75% tax on people making over $2m. I wonder how many millionaires will relocate somewhere else instead of being subjected to higher taxes?
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Bye bye. Don't let the invisible hand of the market smack you on the way out!
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Bye bye. Don't let the invisible hand of the market smack you on the way out!
Funding an artificial market for lower/middle class EV through a tax on wealth is the invisible hand of the market?
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Yes. Because the market has many, many invisible hands. Often they are connected to lobbyists, campaign contributions, threats of layoffs, etc. That gets the invisible hand of tariffs, the invisible hand of crop subsidies, the invisible hand of utilities making profits from building power stations, with no incentive to lower per watt cost, etc.
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All of them. I mean, even if they don't leave, they'll have the resources to fake residence somewhere else, while still living in California. That's the problem with trying to tax the rich locally. There's always another pond for them to hop to, and they always have the resources to do it.
Re:Wonder if the Rich will flee California? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's kind of an interesting question, but keep in mind that the marginal tax rate on someone making $2M in California right now is 49.3%. It's hard to understand how pushing that to 51% would cause a mass exodus, unless it's just the straw that breaks the camel's back. The bigger deal for someone in that position was the SALT limit that was part of the Trump tax cuts. Previously that high earner could deduct the state income tax for their federal taxes, but not anymore, which essentially raised their marginal tax rate by 3-4 percentage points. Have we seen an exodus of wealthy people from California since 2018?
Re:Wonder if the Rich will flee California? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have we seen an exodus of wealthy people from California since 2018?
According to this site [deptofnumbers.com], California's real median income was 4.32% higher in 2021 than in 2018, while the U.S. was up by 4.54% in that same time frame.
Florida was up by 5.38% and Texas up by 2.36% for red states with similar population and/or economies, and the reddest state in the union, Wyoming, was down 1.87%.
So if there was a mass exodus, its effect was pretty minimal.
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So they'll move somewhere worse to dodge 1.75% when they're already making $2m/year AGI?
My guess is "zero".
Mariginal tax rate is not 49% (Score:3)
For one thing, the wealthy can afford to buy assets that appreciate, and so make much money on capital gains, taxed at a reduced rate. Plus I do not think gains on family home are taxed in CA.
Same thing happens here in Australia.
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Plus I do not think gains on family home are taxed in CA.
Not true, it's treated like regular income, although the first $250k of gains ($500k for married couples) is not taxed.
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If filing the paperwork and pretending they actually live in , oh, Wyoming instead of California costs X, and the tax increase is X + Some amount, they'll fake it.
Re:Wonder if the Rich will flee California? (Score:4, Informative)
Silicon Valley techies and Hollywood movie stars are not likely to leave California to avoid paying taxes on the millions they are making from living in California.
Sure, some will leave... but others will take their place and their well paying jobs -along with paying the taxes on that income.
Note that this tax has no effect on the actual rich -those with long-term investments that fuel their lifestyles across generations.
Despite all the naysayers, California's economy continues to grow. It just supplanted Germany as the world's 4th largest economy.
Remote employees who sometimes visit the CA office (Score:2)
... the millions they are making from living in California.
Correction, making from working in California. Having a legal residency in another state and "vacationing" in CA for over six month might let CA dispute the residency but "working" in CA is something else, a possible loophole. Of course it's all moot if they are in CA for less than six months.
I'm thinking of athletes who only reside in CA for the "season", or actors while 'filming" TV or a movie.
For others, let's call them remote employees who sometimes visit the CA office. Is that a potential loopho
Relocate may be a strong word (Score:3)
1.75% tax on people making over $2m. I wonder how many millionaires will relocate somewhere else instead of being subjected to higher taxes?
Relocate may be a strong word. Only their legal residency needs to actually move, they can still have their "vacation homes" in California regardless of where their legal residency for taxation is.
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1.75% tax on people making over $2m. I wonder how many millionaires will relocate somewhere else instead of being subjected to higher taxes?
Because the rich love living in dirty shitholes that spend nothing on infrastructure and development to better the area in which you live?
Look I'm completely mobile, I *could* live in a low tax country and keep every cent I make. Or... I could continue paying high taxes (far higher than California) and enjoy the excellent roads, infrastructure, healthcare, schooling, parent support, mobility etc. etc. that taxes pay for.
It may come as a surprise to you but people typically live where they *like* to live, no
Externalized costs (Score:4, Insightful)
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Use it to fund desalination plants (Score:4, Interesting)
They should use it to fund ocean water desalination plants as well as new pipelines and pump systems and water reclamation systems.
This tax doesn't efficiently help EV adoption. (Score:3)
This proposition is just another tax on the wealthy to randomly fund some need.
If CA really wanted to increase EV adoption (vs. just tax and spend), wouldn't they be more efficient by putting a sales tax on the thing they're trying to replace (ICE cars)?
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This proposition is just another tax on the wealthy to randomly fund some need.
