[jdfreefly]

(take this with a grain of salt...I'm one of the "earners")

You can't invent yourself out of a system of entitlements that has long since divorced itself from reality.

You have a (comparatively) small group of people making a large portion of the income with a much larger group of people making little to no income and demanding more and more help from the earners to support their philanthropic causes.

What makes it hard to swallow is that we see loads of money being thrown at things like education and helping the homeless but we see no improvement.

I'm all for helping educate people, and lending a hand to the less fortunate, but I expect a return on my investment. When you take this much from me and my return is children who can't read turning into violent criminals and the wonderful view of a homeless man crapping in a doorway on the way to work...I want a refund.

[lutorm]

"loads of money being thrown at things like education"?

State funding for the University of California has decreased from 7% of the state of California's general fund in 1970 to 3.2% in 2008. Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted state support per UC student fell by 40%. As a result, the total inflation-adjusted education expenditure per UC student (including student fees and contributions from UC General Funds) decreased by 19%, while student costs rose by 138%.

That doesn't sound like money's being thrown at education, at least not higher ed.

(text lifted from this letter: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/...)

[dflock]

I'm from the UK and have traveled fairly widely - and I have to say that San Francisco has the highest number of homeless people I've seen anywhere in the developed world. Maybe it's the weather. Anyway, whatever's being done about it, it's either not working, or not enough.