00:00Californians are often accused of voting for the very problems that they complain about,
00:04and that's often an unfair judgment, but at least in the case of some taxes, it happens to be true.
00:09California voters have a habit of voting for higher taxes on themselves or voting to keep
00:14higher taxes in place. That's the case, for example, in LA County with the new higher 0.5%
00:20sales tax bringing total sales taxes at a baseline level to 10.25% in LA County,
00:25higher in some areas. There's also the Measure ULA mansion tax that backfired by making housing
00:30more scarce, and there are various homeless services taxes that have been passed over the years.
00:35At the state level, Californians keep electing legislators who vote for higher taxes,
00:40who vote to increase the gas tax, for example, and then California voters vote against repealing the
00:45new gas tax. The latest example is a tax on private health insurance premiums that Governor Gavin Newsom
00:51has signed into law. It could cost the average insurance customer 100 extra dollars per year,
00:56maybe several hundred dollars per household. Now doctors and insurance companies are suing the
01:01state saying that the new tax violates different laws that were passed through referendums in previous
01:06years. It does get very confusing, but one thing is clear. Somehow the feedback mechanism from voting
01:12for higher taxes to having a higher cost of living doesn't seem to be working because people keep
01:17doing it. With a few exceptions, San Diego and San Francisco voted against some new local taxes
01:21in the June primary, but generally speaking, California voters keep choosing higher taxes
01:25and the politicians who support them.
