March 8, 2020
"By using public money to protect California homes from climate change, the state is transferring wealth from working-class people of color to white property owners."
"We shouldn't have to pay for Jack Dorsey's $40m estate when it crumbles into the sea" by Adrian Daub (in The Guardian).
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And if California slides into the ocean,
like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this hotel will be standing,
until I pay my bill…
As for those working-class white people, fuck 'em.
It's a scam and somebody is making good money from it besides the "scientists" who are competing for grants.
Your money is our money but my money is my money.
Or Barbara Streisand's vast cliff-side estate.
@ Ganderson: well penned.
But they still vote Dem. Isn't that the definition of insanity, or is it stupidity?
Stalin had about 20 dachas.
Great attempt to stir up racial animosity.....are there no working class people NOT of color. I guess white working class people don't count.
I agree that tax payer money should not be used to "shore" up the homes of the ultra wealthy. Or really anyone. That is what insurance is for. If your house is UN-insurable, it isn't the problem of the general public.
Too bad that the house you bought is on the edge of a cliff being battered by the ocean. Did you NOT notice this before???? The natural erosion is a feature of nature and the coastlines on the Pacific coast from Washington to Baja have been receding for hundreds of thousands of years. Also moving in various directions via crustal plate action.
Your problem. Not on for the rest of us. Ditto with building your home in tornado ally or even MY issue being in the shadow of several volcanoes isn't the problem of anyone else.
"By using public money to protect California homes from climate change, the state is transferring wealth from working-class people of color to white property owners."
"We shouldn't have to pay for Jack Dorsey's $40m estate when it crumbles into the sea"
No, you shouldn't, but why do I get the feeling that you're a huge proponent of transferring the wealth of white property owners into the pockets of "people of color"? (And whaddya mean "we", white man?)
“But they still vote Dem. Isn't that the definition of insanity, or is it stupidity?”
First new Zen koan of the day.
The article is a complaint against property owners. Not just the rich guys. And, anti-white. Ever notice how "people of color" does not include Asians?
“But they still vote Dem. Isn't that the definition of insanity, or is it stupidity?”
More Californians voted for Trump than any other state. Gonna go out on a limb and suppose vast majority were actual taxpayers.
It doesn't protect property owners, it transfers wealth one-time to them, in the property value. Only the first owner gets it. The rest have to buy it from the previous owner at full price.
Simultaneously it reduces the value of everybody else's property owing to the increased tax bill. That too is a one-time transfer. Following owners get a break in the purchase price of the property that offsets the tax.
Ganderson wins out the gate. Desperados that’s for sure.
In 1980, I had a beach front house on a 200 foot bluff. If was not on the ocean as there was a highway and railroad tracks between the bluff and the ocean. In February of that year, I woke up one morning and found that 17 feet of our yard was now at the bottom of the bluff. It was a wet winter and the house had been there since the 1930s. Now, it was 7 feet from the edge.
It took a year and $100,000 to fix it. I was never comfortable, with the place after that and finally sold it. I wish I had kept it as the house never had any more trouble. I had fixed it right.
Nobody talked about global warming or oceans rising in those days. This stuff now is bullshit. If you go to the Mediterranean, there are docks and piers that have been there since the Romans. The water level is the same. The only changes, as at Ephesus, are due to silting from river flows.
Learn to swim.
See you down in Arizona Bay.
We shouldn't have to pay for Jack Dorsey's $40m estate when it crumbles into the sea.
Sums it all up right there.
Michael K: This stuff now is bullshit. If you go to the Mediterranean, there are docks and piers that have been there since the Romans. The water level is the same ...
Damn you and your facts.
"Desperados that’s for sure.
Ah yes. Thought it sounded... familiar.
Damn you and your facts.
And those god damned voters !
"By using public money to protect California homes from climate change, the state is transferring wealth from working-class people of color to white property owners."
