[81alum]

Interesting points, but when you look at the numbers you will find that most people leaving California are poor and middle class, and they mostly leave over housing, not over jobs or taxes.  Rich people overwhelmingly stay despite the taxes.  Very few jobs have left, although you can always argue that new jobs might have arrived in greater numbers if policies were different.

But it is really mainly about housing, and it has been since before Prop 13.

One of the critical reasons there is a shortage of housing is in fact zoning.  Although environmental regulations play a role, they are not the main reason for the problem.  Since Prop 13 (1978) put limits on local property taxes, cities often discover that new real estate development does not pay for itself--from a city government point-of-view.    The additional property taxes that new residential development generates is often less than the costs of providing services to the new development.  Furthermore, each time the state has a budget crisis it seizes local property tax dollars for state purposes, leaving local governments in the lurch.  Naturally, local governments looked for ways to mitigate their dependence on property taxes.

New commercial/retail has a potential to generate sales tax and not only property tax, and so it became far more attractive to a city planner.  And on the expense side, a strip mall does not generate the need for schools and the heavy requirements for spread out streets, sewers, and police and fire that a sprawling residential neighborhood does require.  When municipal governments gained the ability to keep increments of sales taxes for local use, all the incentives were to zone commercial rather than residential.  Many cities grossly overbuilt commercial and under built residential as a result.  Before the 2008 housing collapse, we had dozens of abandoned and semi-used strip malls spread out amidst an overheated housing market. 

All that said, it varies a lot inside the state.  One would hardly say that zoning laws have unduly inhibited housing development in Modesto or Tracy or Stockton.  Stockton grossly overbuilt housing and became the foreclosure capital of America--surpassing even Florida.  In some neighborhoods every third house was empty--heck, there were a couple of new developments that were entirely empty.  Stockton became the largest American city after Detroit to go bankrupt.  The more housing it zoned the worse its budget became.  It now has less than half the police force it once had--with the expected increases in crime and a continuing vicious circle downward as crime further depresses property values. 

All these issues reflect failures of the California political system to anticipate the consequences of a shift from a property-tax system to a sales-tax system for funding.  In any case, I do recommend Larry Gerston's book, which traces many of our current problems to political failures in both parties.

[81alum]

Interesting points, but when you look at the numbers you will find that most people leaving California are poor and middle class, and they mostly leave over housing, not over jobs or taxes.  Rich people overwhelmingly stay despite the taxes.  Very few jobs have left, although you can always argue that new jobs might have arrived in greater numbers if policies were different.

But it is really mainly about housing, and it has been since before Prop 13.

One of the critical reasons there is a shortage of housing is in fact zoning.  Although environmental regulations play a role, they are not the main reason for the problem.  Since Prop 13 (1978) put limits on local property taxes, cities often discover that new real estate development does not pay for itself--from a city government point-of-view.    The additional property taxes that new residential development generates is often less than the costs of providing services to the new development.  Furthermore, each time the state has a budget crisis it seizes local property tax dollars for state purposes, leaving local governments in the lurch.  Naturally, local governments looked for ways to mitigate their dependence on property taxes.

New commercial/retail has a potential to generate sales tax and not only property tax, and so it became far more attractive to a city planner.  And on the expense side, a strip mall does not generate the need for schools and the heavy requirements for spread out streets, sewers, and police and fire that a sprawling residential neighborhood does require.  When municipal governments gained the ability to keep increments of sales taxes for local use, all the incentives were to zone commercial rather than residential.  Many cities grossly overbuilt commercial and under built residential as a result.  Before the 2008 housing collapse, we had dozens of abandoned and semi-used strip malls spread out amidst an overheated housing market. 

All that said, it varies a lot inside the state.  One would hardly say that zoning laws have unduly inhibited housing development in Modesto or Tracy or Stockton.  Stockton grossly overbuilt housing and became the foreclosure capital of America--surpassing even Florida.  In some neighborhoods every third house was empty--heck, there were a couple of new developments that were entirely empty.  Stockton became the largest American city after Detroit to go bankrupt.  The more housing it zoned the worse its budget became.  It now has less than half the police force it once had--with the expected increases in crime and a continuing vicious circle downward as crime further depresses property values. 

All these issues reflect failures of the California political system to anticipate the consequences of a shift from a property-tax system to a sales-tax system for funding.  In any case, I do recommend Larry Gerston's book, which traces many of our current problems to political failures in both parties.