Improvements in our standard of living come from the free market and innovation.
I live in San Francisco and my taxes are higher than anywhere I've ever lived in my life. Interestingly, the government is run much worse than the small suburban town in Ohio where I am from. Every year in San Francisco, my standard of living goes down and local poverty increases. If there is a model the rest of the country should emulate it is not the California Government model.
California could take every penny from the rich, PG, Benioff, Jack Dorsey etc and they would still be bankrupt. Why?
Wealth is not money. Wealth is production. It is the flow of money. Wealth is efficiency. Wealth is production not consumption.
"Looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter." - Francisco D'Anconia