And then a court overturns the passed proposition and it was all a waste of time. E.g., Propositions 187 and 8.
Yes, some of that has happened, but the vast majority of initiatives here are not subjected to the courts. And insofar as property taxes are concerned, Prop 13 has been in force since before the days of Ronald Reagan here, and as a consequence, our people get to stay in their homes in retirement and it has also fostered a vibrant RE market. The initiative process has been instrumental in reining in our government for all of my 79 years here.
I worked with a guy here in CA who was a PhD. He decided to move to Austin to work for a company to whom ours was a subcontractor. He build a very big house on one of the hills above Austin. The were there for seven years, when his wife said that she had had enough of Texas ( being shunned by their neighbors because they were not “native Texans” was her chief complaint), and she was heading back to CA with or without him. He got a job as a VP of an emerging technology company, but unfortunately for him, housing values had been pretty much stagnant in Austin, and he ended up having to buy a Silicon Valley tract home with the proceeds of the sale of his home in Texas. Thankfully for him, when he finally retired, even his tract home had increased in value, and he was able to sell out for $1.5 million. But, if he had stayed in his original CA home, he would have been able to sell for at least $1 million more!