[api]

People can blast him for being greedy, but here's the thing about California and its taxes: they are being wasted.

We have a state with awful public transit, tent cities of homeless people, decaying infrastructure, wildfires (yes its partly a Federal problem but the state could do something), gross inequality between school districts, and chronically terrible urban planning leading to a housing shortage. California is incredibly wealthy and is relatively high tax (though by no means the highest) so what bottomless pit is that money falling into? California is a money pit where no amount of cash fixes anything. Might as well just set money on fire.

You could say the same thing about America as a whole. We pay only a bit less in taxes than Canada (at least if you're middle class) but get a fraction of the benefits.

I'd be sympathetic with a tax increase if current money were being spent wisely, but don't ask for more money when you can't even build one high speed rail line at 10X the cost of anywhere else in the world.

[dbtc]

The wealthiest people and corporations pay proportionally a tiny amount of tax and then they get subsidized and bailed out by the middling middle class.

Canada doesn't have a ridiculous semiprivate health industry that could probably deliver free healthcare to a smaller state with what it spends on lobbying alone.

I think a deeper truth is that America has a split personality: partly it wants to be a grownup nation, and partly it wants to still play Wild West.

[istorical]

Yeah the ugly truth is that both the democrats and the republicans are often right. Social welfare and public spending is important and needed, and social welfare and public spending is also atrociously mismanaged. But we conveniently pretend the other side doesn't have a point on this because admitting they are right would weaken our own position.

[api]

As a result we often get the worst of both worlds, like the US healthcare system which combines everything bad about socialized medicine with everything bad about privatized medicine.

[jinushaun]

Having lived in both expensive and high tax cities like SF and NYC, I never got the sense that my tax money was being wasted in NYC like I did in SF. Everything is better and the city is always improving itself in NYC. Where does the money go in SF?

[nadezhda18]

Is the state of public transit in NYC (subway) better than in SF? I had an impression it's horrible (everybody hates it) and it's a total money pit.

[danielrpa]

California taxes you a lot more than other states, but doesn't give you better services than other states. I say that because I've lived in 4 states, California included (for years), and nowhere I felt that my money was wasted more than California. Premium taxes for average, if not below average, services by US standards.

My current county in a southeastern red state charges me 1/3 than what I paid in California in property taxes (absolute dollars, as houses here are MUCH cheaper), but we have well maintained schools, music teachers and a funded library. I had none of the above where I lived in California (Orange County).

[api]

OC doesn't even have school busing. They say it's because of proposition 13 (which is problematic) but the funds for OC schools are not substantially less than elsewhere in the country where the schools are on average better and there are services like busing.

Where is it all going?

Probably to bloated administration. Colleges are the same story. Tuition has risen massively yet there are fewer tenure track positions for good professors. It's all going to administrators.

[foogazi]

Ironically Orange County has been a Republican bastion for the last 90 years

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

Could this be a downside of being a bit of a one party state? On paper, I imagine if more races were more competitive, we'd see our elected officials work harder to keep their jobs rather than lean back on the party establishment to support them.

This is actually an honest question - I'm not trying to make a political point here. I'm genuinely curious about whether purple states spend their tax dollars better than the very red and very blue ones.

[api]

It could be. At this point Democrats are basically tenured in California. The state has had Republican governors in the past but that was before present levels of polarization.

[seiferteric]

I really think we need a new party. Fiscally conservative Democrats. People who live in the real world with respect to budgets, with the ability to say NO to stupid things, but generally being open to some Government programs and of course socially liberal.

[api]

That’s sane. It would never go viral on social media.

[seiferteric]

I've come full circle, I think CA Democrats should be in favor of smaller Government and less taxes at the federal level so that states like CA can have a bigger slice of the tax pie by increasing state income taxes. If we did this I think we could get healthcare for all and other things for CA residents. Since it seem impossible to do things at the Federal level for several reasons, why even try? Just do it at the state level.

[hackeraccount]

I'm not a Democrat. I'm not of the Left. That said the argument for wanting activist government at the Federal and not the State level is that it avoids free rider problems. i.e. All sick people move to California because they have free health care. People making money run to low tax States.

I'm unsure personally about how accurate that argument really is but it's certainly made.

[justaguy88]

If you want to say the money is wasted, I think it's on you to provide the examples rather than stating it and then asking others to back you up

[panabee]

the high speed rail line data point is interesting.

are there conditions unique to california that could rationalize this massive gap in cost?

if not, and other governments can build affordable rail lines under comparable conditions, why can't the california government emulate those blueprints?

aversion to wasting money, rather than lack of compassion, seems like a reasonable objection to high taxes. what governments in your opinion offer the best mix of transparency and/or responsible spending?

thanks for sharing.

[bobthepanda]

Toll roads are pretty common in high-tax countries. Canada has some. France, Italy and Japan are pretty much all toll roads.