Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gfxgirl 1260 days ago
Your painting the right as "no taxes" I think they'd paint as "quit wasting money".

As an example, SF has the highest tax revenue per capita in the USA

https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/slideshows/us-cities-with...

So why is it so dysfunctional? My guess is the right would say because so much is wasted on the wrong things.

Note: I'm not saying the right is correct. I'm only suggesting a different interpretation of their POV.

1 comments

Everyone thinks that something they don't want to pay for is a "waste of money". When that something that you want to quit spending money on can be characterized as "other people who I don't identify with", you get the right.

SF is a mess because of liberal mismanagement (I say that as someone who identifies as left). Spending money at massive scale without asking the people you're spending money on to fix something in society (whether it's their own actions, or something that they are responsible for). SF went from a 80B surplus to a 15B deficit... and what get it gain from that? How is the city better... It's not.

>When that something that you want to quit spending money on can be characterized as "other people who I don't identify with"

Everyone wants to spend money on something or someone they identify with. It's not like the left has showed any leniency against those it deems unworthy.

Sure they have. They believe in social safety nets for all (livable wages to reduce crime, for example). They also tend to be more socially inclusive (I rarely see a racist gay person for example).
Woah there... there are PLENTY of racist gay people.
Not from a government perspective, but does anyone want to 'quit spending money' on anything anymore? I find that as a society we've become addicted to spending on stuff and we never cut back spending on anything anymore.

I don't know if the majority agrees but we've all become addicted to e-commerce spending. The number of shoes is not counted in number of total shoes owned but number of shoes bought per month. A stock metric vs a flow metric.

Everybody has a vague idea that they're addicted but nobody seems to want to acknowledge it or even track it.

It's almost as if cutting frivolous spending is no longer a virtue.

Sorry if that's a rant.