California voters say they cant afford to live here. Yet we keep voting to make life more expensive

Voters rejected the “billionaire tax” in California — but approved a variety of other taxes, especially at the local level.It was a remarkable result in an election in which voters constantly said that the cost of living was the top concern.California politicians complain about “affordability,” then make the state more unaffordable.And with Democrats, there are almost never any controls on spending, no careful management of funds, no accountability to the taxpayers.

Their only solution to every fiscal crunch is: Raise taxes.And voters seem to have gone along with it.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story Here’s just a partial list of local results.In San Francisco, voters passed Measure H, which creates an annual parcel tax on local property to fund the city’s ailing Muni transport system.Voters in the broader Bay Area also chose to raise sales taxes through Measure RTM to fund BART and other transit agencies.In San Diego, voters appear to have passed Measure B, which raise county sales taxes by 0.5%, some of which would supposedly go toward health services.In Los Angeles, voters passed Measure FD, which will raised sales taxes in the city by 0.5% to provide funding to the fire department that the city should arguably be providing already.That’s on top of the 0.5% sales tax that voters passed in LA County in June, which was sold as a way to pay for local health care services.Even in formerly conservative Orange County, voters passed sales tax and hotel tax hikes in some towns.What’s remarkable about these results is that voters weren’t raising taxes on other people, in most cases, but rather on themselves. It could be that the same “blue wave” that brought left-wing voters to the polls also resulted in more tax hikes.But that cannot explain...