Well like everything written today, from a political viewpoint, this is only partially true. But the real play here is power [by CA Legislature (Democrats)] to spend OPM. Plus the state gets to charge their 'tithe' which is not small and will grow substantially in the future. Just look at CA gas taxes. "...Beginning July 1, 2019, California's gas tax increases from 41.7 cents to 47.3 cents per gallon, a 5.6 cent increase in the price of fuel. The tax increase is an annual adjustment to the tax the state applies to a gallon of gas. In 2016, Californians paid about 28 cents in state taxes for a gallon of gas..." Plus, 2.25% Sales and the $0.184 Fed Excise Tax which pushes tax to approximately $0.7918 per gallon. Plus, for the first time, imposed a $100 fee on zero-emission vehicles that will start in 2020. So much for past promises!
Every year for about the past twenty years, I've stayed at a certain hotel property on the Boardwalk at Virginia Beach. Over the years, I've gotten to know the management & have talked to them about what it takes to maintain a property on the beach. The answer is --- a lot of money.
There's no falling ground in Va Beach, unlike California's bluffs, but there are occasional hurricanes & most of all, a continuous spray of sand & salt water. The fine sand gets in everything & the salt water corrodes everything it touches. But, for them, it's the cost of doing business, and they can write it off their taxes.
If you build near salt water, well, congratulations! You've just bought yourself a money pit! If you've got money to burn, then light away, but don't expect the rest of us to cover you.**
**Which we do anyway, through federal insurance programs which cover these sort of coastal buildings that private insurance, in its wisdom, refuses to insure.
If "climate change" was real, people like Jack Dorsey wouldn't buy homes in harm's way, would they? Ditto Barack Obama's pied-à-terre on Martha's Vineyard.
"I don't know of any program ever created by any government, at any time, anywhere in the world, that had as its goal helping the poor and middle class, that did not end up taking money out of the pockets of the poor and middle class and transfer it to the rich." - Milton Friedman, during a question and answer session following an episode of his series "Free to Choose" on the BBC, February, 1980.
Excellent analysis, rh.
Dorsey seems like a twerp, while I like John Stossel a lot more, so I guess it's more OK to pay for his beach house.. This is not new news, but I guess the racial grievance angle in the title makes it fresh. It's sorta like insuring pre-existing conditions, except for rich people instead of the infirm.
The neighborhood is called Seacliff for a reason. The cliffs were formed because of land falling into the sea. This is nothing new. That said, saving the house should be between Dorsey and his insurance company. I'm white and non-working class, but I'm subsidizing the repairs too. And I'm probably subsidizing his Tesla too. In fact, given the amount I pay in taxes, I'm probably covering what 100 working class people of color pay in.
My grandfather built a number of homes in that neighborhood during the Depression, because he figured rich people still had money. He did very well until WW2 came along and he couldn't get building supplies anymore. I'd be sorry to see them fall into the ocean, but that's the risk you take when you live close to the edge.
Perhaps you meant to say, "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have"?
Is government "paying to protect California homes against climate change" really much different than government paying a stupendous sum for your "free" college education (presumably even if you choose a worthless major at an absurdly expensive school)?
(Oh, sorry, Elizabeth Warren is not available to answer that question.)
"By using public money to protect California homes from climate change, the state is transferring wealth from working-class people of color to white property owners."
You mean one retard finally figured out what the point of government is?
If you read the rest of his article it becomes pretty clear he just wants to take everyone else's money and give the money to someone else.
But the author doesn't seem to realize the government naturally makes already rich people richer.
Taxing poorer Amerikans of all colors to support well-off White Amerikans is a tune long sung in our country. Take national parks and forests, please. All Amerikans pay for them, but only a select few, almost all Whites and mostly older Amerikans who get their entire car in free along with extra benefits, actually visit the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier Park and all of the others less famous.
The name of the game needs to be changed from support of privilege to fee for all services, including parks, forests, public education, SS, healthcare, child care and so on. Until then, we will live in a country that continues to tax the poor to support the wealthy.
"The cliffs were formed because of land falling into the sea."
Exactly! How did they think the cliffs became cliffs in the first place? Is it that Slartibartfast carved them that way?
I recognize that this is a "conservative" point of view of sorts - but the way in which actual political conservatives are different from these - call them "lifestyle conservatives" is that political conservatives recognize the constancy of change and push back against change for its own sake. They demand (or at least plaintively wish for) evidence that a particular change will be salutary before supporting it. Progressives want "progress" but seem to believe that this time (presumably because they're in charge this time) there will be no unintended consequences, and the results of their sweeping changes will be exactly as they predict (or exactly as their theories need them to be).
