[brundolf]

Many of those wealthy individuals (or their companies, at least) have lobbied to ensure that we don't have a government which takes upon itself to keep citizens out of starvation. Not sure about Elon Musk specifically, but politicians don't just magically decide to ignore the needs of their constituents.

[et-al]

To spell it out for those in the back: reducing tax rates reduces the government's ability to fund public projects. i.e. roads, schools, and safety nets like food banks.

Also, the responsibility of feeding children has fallen upon schools in some areas. When SF closed schools in March 2020, one of the issues they had to address was "how do we feed the kids?"

https://www.sfusd.edu/about/news/current-news/sfusd-provide-...

[AnimalMuppet]

Politicians magically decide to ignore the needs of their constituents whenever they think they can get away with it, unless they're saints - and not many saints are politicians.

The better question might be, why do they think they can get away with it? Why do they get away with it?

(By the way, note that this is not just a problem with one party...)

[brundolf]

Whenever they can get away with it and it's in their best interest (thanks to lobbyists). If they don't get anything out of it, they may as well take the free goodwill from voters.

[AnimalMuppet]

Yeah, maybe I'm too cynical, but I suspect that there's always some lobbyists willing to make it worth any politician's time to do what's not in the voters' interest.