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Loading ...Poll: For many, Golden State no longer shines
08.05.2009 9:47am EDT
(Sacramento, Calif.) The California dream has faded since the 1970s for many in the Golden State, according to a new Field Poll.
Just 41 percent of registered voters agree the state is “one of the best places to live,” a sharp drop from the 76 percent who thought so 30 years ago when Field first asked that question.The survey, released Wednesday, found that Republicans were the most likely to have lost that lovin’ feeling about their state. Just 30 percent of GOP respondents said California remained a great place to live, compared with 80 percent in 1977.
The decades after saw dramatic growth in the state’s population, from 22.8 million in 1978 to the latest estimate of 38.3 million, a 68 percent increase.
The Field Poll report compared Californians’ attitudes on a range of social and lifestyle issues over the last 30 years. Findings were based on Field Polls taken from 1975 to 1978 and from 2006 to 2009.
Among the biggest changes in attitude was the increasing support for gay marriage, now favored by 49 percent of Californians and opposed by 44 percent. In 1977, voters were opposed by a 62-to-31 percent ratio.
There is a growing split between Democrats and Republicans on this and a range of other issues.
Democrats changed their stance on gay marriage from 2-to-1 opposed to 2-to-1 in favor over the last 30 years. Republicans “have not changed their views on this issue, and if anything, are now more opposed than they were 30 years ago,” pollsters Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field said.
In 1977, 65 percent of Republican voters said they opposed gay marriage, compared to 68 percent today.
Seven in 10 Californians now support abortion rights. While support has grown among Democrats and Republicans, there was a 30-point jump among Democrats in favor of abortion, while GOP support edged up only slightly over three decades, according to a 2006 Field survey.
On euthanasia, the number of Democrats who favor allowing the practice increased from 60 percent to 80 percent between 1975 and 2006, while slightly smaller majorities of Republicans and nonpartisans reported approving the practice.
Support for the death penalty remains strong across party lines, with two-thirds backing it, a slight drop from the mid-1970s, when three in four were in favor of it.
The Field Poll found unflagging support for California’s landmark Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that capped property tax increases and was approved by two-thirds of voters.
Last year, on the initiative’s 30th anniversary, a Field Poll found 57 percent of voters support the measure, 23 percent were opposed and 20 percent said they were undecided. Support among Republicans remains much stronger than with Democrats.
Prop 13 is the single greatest cause of California’s fiscal problems. It’s not lack of water, it’s not illegals, it’s not (over-)regulation, it’s not anything else. Prop 13 not only capped property taxes at 1% of assessed value, it created a mechanism where assessed value is effectively frozen compared to market value. Since you’re paying taxes on assessed value, your $700k (market) West LA bungalow (assessed at $100k) may have taxes of only $1000/year. Your new neighbor will be paying seven times what you pay for the same services.
Cry me a river. Republicans only have themselves to blame for the budget crisis, and if they don’t want to live next to brown people they can move to Idaho.
I love California, and I’m confidant that despite all of our challenges, we have the potential to be a model for social justice and economic innovation in the US.
I’m one of three (maybe four) people born in Los Angeles, let alone California. I was born in the mythical ‘Leave it to Beaver’ Days so I’ve seen this state morph and change until my heart is squeezed dry from all the tears. I adore this state. It’s home. My parents, grandparents and a lot more of my family than not are buried in its once golden soil.
I don’t blame Prop 13. I don’t blame immigrants, illegal or not. I do put the blame squarely on the elected representatives who have run our state into the ground using political gain, LGBT equality, women’s reproductive rights and racial equality as their grist.
My suggestion to all who live here: use the initiative process to put a measure on an upcoming ballot which clearly states that public service is just that – and all who are elected WILL RECEIVE MINIUM WAGE ONLY. PERIOD. No perks. Serving your state is your perk. NO HEALTH CARE – unless you supply it yourself, just like most folk. I don’t think this initative will rob us of the best and brightest – unless the brigands we have and have had in office qualify as such. People whow WANT to serve, do simply that.
I doubt my wife and I will leave California. We are one of the 18,000 and we believe that means we have a responsibility to help our sisters and brothers regain the right of marriage (or the right not to marry if that’s their choice – key word here – choice).