In this instance, we've got the climate change people saying that that cliff has to stay just where it is right now or else it's a sign of the End Times, and the income inequality people saying that redistributive policies will work (this time!) because their intention is to right a great historic wrong. Both believe they know what state of things is Perfect with a capital P, both believe that precipitate action is called for, and neither can show any evidence that they're correct.
But of course!
The houses at Sea Cliff are sited a considerable distance from the ocean (as your phone will demonstrate for you if you have an enquiring mind) and will be safe from erosion for at least another 500 years.
Pro tip: Don’t believe everything you read.
The one bipartisan thing left is that Jack Dorsey is a bit of a destructive goblin.
.DBQ
It is called assumption of risk or moving to the nuisance. I mean everyone knows climate change is real so the buyers of sea front property will have to bear the cost.
We all cross subsidize a lot of things. When you want something because you think you're going to get something for nothing, you're saying that's how you want it...
Government flood insurance covers those deplorables who live inland but too close to rivers. I hear whispers that people of color live on riparian flood plains as well.
Of course the Guardian makes it racial, and thus gets the issue wrong.
Perhaps Adrian Daub has not noticed that subsidizing other people's poor choices is the basis of the whole welfare state. I am willing to take his arguments to their logical conclusion, but somehow I don't think the author would be willing to go there.
Until then, we will live in a country that continues to tax the poor to support the wealthy.
I assume you have made aa study of who uses public parks. In Los Angeles I never saw anyone but Hispanics using public parks.
Taxes on wealth are prohibited under the federal constitution. But PDJT, in his tax reform found an indirect way to get at the wealth of people like Jack Dorsey. He capped the SALT deduction. So now, the bulk of Dorsey's (and others like him) property taxes and mortgage interest are no longer deductible.
These folks are agitating for the state to do something to make them whole again. The sate can't lower their taxes without lowering everyone's and they can't afford that. So perhaps this is a workaround.
While Dorsey's, and everyone elses, federal income tax rate may have gone down, the effect of SALT as well as the screaming economy means that the amount of taxes paid have gone up.
Well done, PDJT.
John Henry
Well what is the Coastal Commission doing to save the coastline? After all, that is their only reason for existing.
Jimbino claims that "national parks and forests" are used by "only a select few, almost all Whites and mostly older Amerikans [sic]". I've been to many national parks and forests over the last 60 years, and I don't recall ever being asked at the gate if I was a member of a "select few" (I admit to being "White", but during most of my life I was not "mostly older"). I've camped in the parks and forests and found the cost fairly modest. It's true that Theodore Roosevelt got the national park and forest system going in part to prevent capitalists from cutting down the forests to build working class housing and preserve opportunities for rich "sportsmen" to hunt there. But, capitalist-fan that I am, I wouldn't support drowning the Grand Canyon to build a hydroelectric project. Would you?
Gosh, who woulda thunk that socialism could be unfair?
isn't it curious, john henry, other than a earthquake, how else would wannabe tony stark Dorsey's palace crumble,
the more interesting thing, was Dorsey residing in Africa, was under not one but two Chinese surveillance networks, zte through south African ntn, and Huawei, which covers sudan and Uganda,
@Godfather "capitalist-fan that I am, I wouldn't support drowning the Grand Canyon to build a hydroelectric project. Would you?"
No, and your comment illustrates "false dichotomy." There are many alternatives to drowning of the Grand Canyon in the interests of justice. One is to privatize all parks and forests and let the market determine winners and losers based on fee for service. Like Walmart and Amazon do and what I heartily recommend. What would you say to a rule that granted free toilet paper to the rich, white and otherwise privileged, including those who conspire to get their indolent daughters falsely recognized for athletic prowess?
Today's Democratic Party...
“Under capitalism, one man exploits another, under socialism, it’s the other way around.” - Soviet proverb
Nobody asked me, but let them take up a collection themselves, regardless of the racial bullshit, when you’re right, you are right.
