Comments
PERSPECTIVE - The interesting thing about tax dollars is that there is never enough of it for a politician in California. Fraud, waste, abuse, kickbacks, failed projects, bad results, unaccountability, and unauditable trails of payment are what politicians have created, promoted, and still seek to expand in Los Angeles and throughout the State. These are the results, which become more visible every day, and it is now impossible to say it ain’t so.
There is a basic agreement that underpins any functioning society: citizens pay taxes, and in return the state provides order, safety, and the infrastructure necessary for economic life. That agreement is not philosophical. It is transactional. It is measured not in rhetoric, but in outcomes. And in Los Angeles, and increasingly across California, that transactional balance has failed.
California has constructed one of the most aggressive systems of taxation and fee extraction in the United States. Income is taxed at the highest marginal rates in the country. Sales taxes approach or exceed ten percent in many jurisdictions. Fuel is layered with excise taxes, environmental surcharges, cap-and-trade costs, and regulatory add-ons that quietly increase the cost of everything that moves through the state. Fees upon fees attach themselves to daily life, vehicle registration, licensing, permits, and regulatory compliance—each one justified in isolation, yet collectively forming a system that feels like compulsory usury or debt slavery.
This is not taxation in isolation. It is taxation combined with the full weight of a law, backed by armed men with badges, which is one of the few differences from the protection rackets promulgated by the Cosa Nostra.
Miss a deadline, and penalties compound. Delay a payment, and interest accrues. Fall out of compliance, and the state can suspend your ability to operate. The system is designed to ensure your participation through consequences. Not because the state is equivalent to criminal organizations, but because the mechanics share certain characteristics. Both systems extract money. Both regulate behavior. Both impose penalties for noncompliance. However, paying protection money to the mob might keep your business safe, whereas paying taxes for adequate policing will not come with any such guarantee.
Governments derive legitimacy from performance. They exist to enforce laws, protect property, maintain order, and provide a stable environment in which people can live and work without fear. When those functions falter, everything built on top of them becomes unstable.
As of 2026, the Los Angeles Police Department operates with approximately 8,600 to 8,700 sworn officers, the lowest staffing level in roughly thirty years. Since 2019, more than 1,400 officers have been lost to attrition, retirement, and recruitment challenges. This is not a marginal decline. It is a structural contraction in deterrence, presence, and response capacity.
The effects are operational and immediate. Fewer officers mean fewer patrols. Fewer patrols mean less visibility. Less visibility weakens deterrence. Response times lengthen. Proactive policing gives way to reactive triage. Residents feel it. Businesses try to adapt but are hampered by Proposition 47. The absence of enforcement becomes its own signal to act with impunity, as consequences are minimal and, for favored demographics, even less so.
Even when the voters rally around a common-sense proposition like 36, which was to put consequences back into the law, the corruption is so great, and their desire for equitable outcomes so insatiable, that our current crop of elected leaders not only actively support defunding the police but also ignore the yes vote on Prop 36 and fail to allocate the funds to enact it.
This shift reflects a broader policy direction within Los Angeles governance, promoted wholly by members aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA- Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martinez, and Nithya Raman) and others who have advocated reallocating resources away from traditional law enforcement under the framework of “defunding the police.
This is a civilization-collapsing policy they advocate. Beyond economic opportunity, the reason people gather in cities is safety. The DSA assumes predatory behavior can be managed without consequence, that deterrence can be replaced by services (I’m being robbed at gunpoint, please call a social worker!), and that disorder will self-correct if addressed indirectly. It does not. Without credible enforcement, bad actors are not rehabilitated; they are incentivized. The result is not equity or justice. It is the promotion of disorder that reverts to the law of the jungle. And that exposure is not theoretical. It is experienced daily, particularly by those who cannot afford to avoid it.
Residents are now paying twice, once through taxes for inadequate public safety, and again privately for the same function. This is a duplication of core city function, and it signals a system that is no longer aligned with its primary obligation.
At the same time, policing capacity has declined, while spending in other areas has surged, most notably on homelessness. Since 2020 alone, Los Angeles has spent at least $2.6 billion to acquire and convert hotels, motels, and housing units. Many of these projects cost close to or more than $1 million per unit. The results are deeply misaligned with the scale of that investment.
