[ozzythecat]

I don’t want to get into politics on HN, but I’ll say it’s a bad idea because many people don’t want to pay another penny in taxes. And this isn’t about my personal politics. If you want a tax because society will benefit, great - many of us are for it. But that’s not the debate.

If the government was efficient or effective at spending, then it’s just a question of, “well, do we agree spending on X benefits our community or society?”

Where I live, the infrastructure is in bad shape. Public schools are an embarrassment. Teachers are paid nothing (hence, we have unqualified teachers because skilled ones go into other fields). Homelessness is a separate industrial complex where we pump billions each year, but there are no results.

The debate on taxes always turns into the rich or whoever “paying their fair share”. But there’s another topic of greed, blatant corruption, and incompetence in the government apparatus that we have. If I give another penny from my dollar, I don’t see how my community benefits. There’s no accountability. Why should I pay my community gets nothing in return? In fact, it’s not that my community pays and another community wins. It’s that the money seems to go down a black hole of bureaucratic corruption and greed.

[notacoward]

> this isn’t about my personal politics.

...and yet, the rest of your comment is all your politically motivated beliefs and suggestions for policy based on those beliefs. Why do you believe all government is corrupt or incompetent? It can't be direct observation; there's just too much of it for one person to do that. Why do you focus on schools and homelessness, instead of (for example) military spending or corporate non-taxation? Could it be because of something you read, written by someone with a distinct political agenda?

"I'm not political, but <political opinion>" is one of the oldest tricks in the book, disingenuously trying to put one's own opinions above the "mere" politics others believe in. Stop. Own your political beliefs. Engage as an equal, not a superior authority representing "common sense" or whatever.

[eganist]

Having spent time in the public sector...

...it's amazing how much of this is caused by local and state governments being unable to afford:

1. Qualified talent

2. Equipment

3. Effective professional services

"The beatings will continue until morale improves" or, perhaps more aptly, "funding will trickle until programs improve."

a.k.a putting the cart before the horse.

I get that this isn't uniform across the board, but anecdotally, it's been true everywhere I've been. What's more appropriate, at least to me, is to include temporary funding that renews on meeting certain OKRs.

[prirun]

Having a relative who is a CPA and worked for local governments...

1. They hire their friends instead of qualified talent, and pay their unqualified friends ridiculous amounts

2. Local officials have businesses on the side and arrange to have their business get local government contracts

3. They don't want anyone qualified looking at their finances, because all the corruption and fraud will be obvious.

We've had local elected officials steal money and yet they can't be removed from office because they were elected. The whole local government situation is shit, starting with the fact that the people elected may be "popular" in some sense (they won the election, yipee!), but that doesn't mean they are qualified to run a city or county or manage a large budget.

[ac29]

If you or your relative actually has evidence of corruption, fraud and theft, why not go to the State AG with it, or the FBI?

I can't imagine just throwing up my hands and saying "welp, its politics" if I had this sort of information.

[prirun]

So you would throw your life into chaos in an attempt to get a corrupt official removed (which probably wouldn't work), only to get a new corrupt, elected, unqualified official in their place? No thanks.

[notacoward]

It might be helpful if you said where you were observing all this, because it's not universal.