Like California Florida is Tired of High Property Taxes

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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https://www.wsj.com/us-news/florida-state-property-taxes-f5921237

Vincent Long, the administrator for Leon County in Florida, is in a race to slow the county’s spending. So far, he has frozen hiring, cut travel and other expenses, and begun a yearlong analysis for commissioners on how best to restructure the county’s finances and organization.

Leon County, which includes Tallahassee, has cast a closer eye on its coffers under a new measure to slash property taxes in the state. This is where things get strange: The measure isn’t even law—yet.

Florida residents will vote on the proposal in November. If it passes, it would dramatically reduce property taxes for many homeowners. The initiative could prove popular in a state where the cost of owning a home has spiraled. So city and county managers across the state are making their plans now for a massive drop in revenue.

“It’s not a haircut, it’s an amputation,” Long said. “You can’t make a historic change to our primary revenue source without also making a historic change to the very role and function of government.”

The proposal is spurring urgent responses from local governments faced with the prospect of plummeting tax revenue. Cities and counties are scrambling to prepare for a potential overhaul of how they pay for all sorts of services, from policing to pothole repairs.

Apparently voters/citizens are unhappy with the value received from local government.
In the K economy the middle class has less money.
Many voter/citizens in Florida are seniors and may be on fixed income.

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And the only difference is that California has great social services, world class universities, retirement programs for workers without access through employers, school lunches for kids, and a host of other things which Florida does not*.

*Florida may or may not provide lunch for kids, depending on the district. Overall, not a lot do.

So Californians don’t like high taxes, but at least get something for it, Floridians don’t like high taxes, but don’t.

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Sounds like some Californians don’t feel like they are getting something for it. Just spoke with a colleague a week ago, born and raised in California and does very well and afford to stay but is leaving. They just bought a place in Nevada, which will become their primary residency and then commute as needed into CA. More and more people are reaching a breaking point that realize so much of their income is going elsewhere between taxes and the cost of living. I suspect we’ll continue to see a hollowing out of lower middle class to include now what is considered wealthy but not super rich heading elsewhere.

It’s one of the most beautiful places in the country and at one time some of the best public schools in the country, particularly in the LA area. Now, Mississippi and Alabama 4th graders are now 3-5x more likely to be reading at or above california public school attendees.

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This is technically true, but misleading. Mississippi and Alabama have indeed placed a lot of emphasis on early reading success, including teacher retraining and implementing science-based learning methods. In Mississippi and Alabama, 3rd graders who can’t read at a certain level repeat the grade. So yes, 4th graders in those states outperform California 4th graders in reading. In fact, Mississippi is best in the nation by the metric.

However, that lead vanishes by 8th grade. Alabama students are ranked 45th and 48th in 8th-grade reading and math, respectively, while Mississippi sits at 41st and 35th. California is roughly in the middle. Where California really excels is university preparation. California has probably the best public college system in the country, but in order to even apply to an upper tier school, students must have a solid background of AP classes.

Public education is a hard problem. It there were an obvious solution, it would fixed already. Things that work in one state won’t work in another. For example, it is hard to recruit qualified foreign language or AP teachers in rural Mississippi. But California has a higher percentage of students who don’t speak English at home which makes teaching reading more challenging in early grades. California is expensive, so it has to pay its teachers well, but that means larger class sizes. On and on. Different states, different problems.

Some interesting links:

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I attended LA area public schools and still have family there today. It is vastly different. If you have any doubts, California leads the nation in the % of public school teachers that send their own children to private schools. They don’t even want to eat their own cooking.

We can play around with the nuance of it. The public school system in California and in the major metropolitan areas is in steep decline. Worst of all, these school systems there, and in Chicago and other major cities are spending way more on average per student and continuing to do produce worse and worse results. If we wanted to pick one problem for the country to rally behind, this should be it. We should consider every option available to get children educated and properly prepared for adulthood.

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@FOOLME45

Thanks for the ancient data. Guess you cannot find new data.

