Kevin of Reno

I’ve been to a lot of big cities now. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, Chicago, New York, Washington DC, San Diego, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City.

One trend I’ve  noticed is that the cities known for their progressive policies and liberal programs are the ones more prone to problems. Granted: There is absolutely no way to measure causal relationship (likely SF has a liberal policy because it has so many homeless) and my position is purely observational. However, this article by PublicCEO.com articulates the case I’ve been making against those policies.

Despite its (San Francisco’s) spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.

Yes, San Francisco is mismanaged, but blaming the individuals in charge won’t fix it. The problems with the city, and other large cities, are institutional. The larger and more complex and more we expect a government to do, the more likely corruption, waste, and incompetency are to define it. Government should do a few things, do them well, and then get out of the way.

The Economist did a piece awhile back on how the high taxes for high levels of service model California embodied has been replaced by the low tax, low service model of Texas. Certainly people came to appreciate and expect the services California provided, but as we’ve seen over the past two years, when the revenue that pays for those services is based on property values and sales taxes (both of which are subject to wide fluctuation), the model is unsustainable.

I love the San Francisco as a metaphor for liberalism visual. It’s a city that is suffering because it asked too often what it could do for its citizens, and not what they could do for it, or for themselves.