"including those who conspire to get their indolent daughters falsely recognized for athletic prowess?”
Best solution? Let them all compete without any divisions based on any sexual differences. Boy, trans boys, girls, trans girls, all trying out for the same teams, and whoever doesn’t like it is just too lazy to do what they need to to win.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment), including racism, breeds adversity.
That said, climate cooling... warming... change. Undeniable. Unfalsifiable. But will the perturbations remain consistent... they haven't... over a thirty-year period to earn the moniker "climate" change, and to justify redistributive change?
"In 1980...Nobody talked about global warming or oceans rising in those days."
It wasn't discussed by the public at large or even widely within science circles, but there were those who had started warning of it by 1975.
By the 1980s, the oil companies conducted studies which led them to make private warnings of increases of CO2 in the atmosphere, leading to global warming.
Here is another example of the ultra wealthy behaving like poor ass destitute trash: "Oh, I'm just a poor little rich boy. I screwed up and built my house in the worst possible place and now I need the government to bail me out." Bull. We need to discourage the ultra wealthy from engaging in self-defeating behavior that increases the need for welfare. Let their ugly houses fall in the ocean. I don't care.
Seriously, have you seen these houses? They're butt ass ugly.
The oceans have been rising for 20,000 years, BTW.
I'm no fan of Jack Dorsey but to be fair considering the amount of money in state income and capital gains taxes the wealthy in CA pay plus the property taxes they pay, they are paying a hugely disproportionate amount in taxes to CA than the average working class and middle class contribute to the state's coffers.
If they were not allowed to build and own in those most desirable areas of CA then they would most likely move to somewhere else and probably outside of CA. And with that there goes the income,capital gains and property taxes those folks pay. And guess who gets to makeup the shortfall?
Some people on this thread complain about federal flood insurance. First by law there is no primary private coverage. Second for expensive homes the federal coverage is relatively minimal which why those owners carry private excess flood insurance. Some here have commented on folks by the ocean getting subsidized by the inland folks. Compare real estate prices and coastal property almost always pays much higher property taxes and the people who own them have to earn considerably more to pay those property taxes and with that comes higher state income taxes. So who is subsidising whom?
"If they were not allowed to build and own in those most desirable areas of CA then they would most likely move to somewhere else and probably outside of CA.”
Let them build and pay the costs, which they can well affford.
I'm with Aunty Trump - the rich folk have more than enough of their own money to pay for any needed mitigation for their property. The taxpayers should not be footing the bill.
But it is California after all.
Cook is a full bore global warming cultist.
Got it.
And if California slides into the ocean,
like the mystics and statistics say it will
“Statistics” and — more importantly — the science of geology say(s) no such thing. As for the “mystics” — pffft!
Pace popular mythology, what geology says is that major sections of continents just don't “slide into the ocean” — even when, as we see in California, when big portions of the state straddle two different tectonic plates. Thus, geologically speaking, southwestern California (reaching all the way up to San Francisco) isn't part of North America at all — people riding therein are denizens of the Pacific Plate.
Beyond that distinction, California has existed in more or less its present form for at least 100 million years. Other than part of it, very slowly (at 2 inches/year), being carted off by the differently-moving Pacific Plate, that lengthy existence implies that California ain't going nowhere. (How the state may or may not be “moving” socially is orthogonal to its geology.)
That erosion has been going on for thousands of years. It's not the result of "climate change".
PB is correct- this has literally nothing to do with climate change- this standard cliff erosion and would be occuring right now if there were no human beings on the planet today.
The oceans have been rising for 20,000 years, BTW.
They rose over 400 feet between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago, then stopped rising 2,500 years ago. Supposedly they are now rising again at the rate of 1 foot a century.
"In 1980...Nobody talked about global warming or oceans rising in those days."
It wasn't discussed by the public at large or even widely within science circles, but there were those who had started warning of it by 1975.
By the 1980s, the oil companies conducted studies which led them to make private warnings of increases of CO2 in the atmosphere, leading to global warming.
There are newspaper articles from the 1920's warning that the glaciers would vanish in twenty years. The National Park service has been busy recently tearing down the signs warning that the glaciers there will disappear by 2020, because it's 2020 and they're still there.
