[stupac2]

But I'm sure it's all just flushed down the toilet by the idiots in Sacramento, just like everyone everywhere thinks their tax money is wasted until you start trying to find things to cut.

I understand your point, but it seems that the cost of many desirable things provided by the State is much higher than similar things provided by private industry or by other States. CalTrans is always the poster child for this argument, but there are many others. What often happens is that the political argument is framed as "Should we do X or should we not do X?", rather than "How do we do X at a reasonable cost?". The situation is that in California one party has a majority and can do pretty much what they want. This majority seems incapable of finding a way to increase the "bang for the buck", which we desperately need to do. Washington DC has gridlock, which is bad. Sacramento doesn't have that excuse.

Right but that's a US-wide problem. The question of why US public works projects are so much more expensive than anywhere else is much-studied and as far as I know has no straightforward answer.

I just get irritated that whenever this comes up the attitude seems to be "things are perfect therefore ***** everything!" and it's ridiculous.


Re: prop 13, the housing might be more expensive but it turns over much more slowly. Per this chart we're 17th in the country. There's no way to sort, but per this page CA's total state/local collection per capita isn't all that high (although it's nearly a decade out of date...)

So, I dunno, seems about right to me.

[stupac2]

But I'm sure it's all just flushed down the toilet by the idiots in Sacramento, just like everyone everywhere thinks their tax money is wasted until you start trying to find things to cut.

I understand your point, but it seems that the cost of many desirable things provided by the State is much higher than similar things provided by private industry or by other States. CalTrans is always the poster child for this argument, but there are many others. What often happens is that the political argument is framed as "Should we do X or should we not do X?", rather than "How do we do X at a reasonable cost?". The situation is that in California one party has a majority and can do pretty much what they want. This majority seems incapable of finding a way to increase the "bang for the buck", which we desperately need to do. Washington DC has gridlock, which is bad. Sacramento doesn't have that excuse.

Right but that's a US-wide problem. The question of why US public works projects are so much more expensive than anywhere else is much-studied and as far as I know has no straightforward answer.

I just get irritated that whenever this comes up the attitude seems to be "things are perfect therefore ***** everything!" and it's ridiculous.


Re: prop 13, the housing might be more expensive but it turns over much more slowly. Per this chart we're 17th in the country. There's no way to sort, but per this page CA's total state/local collection per capita isn't all that high (although it's nearly a decade out of date...)

So, I dunno, seems about right to me.