If CA really wanted to increase EV adoption (vs. just tax and spend), wouldn't they be more efficient by putting a sales tax on the thing they're trying to replace (ICE cars)?
Taxing ICEs won't make EVs more affordable. It will just mean less people can afford to drive. Some will see that as a win for the climate. Others will see it is simply increasing the number of people living in poverty.
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Putting the Cart before the Horse (Score:2)
Before you start pushing anyone to fully jump on the EV bandwagon, consider:
1) Beef up the power grid to ensure it can handle the extra pull from everyone and their brother charging a vehicle
( Tip: If your State is still doing rolling blackouts during periods where demand > supply, your grid is not ready for EV )
2) Curious why no one talks about the cost of replacing the battery arrays. Five to Seven years in, it's going to happen and
it is far from cheap. ( I think Tesla's run ~$15-20k ? )
3) Those t
Re:Putting the Cart before the Horse (Score:5, Informative)
Beef up the power grid to ensure it can handle the extra pull from everyone and their brother charging a vehicle
Grid enhancement is happening here in California. Large infrastructure improvements take time, but several are in progress and more are scheduled. And several improvements will also address changes to reduce the likelihood of starting wildfires due to high winds causing power line failures.
Curious why no one talks about the cost of replacing the battery arrays.
Those battery packs have been lasting much longer than their original estimated lifespans. The prices of the batteries may drop as production ramps up and more manufacturers and battery chemistries are added to the mix.
You're not going to pull a trailer with a Leaf or a Tesla
Non-sedan vehicle options exist and many more are on their way. Ford F-150 Lightning, Chevy Silverado EV, Rivian R1T, Tesla Cybertruck, and a slew of SUVs including a ton of Tesla Model Y and Model X SUVs already on the road.
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There are EVs that tow, but range drops drastically when towing. That is a problem that will need to be addressed before gas and diesel can be phased out entirely, because towing a trailer long distances is apparently quite a pain currently. Besides the low range, charge points are generally not designed with trailers in mind, so best case scenario for the most part is needing to back up with the trailer after charging, and worst case is having to find somewhere to park the trailer, unhook, charge, and co
Teslas can tow... (Score:2)
Teslas CAN tow however?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Video of a model X towing an "uncooperative" 2500, in that the parking brake is still set on the truck. Then there's going to be the cyber truck eventually. 100% torque at 0 rpm is great for moving things.
As for batteries (no need to specify "battery array", a battery is already an array of cells), not really, they're already lasting over a decade, not just 5-7 years, and prices are dropping like a rock for them. Rebuilt batteries are available for
Prop 30 going down (Score:2)
As of 9:30 PST, the Sec State site at 35% reporting has No winning 56.9%.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
Given how a minority of the population pays in more than they get out, this continuing push to 'tax the rich' is risky. That and high earners are more easily able to relocate where they won't be increasingly raised to fund government largesse.
IMF discussion of fossil fuel 'subsidies' (Score:2)
This is an interesting document arguing that the Western world's failure to get the users of fossil fuels to pay the full cost of the pollution that they cause constitutes a subsidy to them worth over a $trillion a year
https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/... [imf.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed!
Once the EV manufacturing hurdles of the last year have passed, we could spend that entire fossil fuel subsidy every year on shoving EVs to everyone who'll take one and helping everyone and their brother set up charging/grid support infrastructure.
But it seems like we could start banking that subsidy now, and ramp up the amount, so that we get more infrastructure-supporting infrastructure going -- lithium extraction, for example.
A promise of $X this year, $X*2, then next, $X*3, then next, etc. for so
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"It's not clear what caused this."
"Fuck Off, we're full" - Austin, TX
Re:Followed by 43,000 residents leave California (Score:5, Informative)
Silicon Valley techies and Hollywood movie stars are not leaving California to avoid paying taxes on the millions they are making from living in California.
Sure, some will leave... but others will take their place and their well paying jobs -along with paying the taxes on that income.
Despite all the naysayers, California's economy continues to grow. It just supplanted Germany as the world's 4th largest economy.
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The only ones from that crowd that this tax would apply to are the Twitter execs that Musk fired. The rest are just middle class peons. Anyone with talent, skills, and a network of friends/acquaintances will be working again within 6 months.
Re: (Score:2)
This site [linkedin.com], which may have some small measure of insight into the matter, disagrees.
Re: Followed by 43,000 residents leave California (Score:2)
I guess you don't work in IT?
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California is a great place to live if you're wealthy. Climate (even now), scenery, culture -- it's glorious. A little bit of extra taxes isn't going to change that.
On the other hand, if you're poor, California can be a struggle. But then if you're poor, you're probably not in the market for an EV.
Re:Tax The Rich (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
EVs designed to share their stored charge with the grid would stop those rolling blackouts. And the owners of the EVs would make a profit doing it.
https://electrek.co/2022/08/18... [electrek.co]