5 ms·
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
by xp84 4mo ago
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.
- hagbard_c 4mo agoYes, that has been clear for a long time, about as long as CA has been a one-party state. The real question is why you supposedly smart Californians keep on falling for the... same... old... lie... every... damn... time. It is not as if the pie-in-the-sky people haven't promised a chicken in every pot and a cow in every shed and a car on every driveway - replace these with whatever modern equivalents you like - a thousand times before without delivering even a single chick, calf or push bike. Why do you keep on falling for the same old tired this-time-it-will-work lies? This is not limited to CA and might even become more prevalent in NY now that the DSA has seriously started to hollow out the remains of what used to be the Democratic party but it has been going on for much longer in the formerly Golden, now somehow tarnished state. Why? California Dreaming used to be a thing, not a nightmare.
- croisillon 4mo agocalling California a one-party-state is a bit exagerated: even the Democrats have had a governor from time to time too, in the past 100 (or the past 60, or the past 40) years
- xp84 4mo agoI don't understand what you're trying to say. The stats don't lie: https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_California_state_government https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_California_state_go... And the only bit of "red" on that diagram besides the blip in 96 in the Assembly, was Schwarzenegger, who was quite a moderate figure, and given his party didn't control the legislature at all, he didn't make a tremendous or long-lasting impact besides a few budget showdowns.
- croisillon 4mo agobut apart from 10 years Warren, 6 years Knight, 8 years Reagan, 8 years Deukmejian, 8 years Wilson, 8 years Schwarzenegger, when did Republicans ever win any election in California?
- albedoa 4mo agoWhoops, looks like my insight about you was entirely accurate how can that be: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643270
- hagbard_c 4mo agoExplain how 'your insight' into me is 'entirely accurate' in reference to my posting of another person who claimed to have insight into other people who happened to disagree with whatever was posted on this site. Before you do that I'd follow the advice I gave in that post: take a mirror and have a good look at it. What you see is what you get.
- akramachamarei 4mo ago> plenty of people in my social circle who basically vote by reading the supposed purpose from the title 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.