“Quality of services in many cases declined. It’s clear, for example, that there was a shift in fire protection away from professional fire departments and toward volunteer fire departments in some parts of the state.
It hurt the schools. School finance has continued to, of course, increase in California as it has elsewhere in the US, but California used to be at the top in terms of quality of education in primary and secondary education and in terms of school spending. And now it’s definitely not.
It has hurt the quality of infrastructure — potholes in the roads, response times of first responders. It has shifted the state tax structure onto income taxes, which means that the tax system in California is really swingy — in a boom, a lot of money might flow into the state’s coffers, and in a recession, the state budget really suffers. During the financial crisis, this meant that local governments that could no longer rely on a lot of property tax revenue were especially vulnerable to bankruptcy.
It has also created all kinds of unfairness — new unfairness, rather unlike the old system. Now you might actually pay a lot more tax than somebody else in your neighborhood who has an identical home worth the same amount of money, just because they bought their home earlier than you did. And they might agree that that’s unfair, but they might not vote to change it because it’s an unfairness that allows them to stay in their home.”
https://www.vox.com/podcasts/485716/tax-cuts-history-california-prop-13-property-tax?utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=%3Cmedia_url%3E&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawRMbrNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEenSnmg0Uqf6qGxDIVlnpo3E6LM94egO9GzsntxcHxzIWtcz-9HVePNYBgPRE_aem_dbXl8hV9j1M29lc4E8Pqpg
Repeated Republican presidents and Congresses have told us that tax cuts will pay for themselves, and they repeatedly have not paid for themselves. Tax cuts like these are budget busters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqVzMF3QOng
“Special tax breaks for venture capitalists, Alaskan fisheries, spaceports, private schools, rum makers and others — together costing tens of billions of dollars — quietly caught a ride on Republicans’ sprawling domestic policy megabill.”
Pork pork pork. Where’s the tea party!?
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/04/from-rum-to-gun-silencers-tailored-tax-breaks-add-billions-to-megabill-00438962
“For decades, Republicans have extolled the virtues of removing loopholes and carveouts from the tax code, arguing it would make the system fairer and more efficient, while allowing for lower overall tax rates.”
…
“Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is not an exercise in tax simplification.
Instead, it began with a push to extend the party’s 2017 tax cuts — which despite some streamlining also introduced some complexity — and piled more on top, in line with a slew of presidential campaign promises. Add in a heavy dose of congressional politics, and the result was a sprawling and quirky piece of legislation that is distinctively Trumpy: lower taxes and a bigger pile of tax breaks.”
…
“several economists I spoke with worried it is the worst of all combinations: increasing the debt to pay for tax breaks that lead to neither growth nor other economically useful outcomes.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/05/trump-tax-cuts-megabill-republicans-00439787
“As Republicans began to consider their bill in January, Trump promised to “love and cherish” Medicaid. But he ultimately embraced the cuts as necessary to get the bill passed and lobbied reluctant GOP representatives and senators to go along.”
…
“Other entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, which both serve elderly people, were deemed too politically risky to touch. Trump has been even more adamant about not reducing benefits in Medicare and Social Security, a cornerstone of his first campaign in 2016, than he was about Medicaid.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-republicans-t-quit-medicaid-184536906.html
4 ways Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ could impact your wallet
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/4-ways-trumps-big-beautiful-183228278.html
Trump’s big beautiful bill hits Medicaid hard, which provides health insurance for low-income people. The bill adds onerous paperwork requirements that many people will fail to complete. Republicans represent the cuts as getting able-bodied young men back to work, but for Medicaid to save money, it has to no longer pay medical bills, which do not primarily come from able-bodied young men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q7LwNuOTs4