California suffers from a Peter Thiel curse.
One single individual amassing huge amounts of money, influence, and power has never worked for the common good.
One single individual amassing huge amounts of money, influence, and power has never worked for the common good.
This. Mr Thiel's highly hypocritical and incoherent rant on "dysfunctional societies" and "corrupt governments" is nothing more admitting that the likes of him are refusing to contribute at all back to society, let alone proportionally to what they personally benefited from it, and are thus single-handedly actively causing its deterioration.
Mr Thiel, pay your taxes, and in the process put your money where your mouth is and start contributing back to fixing problems. You're supposed to be bootstrappy and a problem-solver, aren't you? Why did any of your industrious spirit vanished once it's your time to pay back to society what you owe it? Is it easy to build a huge mansion in a gated community but too hard to work with local and state governments to chip in a fraction of that cost to invest in urban renewal programs, social programs, or even social housing?
The only reason California doesn’t look like Sweden is because your average California liberal is a hypocrite and won’t put their money where their mouth is.
I’m skeptical.
In any case blonde girl Sweden and human rights Sweden are not the same place.
https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...
The visa process is relatively painless. Much simpler than the the process for USA or UK. All you need is a job offer.
So not really comparable to an independent nation of Sweden.
In that sense, Sweden’s exposure to potential internal migration is much higher.
Meanwhile, it’s important to remind you that engineers are rarely involved with policymaking. They are not the problem. Heck, there isn’t even an union or guild for engineers.
My point here is that there isn’t a single solution for very complex systemic issues. Pinning the blame on middle classes is wrong and unproductive.
They voted for a very anti-immigration right wing party.
Take GP's advice and go talk with some locals. Various countries with high taxes are watching their services fall apart. Taxing the middle class alone isn't the silver bullet you portay it as, and is only a small part of the entire system.
In the face of an aging population and diminishing workforce, taxing the middle class may not be enough. But I am talking about an antecedent question.
Or maybe California cannot restrict immigration from other parts of the US, containing 290M+ people. Nor can it stop the federal US government from taking a good portion of its wealth and giving to other parts of the US.
And Sweden can stop immigration anytime it wants.
Seem like pretty big differences in parameters requiring different approaches to government and expectations of outcomes.
Telling someone to pay their taxes to fix this problem is kind of like telling someone to drink more poison to cure their stomach ache.
It's interesting that Peter Thiel's preferred mythology (bootstrappy problem-solver with an industrious spirit) has become canon even among skeptics.
Peter Thiel's mythology revolves around the idea that all of society's problema are solved by industrious individuals, much like himself, instead of the state.
And now we see the likes of a Peter Thiel not only robbing the state of the means to actually do the job he's whining they should do, but also doing absolutely zero to do anything about the problem.
It's not a mythology. It's entitlement, hypocrisy, cinicism, and rationalized greed.