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That is not what recent post shows: Public School Rankings by State 2026

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California builds solar and battery power even with conservative road blocks!
Elon Musk uses California for a large chunk of his fortune.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09072026/inside-clean-energy-utility-scale-solar-booming/

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While some individual districts and specialized STEM academies rank among the absolute best in the United States, statewide testing highlights deep structural challenges, with overall student proficiency sitting at 34% for math and 47% for reading. [1, 2]

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This is what California Builds. The largest Solar project of the kind on the brink of failure. Ask the people of Fremont, what Musk brings to the area. The most amount of employee millionaires have been created under Tesla.

The $2.2 billion solar farm in California is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert. Built with $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees, the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) facility was targeted for an early shutdown starting in 2026 due to high maintenance costs, poor efficiency, and frequent bird deaths. [1, 2, 3]

However, the future of the massive Mojave Desert installation remains contested: [1]

  • The Closure Plan: Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)—the utility company that buys most of the plant’s power—negotiated a deal to end its purchase agreements and begin shutting down two of the plant’s three units. Both the Biden and Trump administrations pushed for the closure, noting that older CSP technology has been outpaced by cheaper, more efficient solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. [1, 2, 3, 4]
  • Regulatory Pushback: State regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) rejected the contract termination agreements. The CPUC ordered Ivanpah to remain online, citing severe concerns about energy reliability, grid strain, and surging electricity demand from artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers. [1, 2, 3]

For a deeper look at the conflict surrounding the facility’s finances and operational future, you can read the reporting on the standoff from the Los Angeles Times or review the POLITICO Pro coverage of the regulators’ decision to block the shutdown. [1, 2, 3]

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The challenges that face the LA unified school district are things that most of the country would completely fail. LA unified (LAUSD) admits students that speak 150 primary languages that are not English. A second grade teacher can open a classroom in the fall with strudents who never speak English but speak Spanish, Arabic, Vietnamese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Tagalog, even K’iche or Nagaland. The majority ESL stidents of LAUSD go on to college. The chances of Mississippi or Alabama public schools pulling this off is less than zero. In 2023 LAUSD identified 240 children over the decade that began elementary school only speaking K’iche. Teachers in Mississippi don’t even know what I’m talking about.
California also offers tuition free two-year community college if you are a first-time, full-time student (taking at least 12 units per semester) and a California resident. A stepping stone toward a four-year university, further it is easier to be accepted by a top university in California going through the two-year route. 4x as many transfer students from a two-year school are accepted at Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD than high-school grads >>freshman applicants. California education system is uniquely designed to work and may not satisfy the bean counters who sit in judgment.

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Ha! Ha!
Ivanpah is an old experimental solar project. It proved that CSP is not ready for main stream solar. Ivanpah proved that PV solar is superior to CSP. Now PV solar is surging all over the world. In California solar passed natural gas in 2025.

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Ivanpah can keep operating at its lower power generation. It depends on the state utility commission, PG&E, and the owners of Ivanpah to determine when to shutdown the facility.

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BTW No, California does not lead the nation. While the state does have one of the highest total numbers of private schools (over 3,200 campuses), it falls around the national average for the percentage of public school educators who send their own children to private schools
Philadelphia Public School Teachers: 44% enroll their own children in private schools, or four times the national average.
Cincinnati Public School Teachers: 41% enroll their own children in private schools, more than three times the national rate.
Chicago Public School Teachers: 39% enroll their own children in private schools, more than three times the national average.
NY Public School Teachers: 38% enroll their own children in private schools, or more than three times the national rate.
San Francisco-Oakland Public School Teachers: 34% enroll their own children in private schools, slightly more than three times the national average.
LAUSD teachers: 22% enroll their own children in private schools, slightly more than two times the national average.

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California is a state not a city. On a state by state basis, CA leads the nation in % of teachers sending their own kids to private schools. Those other cities are also Democratic run top to bottom. As you point out, public school teachers don’t want their kids going there either and in even much larger numbers.

