Perhaps not Somali civil war level failure, but taxes keep going up while government keeps becoming more ineffective. Government concern for personal safety and property keeps going down.
I personally no longer feel safe going outside my $3000/mo apartment after dark despite being a tall man because there are mentally deranged homeless who, quite literally, roam the streets attacking vulnerable people (my wife was assaulted by one and police didn't care), and frequent reports of robbery at gunpoint. Prices in stores in downtown are 2x what they are in nice suburb areas an hour's drive away because of unprosecuted theft. It is literally cheaper for me to _order Instacart and tip a driver_ than it is to purchase from local grocery stores.
And what are my elected politicians doing during this time? Sending out emails to their constituents about "mitigating inequity" in how roads are resurfaced and renaming manhole covers.
So I should pay more than 50% in taxes? If the California+federal tax rate was 35% for me or something I could have already retired. I think I distribute my income fairly and I can't even vote in this country even though I am a permanent resident and pay taxes like every other American.
The problem is the government is an inefficient black hole of money, I also pay around 3k in rent but live in a nice neighborhood but the only way to do that in San Francisco that I'm aware of is by renting a 8k condo with roommates. I have an activist history in Argentina but after about a year of trying to find a group that's doing something I feel identified with in San Francisco to tackle what I believe are the cities problems, the only groups I found have basically been getting a decent salary from the government for them and their friends and whatever is they are doing is clearly not working. I don't want to start naming names and discussing policy because it just doesn't go anywhere. I just really really really don't think this is an income distribution problem, it looks like one, I believed it was that three years ago, I tried to understand it better and do something, and now I think it's not. It's that "the homeless" are the justification for a useless bureaucracy that's in the best case not really changing anything and in the worst is going to make it worse in the long term, all by living off half of every software engineers income that we are already forced to redistribute.
But more than that, you should stop electing shitacular government officials.
Otherwise it's going to be so unprofitable for you to not be in government. Once you're in government then you might as well just fix the problem yourself.
> There's more to an election than just going and voting.
Yeah there is, a lot, most of it illegal if you are not American. You can't contribute money to political organizations including certain type of non-profits and technically you can be deported even for protesting. Volunteering for a campaign is also a big no-no.
I can volunteer and donate to organizations that have a clear political bias even though they are not partisan, and already do.
So what should be my tax rate? 100% and then I get everything from the government?
I am ok with that, but I'd rather work as a clerk on the DMV instead of my current job which is rather stressful but has the benefit that if I don't screw up I'm retiring early.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to claim that California’s taxes, above a reasonable minimum bound, provide any appreciable material benefit to him. Quite the opposite.
I doubt it's "more than four hours a day, every day". Any software engineer working more than 40 hours/week in this job market is a chump.
Beyond that, he lives in a society, is only able to make that money through the support of that society. Note he chose to move to California, so clearly he's gaining a lot from California.
Letting law and order go down in flames is going to make it worse. The rich can easily afford private security, poor people can't. See also: south africa.
San Francisco spends over $50k/year per homeless person and has the worst homeless problem in the nation. More money is not going to help. We need state power and willingness to forcibly commit heroin/meth addicts and mentally deranged people to institutions.
I personally no longer feel safe going outside my $3000/mo apartment after dark despite being a tall man because there are mentally deranged homeless who, quite literally, roam the streets attacking vulnerable people (my wife was assaulted by one and police didn't care), and frequent reports of robbery at gunpoint. Prices in stores in downtown are 2x what they are in nice suburb areas an hour's drive away because of unprosecuted theft. It is literally cheaper for me to _order Instacart and tip a driver_ than it is to purchase from local grocery stores.
And what are my elected politicians doing during this time? Sending out emails to their constituents about "mitigating inequity" in how roads are resurfaced and renaming manhole covers.