bdowling · HackerTrans

tháng trướcdiscuss

Might as well post the full version, which adds context:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.

Taking, as he did, the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

Trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to His will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever.

—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892-1971

bdowling

4 tháng trướcdiscuss

Powerful interests want it to be true.

bdowling

9 tháng trướcdiscuss

Arson is also an inherently dangerous felony, which is why when someone dies because of arson, the arsonist can be charged with murder.

bdowling

3 năm trướcdiscuss

> “If you want to use images produced by Human Generator in commercial projects, contact us.”

If there is no copyright in AI-generated images, then how can they possibly enforce this?

bdowling

4 năm trướcdiscuss

Thank you for clarifying. I updated my response to add a note about this.

bdowling

4 năm trướcdiscuss

(Edit: See reply. Counterintuitively, a purchaser intending to gift a firearm is the transferee as far as Form 4473 is concerned.)

> Ironically, if you take someone shopping to buy them a gun as a gift, by law you're the one that's supposed to have the background check run - not the recipient.

That is contrary to what is on ATF Form 4473 [0]. Form 4473, question 21.a., asks if the purchaser is the actual transferee of the firearm. The form makes it very clear that it is a crime to answer "yes" if the buyer is purchasing the firearm to transfer to another person.

[0] https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/4473-part-1-firearms-trans...

bdowling

5 năm trướcdiscuss

Prop 19's targeting inheritance exemptions will have uneven effects. The very wealthy won't be affected at all because, on the advice of their estate planners, they will have transferred their properties into corporate entities long ago. (Recall that properties owned by corporations aren't reassessed when stock ownership changes and Prop 19 didn't change that.) Heirs to properties worth less than $1m who intend to use the property as a primary residence are also unaffected.

There is, however, a large group of ordinary middle-class people, particularly in cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, who own what were once modest homes that are now worth more than $1m.[0] Their heirs will be burdened when the property tax bills double (or more) in one year, even if the heirs use the property as their primary residence. More heirs will sell inherited properties, which is exactly what the real estate brokers who promoted Prop 19 intended. $1m+ is also a sweet spot for broker profitability.

The intent of Prop 13 was to stabilize property taxes after the double-digit hyperinflation of the 1970s by capping annual increases in assessed value at 2%. That created stability for individuals and businesses that led to massive investment in and migration to California.

Prop 19 undoes that stability, but only for a narrow group of people: heirs to $1m+ properties from parents who did not have sophisticated estate planners. From Wikipedia:

    The Case–Shiller housing index shows prices in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco appreciated 170% from 1987 (the start of available data) to 2012 while the 2% cap only allowed a 67% increase in taxes on homes that were not sold during this 26-year period.

[1][2]. On average, heirs to $1m+ homes in those markets will be hit with roughly a 103% increase in one year (170%-67%). So, Prop 19 hits a narrow group of people with a 100%+ tax increase when Prop 13 was supposed to limit increases to 2%. A compromise rule could have been to spread out the increase over the course of a few years, but that wouldn't induce more sales like the brokers' lobbying group wanted.

Personally, I think it would be fair to increase the annual cap from 2% to 4%. In a decade or so, that would undo much of the tax discrepancies caused by Prop 13. And the effects would be spread out, so people could plan for it. Increasing the cap, however, would never pass because it is clearly a tax increase on everyone and doesn't benefit a special interest like real estate brokers.

[0] The median home price in Los Angeles is now over $900k. https://www.zillow.com/los-angeles-ca/home-values/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20191011004252/https://us.spindi...

bdowling

5 năm trướcdiscuss

> Those moving into the inherited home as their primary residence are not affected.

Not true. Only $1m of assessed value is excluded for heirs moving into an inherited property as a primary residence. Inheriting property worth more than $1m is not a bad problem to have, but in places like Los Angeles it means that a lot of people not be able to afford to live in the property and will be faced with either fixing it up for use as a rental or selling the home they grew up in.

bdowling

5 năm trướcdiscuss

> If California somehow repealed Prop 13...

In November 2020, California scaled back on some of the benefits of Prop 13 for families. Prior to Prop 19, properties could pass from parents to children and the property tax basis would not increase. Now, the benefit is limited to the parents' primary residence, the inheriting child or children need to reside in the property for one year as their primary residence, and the amount excluded from reassessment is limited to $1m.

The main proponents of Prop 19 were realtors who expected the change to result in more sales of properties after parents die. I haven't seen data on it, but they were probably right. There will probably be more sales as children who inherit their parents' properties can't afford to keep them after reassessment.

Prop 19 was titled the "The Home Protection for Seniors, Severely Disabled, Families, and Victims of Wildfire or Natural Disasters Act" because it allowed seniors and victims of wildfires to sell a home and buy a new one anywhere in the state and carry over their current property tax assessment, regardless of the sale price. However, it totally undermined one of the best ways for families to pass wealth on to their children, the acquisition of properties for investment. Corporations, of course, were unaffected.

bdowling

6 năm trướcdiscuss

> What's the law on this?

Your understanding is correct, at least in general. If the tenant moves out and stops paying rent, the landlord has a claim for breach of contract. The landlord, however, must try to mitigate his damages by renting the property to someone else. The breaching tenant will be liable for vacancy costs as well as costs of finding a new tenant. If fair market value has gone down and the landlord can’t find a new tenant at the old rate, then the breaching tenant will be liable for the difference in the remainder of the lease term.

There may be statutory exceptions that allow a tenant to break a lease without liability in some circumstances. They’re things like military service, domestic violence, unsafe property, or landlord harassment. See this article for more info for California: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/tenants-right-break-...

bdowling

7 năm trướcdiscuss

> I know the quote.

The quote is from “Howl” by Allen Ginsburg, a poem about burnout (among other things). That’s applicable to a report of people working a 9-9-6 schedule, a recipe for burnout.

bdowling

7 năm trướcdiscuss

If your property is wrongfully seized by the government due to some criminal activity, you can file a claim to get it back. This happens all the time when a criminal is caught with stolen goods. The thieves do not have the best claim.

It may take some time and effort to get the property back, but there is a process.

bdowling

7 năm trướcdiscuss

How about a bumper sticker that says, "I slow down for stop signs".

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