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I guarantee that by far.There are more teachers that send their kids to private school in the bay area than eastern california i.e, lake tahoe or central california like fresno or sacramento.
I don’t know where you get your statistics from

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Yes, California public school teachers send their children to private schools at rates roughly double the national average, a trend that mirrors national patterns where educators frequently opt for private education. [1, 2]

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I asked Claude AI about the statistic and it seems the answer is a little more nuanced:

“The “double the national average” claim comes from national studies, not California-specific ones. An AEI analysis (citing older data, likely from the 1990s Fordham Institute/Peter Brimelow-style research) put public school teachers nationally at 22 percent enrolling their kids in private school compared to a 10 percent national average for the general public — roughly 2x.

A separate paper on urban teachers specifically found public school teachers send their children to private schools at a rate of 21.5 percent, nearly double the national rate of about 12%.

A 2015 Education Next survey found a smaller gap: 20% of teachers with school-age children sent one or more to private school, versus 13% of non-teachers — about 1.5x, not 2x.

One older CTA-commissioned study reportedly found one-third of California’s teachers sent their kids to private schools , per a Heritage Foundation piece — that would be a much bigger gap.

The catch: I couldn’t find a rigorous, recent, California-specific teacher survey establishing a clean “2x” ratio. What is well documented is that certain California cities have very high private-school enrollment overall — e.g., around 30% of San Francisco students are enrolled in private schools, the highest rate of any California county, versus a statewide average of 7.8% — and anecdotal/local reporting (like the Oakland piece) cites teacher-specific rates around 34%, but that’s one district, not a statewide, rigorously sourced figure.

So: “roughly double the national average” is an accurate description of some national studies on teachers generally, but treating it as a solid, current, California-specific statistic isn’t well supported by what’s available — the sourcing is thin, dated, or district-specific rather than statewide.

Note that the specific figures came from a mix of sources (AEI, a Fordham/urban-teachers study, Education Next, KQED, SF Chronicle, etc.), since I pulled from several different studies with varying methodologies and dates.”

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First: what quote actually says:
Yes, data confirms that public school teachers enroll their children in private schools at rates roughly double the national average
Second: the link that you provided is actually the link I gave you:
Philadelphia Public School Teachers: 44% enroll their own children in private schools, or four times the national average.
Cincinnati Public School Teachers: 41% enroll their own children in private schools, more than three times the national rate.
Chicago Public School Teachers: 39% enroll their own children in private schools, more than three times the national average.
NY Public School Teachers: 38% enroll their own children in private schools, or more than three times the national rate.
San Francisco-Oakland Public School Teachers: 34% enroll their own children in private schools, slightly more than three times the national average.
LAUSD teachers: 22% enroll their own children in private schools, slightly more than two times the national average.
No matter, the public school system is essential to any first world nation. Complaining about the public school system is not the solution. Acting on the PS deficits and reinforcing the continued excellence of education is the only path. And what we see currently in the conservative environment is the reduction of funding and funding for private religious inculcation.
On average, states with a Republican trifecta spend $141 less per pupil than states without a Republican trifecta. For districts in high-poverty neighborhoods, Republican trifecta states spend $244 less per pupil.

https://www.epi.org/publication/u-s-investment-in-public-education-is-at-risk-vouchers-state-budget-austerity-and-federal-attacks-on-the-department-of-education-threaten-childrens-futures/
Its not startling that these poorest states vote for billionaire agenda.

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I think that is true in St Louis too but I’m not sure it’s relevant. St Louis public schools are marginal at best. Yet we have charter schools and excellent parochial schools. Many teachers probably live in the suburbs (which have excellent schools) and commute. Yes, teachers living in the city probably send their kids to private schools.

Declining population leaves public schools short of funds. They are about to close many schools due to declining enrollment and high maintenance. People are fleeing due to poor schools and high crime rate due to weak enforcement (again lack of funds and weak public support).