Civilization did not cause climate change. Climate change caused civilization.
@Jimbino: I have no objection in principle to privatizing national parks, but there are a lot of other things to privatize to which you or I might give a higher priority -- for example, paying for medical care, higher education funding, retirement income, airport security, the right of the people to keep and bear arms (Oh, I thought we'd already taken care of that) . . . . Well, you get the idea.
In Nantucket (where the X family spent some summers), the locals wouldn't let rich folks spend their own money to fight bluff erosion (restyled in the Jack Dorsey case as climate change). The nesting birds were more important than the houses. At least one house had to be knocked down before it fell into the ocean:
The burning question among island residents—one that pits the determined, deep-pocketed summer people against the working folks who live here year-round and occupy most of the positions in local government—is whether the politicians will finally allow the homeowners to spend their own money to save their multi-million-dollar homes with the stupendous views. So far, the answer has been a resounding no.
Vanity Fair article
Meant to include a link above: Vanity Fair
drowning the Grand Canyon to build a hydroelectric project.
_____&&&&&:
How many years will it take to fill? And no flow into ' rising ocean "!
"We shouldn't have to pay for Jack Dorsey's $40m estate when it crumbles into the sea"
Welcome to big government, which I bet Adrian what's his/her name is all for.
@ Michael McNeil said
... what geology says is that major sections of continents just don't “slide into the ocean” —
...geologically speaking, southwestern California (reaching all the way up to San Francisco) isn't part of North America at all ....
____&&&&&
Would Lex Luthor still succeed in his plan to widen the fault and create a filled in Baja? And beach front?
"The houses at Sea Cliff are sited a considerable distance from the ocean (as your phone will demonstrate for you if you have an enquiring mind) and will be safe from erosion for at least another 500 years.
Pro tip: Don’t believe everything you read."
This. You will note they don't show you Jack Dorsey's houses. Eventually erosion will get them in a thousand years or so assuming no remediation.
"Civilization did not cause climate change. Climate change caused civilization."
And now civilization is returning the favor.
"Cook is a full bore global warming cultist."
Florida Man Cookie (who lives in NYC in case you didn't know) checks all the boxes of a pseudo-dissident caricature.
"Civilization did not cause climate change. Climate change caused civilization." - Gahrie
Followed by: "And now civilization is returning the favor." - Robert Cook
The likelier case is that civilization is, as usual, overestimating its influence over the forces of nature. 'Twas ever thus. King Canute thought he could stop the tide; Malthus thought we'd all breed ourselves into starvation; and now we of the new millennium think we can halt climate change so that we never have to adapt again - even though Gahrie's point about the role climate change has had in the development of human civilization is exactly on point.
I've been saying for years that we need not to get too comfortable. Climates (of which there are many, and to which we've successfully adapted) will continue to change no matter what we do or don't do. Is it possible that human activity is outweighing natural processes in affecting climates? I guess... but it's a big ask. Meanwhile, the most effective means to reduce pollution has been to have a more or less free market economy. When a socialist state determines that it has to choose between spending its self-limited resources on food (or on the thing that allows it to claim superiority over other nations, like military might during the cold war) or on the spotted owl (or its functional equivalent), who really believes the owl is going to win? Has it ever happened? Yet the "stop climate change" side endlessly insists that socialism is the (only) solution.
Yeah, climate change. The fractional increase in temperature claimed is responsible for the decades long erosion threatening the cliff side mansions.
I have ridden the Pacific Coast Highway. Lots of cliff erosion from long ago and continuing. Like beach erosion of the Atlantic coast.
Rich guys always want their stuff protected with tax dollars.
Global Climate Change just garners support for this theft from the little people.
But just think how stupid the previous POTUS is for buying that beach front mansion.
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BleachBit-and-Hammers said..."Or Barbara Streisand's vast cliff-side estate."
The poster child of the duplicitous Democrat.
Late to the conversation again. I’ve often wondered why we taxpayers pay to reinforce the levies surrounding low-lying privately owned farms in the Sacramento River delta. All the land contained in these islands are privately owned yet the taxpayers are forced to pony up millions to rebuild 19th century levies built on top of peat. Crazy.
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