RESTON, VA June 7 (DPI) – A proposal to tax millionaires more to get the homeless off the streets of Los Angeles usually might get a warm embrace in progressive circles, but a recent Reddit thread suggests that young, tech-savvy readers – those who populate heavily-trafficked Reddit.com – recognize that help-the-homeless initiatives are often a racket for nonprofits and the public sector.
The most upvoted of more than 4500 comments in the thread last week focused on the “intermediary problem” in which third parties – politicians, nonprofits, advocacy groups – push to raise taxes on the wealthy for a specific purpose, and then use those captured funds for something else. One reader saw a precedent in California, when a 2006 referendum increased taxes on millionaires to help the mentally ill – only to see “not much change” in the well being of the mentally ill ten years later:
In 2006 California passed Prop 63, taxing millionaires to help the mentally ill. I’m not seeing much change in the problem from then to now. I would expect most of the money goes to the various experts who get the funding for their programs.
“I would expect most of the money goes to various experts who get the funding for their programs.” Bingo. I have insurance, but went to exactly two psychiatric evaluations across two years due to stress from grad school and life. Including the one month Xanax prescription I got, I paid out $60 and the insurance company paid out over $700. And I was just an ordinary healthy college student who spent a grand total of 60 minutes with a psych. Legit mental patients need weekly evals and regular prescriptions. All that tax does is take money from one set of multi millionaires and give it to another.
The availability of money is not the problem. It’s where the existing money gets funneled. “There’s only so much to go around” is a lie. There’s never any money to help the poor because there’s no political incentive to help the poor. It’s a dog and pony show to get more money to spend in wasteful programs and give kickbacks to “developers”. San Francisco has a $9 billion budget. We’re voting whether or not we want to raise sales tax to add a few hundred million more to our budget. For what? We still have homeless people shooting up out in the open, human poop everywhere, tent cities, people with severe mental illness roaming amongst tourists and the working people. On top of that, we have sinkholes that open up every week from old worn out water pipes or sewer lines from the 19th century. Where’s the priority to fix social problems when $9 billion doesn’t seem like it’s enough. I didn’t screw up the m with a b. It really is billions.