I hold out hope that our state will regain its footing – but I don’t hold it too close or too tightly.
With all the problems California has, it’s still 110% better than any other state in the country and I wouldn’t live anywhere else.
I love visiting California, however, I wouldn’t want to live there on account of what I’ve read about,especially those pesky referendums, and how they circumvent the legislature in making law, whether it be about taxes or marriage rights. There’s not much hope it’ll be a normal place for another thirty or so years.
Prop 13 has got to go, as does the ludicrous law that a super majority (66%) vote is needed to pass a budget. The Governor can enact all the arm-waving, threatening measures he wants, but at the end of the day, if someone doesn’t break from party lines, the state is still SOL.
@shai: Paying politicians less seems like a great idea, but it only compounds the problem that only the wealthy can run for office anyway. If you know that the job you’re going to be running for means that there’s no way in heck that you can feed yourself, you’re not going to take it. Good, talented people still have financial lives to worry about. The very wealthy control politics right now because they can afford to privately support themselves in addition to their state-earned incomes already. State service might make you feel good but we can’t feed ourselves on positive feelings and a moral compass alone.
I moved to southern California from the east coast in 1967. There were orange groves, and yes there was traffic, but there was also a real rush hour–today rush hour is anytime of the night or day you get on a freeway. My rent on my first one bedroom apt was $100 a month all utilities included, furnished. My last landlord was charging $1600 a month, no utilities and unfurnished. And he was a slumlord who knew how to play fast and loose with the rent control laws. When the small, one room house on my corner sold for $555,000, I decided then that California was no longer the wonderful place I moved to 40 years ago. In 2006 I left California. I don’t miss the traffic, the smog, the constant helicopters up above, the crime, the filth–I hated having to step over human feces and puddles of urine to get to my car in my apt. carport, the ugly graffiti everywhere, and the bars on my windows. There are many reasons the former Golden State no longer shines. And that actor in Sacramento has only made it worse. I’m glad to be gone.
For all who decrie prop 13, you should live in a “full market value” assessed state before you think the grass is greener.
I built a new home on the coast recently and was RAPED by the local tax assessor. I know pay about 40% of the original assessment because I threatened to sue her and have her fat butt locked up in jail. Using “assessed value” that is determined by the market is patently unfair. they can be completely subjective. In my case she told me she loved my home…so much she assessed it FOUR TIMES other homes in my area, some with better views, all of them larger than mine.
In other areas I’ve owned property way under-assessed because the town hasn’t spent the money to change things. The house I’m in now is assessed at half the others on my street because it was in disrepair when I bought it. They’ve already started jacking it up with the new roof and other much needed repairs. By the time I’m done it will be assessed HIGHER than my neighbors!
All this to pay for school. Think about it, how does property value affect the amount of expense you cause the school district?
I’ve been advocating for a bedroom tax, not a value tax. The more bedrooms, the more potential kids to educate, the more you pay (I really would want simply a fee for breeders to send their kids but that is probably illegal).
At least in California you know exactly what you are going to pay. I was looking at property in Lake Tahoe and I asked the realtor what the taxes were, she looked at me like I had two heads. The taxes are going to be what you pay for the house, duh! It is a very simple situation. You pay based on what you pay, the next guy pays based on what he pays you, etc. Elderly people in their homes for years aren’t forced out of their homes.
People who aren’t wealthy don’t have to pay more in taxes because wealthy people move into the neighborhood.
My mom paid 75k for her home in the 70’s…houses on her street have sold north of $2M…she has to constantly fight to keep her tax bill fair. Another neighbor took the heat out of their second floor and claimed it is storage space to reduce their bill! It is just crazy.
Prop 13 makes perfect sense to me. Just because the idiots you elect can’t manage the money is no reason to blame a 100% fair system..the best one I’ve ever heard of.
Drew, you hit the nail on the head when you said: “the idiots we elect” – again and again and again. Bill Maher called the American voters idiots and Bill O’Reilly got sooooooooo upset. When you look at what the politicians do that we elect and relect you have to come to the conclusion that the electorate is comprised of a bunch of idiots.
The big news here is that 49% of Californians favor marriage equality, while 44% are opposed. That contradicts those “leaders” who claim that we cannot win a referendum restoring marriage equality in 2010.
