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We just reeeeeally want to believe, more than other states, that our government is The Good Guys and we can Fix The Problems if we only added more laws and more taxes. Every two years we are presented with 20 earnest-seeming ballot measures that each have roughly this message: > "We have a major problem in California -- ____ is not as ____ as it should be. Prop 1234 authorizes the state to sell $__,000,000,000 in bonds[1] to be repaid over the next 30 years. This will completely fix the ____ problem. By the way, it looks like a lot, but it's actually a good investment that will SAVE TAXPAYERS MONEY in the future." Then we get another almost identical one in 3 years saying that ____ is worse than ever and this new round of $__,000,000,000 will finally fix it once and for all. Voters approve like three quarters of these, and usually don't even remember we just gave them billions of dollars to fix the same thing a few years ago. I've heard plenty of people in my social circle who basically vote by reading the supposed purpose from the title ("Anti-Homelessness", "Schools", "High-speed rail", "Animal welfare") and they vote based entirely on the assumption that this proposition is the only and best way to help the homeless, improve schools, etc. They don't even entertain the idea that the prop might be a pork-filled piece of trash written by lobbyists that might even make the problems worse while costing eleven figures and still not be paid for in 20 years. We just trust Sacramento so blindly. [1] That, or the other alternative funding: A tax raise "on big corporations" which will 100% definitely not affect you, dear voter. |
In my experience, if there's anything that shouldn't be judged by what it's called, it's typically political things, ballot props and bills especially. Sometimes I even adopt an inverse intuition, which is the proposal will have an opposite effect to its nominal one.