I hope people do the right thing and shop less.
Sorry, I don't see how the right thing to do is shop less. Can you elaborate? This is quite off topic, but I'm also quite curious.
It's bad legislation which hurts consumerism, is anti-business and was passed during a national economic recession as well as a then 40 billion dollars and change state deficit. One way or another, it also ends up hiking taxes.
The way I see it is that:
You shouldn't pursue policies that generally hurt consumerism and stifle economic growth, particularly during a recession.
After implementing these plastic bag bans, the cities started to increase their spending (during a 40 billion dollar deficit) and raised taxes.
California tax is already extraordinarily high enough for one.
I'm against raising taxes so that people have less discretionary income while hurting your own revenue by decreasing consumerism (sales taxes) and hurting businesses (both small and large) within your jurisdiction (more tax revenue). You're spending more, while cutting off your own means to make money and then begging the rich and regular folks to pay your massive debt off.
The cities that started banning plastic bag didn't actually save any money for public utilities, services, maintenance and recycling either.
I think when you implement bad economic policy, people should respond rationally and spend less accordingly.
We also have incompetent state and local bureaucracy.
Silicon Valley is really not the bastion of glory that everybody makes us out to be.
We have so much wasteful spending and tax from all our major tech corporations perpetuates this.
Our taxes don't yield us anything. We still have poor infrastructure.
A great deal of our local tax money has been wasted on building things that nobody ever uses and that services a very small neighborhood at best (corruption).
Schools districts are always out of money and want to parcel tax you.
Our highways are a mess here. They also make no sense.
Did you guys pass 101 on your way to SFO? Did you notice all the redrawn lines and the construction? That highway's been in that incomplete state since 2011.
The bay bridge looks like a POS and it's been structurally unstable since forever.
We still have very ****ty public transportation here. Caltrain and BART is a joke. Wouldn't it have been nice if you guys could have actually taken public transportation from SFO, SJC to Mountain View?
SJC to Mountain View is a 15 minute trip and you can't even take a train or light rail there. What kind of cutting edge place is silicon valley?
The cost of rent and food has also skyrocketed here the last few years.
Hilariously enough, shoplifting has significantly risen because people are stealing/hiding things in the bags they bring into stores. Surprise, surprise.
Of course this probably sounds familiar even if you don't live in CA and states and local bureaucracy is always going to suck but I'd rather have less of a nanny state passing less pointless legislation.