@ DaveW–I live in Cleveland, and across Cuyahoga County, the average property tax is roughly 2% of assessed value. Assessed value is rarely far from market value here, which means 2% is likely to be 2%. We deal with it. So don’t tell me to learn what it’s like before complaining about Prop 13, because I already know. After Michigan reformed school funding in the mid-90s, that left Ohio with arguably the highest average property tax rates in the Midwest, and among the highest in the country–especially Cleveland’s eastern suburbs, like Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights. Prop 13 imposes vastly higher costs on people who don’t have the fortune of a private sale. Remember the private transaction, Dave? That’s where your parents or their friends can sell to you at a fraction of market value. In Cleveland, our history of real estate discrimination (basis of the Fair Housing Act) would probably take that “private sale” concept to SCOTUS and quickly flush it. In this context, even Scalia would agree that it’s all too open to abuse. Not that anybody in Cali would ever engage in racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual-orientation discrimination. No, not there.
@shai–OK, I’ll bite. Under your plan, I could quit my part-time job at Carl’s Jr and go work as a trauma doc–after all, you did say ALL public servants. I could prescribe as I saw fit, cut as I saw fit, kill as I saw fit–and who would bust me, my co-workers who became cops and judges? Or maybe we’d all be killed by an overpass collapsing in a 3.5 quake, because that new engineer in charge of a seismic retrofit knows more about pickles per burger than tensile strength standards for reinforced concrete. Your fantasy, baby, I’m just taking pix of it and sharing them.
I’m not down on California. I think it’s been one of America’s shining achievements. I think it can continue to be. I think Prop 8 was a hiccup, as were the troubles in the early 90s (which resulted in huge migrations to SLC, Denver, Portland, Seattle, and Nashville, among other places–migrations still reshaping those cities). Right now though, Cali is in a place where its residents are as hands-off from responsibility as its elected officials. Both parties have engineered themselves into largely secure constituencies, and both parties have bought electoral stability by giving the public more services than the revenue stream can possibly cover. The notion of a “right” to stay in a house which has a million-dollar view and lot, in a major urban area, but which owes less in taxes than a trailer in a floodplain in Ventura–that’s fiscally unsustainable. That’s wilfully creating a revenue structure more precarious than DC’s, and in Cali there’s no meddling Congress to blame. If Cali doesn’t do something to balance revenues and expenditures, it won’t have the fiscal ability to accomodate next-wave businesses. It will become more like Mexico–beautiful, and full of potential, but so crippled by delusions and self-imposed wounds that it can’t achieve as much as it can dream. As a non-resident admirer, I would like to see California take some strong and necessary medicine rather than give up its fundamental strengths.
Wow- tough room.
For Drew and Rick – You both bring up valid issues. My wife and I have a very good friend who lives in Idaho. Yes, before I continue I know California is not Idaho, however, in Idaho and I understand other states as well, being in the State Legislature is not their full time job. They do have other jobs where they bring in income. They meet several times a year or as necessary if something comes up and they serve their state.
Drew, I can appreciate your views, truly, but I think your examples might be a bit extreme – though I understand and appreciate the points you’re making. I think that if something like paying minimum wage to elected officials went through, then of course, safe guards would remain in place. Who would pay for those safe-guards to be inforced? Our entire tax structure needs to be re-designed. My thoughts are one way to go, but, as you point out, they can’t stand alone without the rest of this state’s issues being addressed.
I understand a Constitutional Congress might be convened next year. I think that would be a wonderful thing if we can get past the politics and really look at our issues.
I agree with the people who have mentioned water here. We’re on hideous (but very necessary) water restrictions in Los Angeles. I have a feeling we’ve only begun to see the repercussions of looming water wars.
Re: Prop 13; no need to really be concerned here. Those who originally benefited are dying off. Those who can qualify under the extremely narrow rules (children mentioned in wills or trusts only) are few and far between – they’ve moved away. Prop 13 is dying out and dissolving as older Californian’s sell to move to less expensive states. Most of the people who are still grandfathered under Prop 13 will most likely lose their homes to the tax man if that protection is taken away as they are existing on Social Security. If that happens, I guess the government will have a nice assortment of homes for other people to purchase, just as the banks (who are adding to their collection of inventory through forclosure) have now.