00:00If you live in Los Angeles County, you might have noticed that things became more expensive
00:04on Thursday, October 1st. And that's because new sales taxes kicked in. A 0.5% rise that
00:13takes sales taxes to 10.25% in the county overall. And in fact, in some places, people are paying
00:18more where there are additional local taxes. Like in Santa Monica, people are paying 11.25%.
00:24In some places, people are paying even more. And this is something voters decided back
00:30in June. Measure ER was placed on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors, and it was billed
00:35as a way to make up for cuts in healthcare spending and a way to fill in the money that
00:43the county ostensibly needed to keep the healthcare expenditures going, keep offering services
00:48to the public. ER, of course, was the title they gave it. Get it? Emergency room. But
00:53Measure ER almost didn't pass. And in fact, if you look across the state, voters in other
00:59major California cities, in San Francisco and San Diego, voted down new taxes. So what
01:04made LA County different? Did people feel like LA County had a particularly acute need? Did
01:10people feel like there wasn't money for essential services in LA County? What exactly happened?
01:15Well, when you look back at the election, for a long time, it looked like Measure ER was actually
01:20going to lose. And LA County voters were going to vote down this sales tax increase. And then
01:26as late ballots started coming in, the same batches of ballots that put Nithya Raman into
01:30second place ahead of Spencer Pratt in the race for LA mayor, you started to see more yes
01:35votes come in for Measure ER. The left-wing voters who put a socialist into the general election
01:41also voted for the sales tax increase, and it won narrowly. And that's why everything is
01:46more expensive in LA. So the next time people complain about the high cost of living in California,
01:51remember, this is something people voted for, at least in LA County.
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