Encampments persist. Public spaces degrade. Individuals suffering from severe mental illness and addiction remain untreated and unsheltered. The city’s visible condition reflects a system that is succumbing to societal breakdown and third-world status.
More troubling, even where units are built, they are not being effectively utilized. One study of newly constructed supportive housing developments found that only 24% of units were occupied within 90 days. In some cases, most units remained vacant, while administrative delays, tenant-matching issues, and operational inefficiencies slowed deployment. When open, there are so many instances of crime exploding in adjacent areas of the shelter.
This is the critical point. The issue is not simply cost. It is the cost combined with underperformance. Spending $1 million per unit might be defensible if it rapidly reduced homelessness and aided robust recovery. But when units sit partially empty while encampments remain full, the disconnect becomes impossible to ignore. At that point, the problem is not funding. It is execution. But the bigger question is: why should society give away million-dollar housing when so many honest, hardworking citizens are struggling to make ends meet? What makes bad behavior worthy of being rewarded with large amount of taxpayer dollars?
If the citizens of Los Angeles and California had full transparency into the magnitude of plain old theft, inefficiency, misallocation, delayed deployment, and structural waste embedded within these systems, election outcomes would likely look very different. Complexity obscures accountability. Multiple agencies and non-governmental organizations obscure responsibility and hinder transparency, erecting a bureaucratic wall of impenetrability and a cloak of secrecy that allows money to flow without accountability.
The consequences extend beyond policing and homelessness.
Consider education. The Los Angeles Unified School District spends roughly $47,000 per student, yet only about 27% of students meet California’s basic science standards. This is not a funding problem. It is a performance problem. The scale of investment is already enormous. The outcomes do not justify it.
Consider fire protection. The Los Angeles Fire Department, an essential service, is now supporting a ballot initiative to increase the sales tax by half a cent simply to maintain operations after a significant portion of the city was burned to the ground. In a city that already taxes heavily, essential services should not have to plead for additional funding. The issue is not revenue. It is priorities. Maybe if we handed out fewer crack pipes (a dubious harm reduction policy), we would have fewer fires?
At the same time, large public systems remain vulnerable to waste and abuse. Programs like Medi-Cal have faced scrutiny over improper payments and fraud, with an exposure of $500 million. Enforcement actions are increasing, and arrests are being made, but these efforts are reactive. They occur after our money has already been lost.
For taxpayers, there is no distinction between inefficiency, mismanagement, and fraud. Because the result is the same. And while all of this unfolds, a broader shift is underway.
People are leaving. California, and Los Angeles in particular, has experienced sustained outmigration. High-income earners, middle-class families, and businesses are relocating to states with lower costs and more predictable governance. This is not a coincidence. The same federal government exists across all fifty states. The same macroeconomic pressures apply. Yet California consistently stands apart in terms of excess costs, regulation, and unfriendliness to business. So much so that hundreds of major companies have left California for friendlier regulatory environments
That difference is driven by policy. And it has consequences. When residents leave, the tax base shrinks. But government obligations do not shrink proportionally. Fixed costs remain. Long-term liabilities remain. Infrastructure demands remain.
The result is predictable. The burden on those who remain grows. Fewer taxpayers are left to support the same or expanding levels of spending. Tax rates rise. Fees increase. Enforcement to collect intensifies. This creates a feedback loop. Higher costs drive greater outmigration, further concentrating the burden. Over time, the system becomes increasingly dependent on a smaller group of taxpayers who must continue funding it.
This is not sustainable. Because at some point, even those who can afford to stay begin to question whether it makes sense to do so. And that is the inflection point. Taxation depends on legitimacy, not just legal authority, but the belief that the system is working. That which is taken is returned in the form of something tangible, visible, and reliable.
Right now, as we drive on crumbling roads and feel unsafe even on our street, it is hard to point to a single tangible result that our tax dollars have delivered to the public. Homeless spending is massive but completely ineffective. Education spending is high, but Jorge, Muamar, and Shaqulia can’t cipher or read. Essential services like the police feel like they barely function while new taxes are proposed. And the population required to sustain the system is slowly leaving. Why stay?
If voters understood how much of their money was being stolen, no politician could ever face the public without a large phalanx of police for protection. No incumbent would be re-elected. However, unfortunately, the mainstream media does its best to keep voters ill-informed.
It is time to make consequences great again. Lock up the criminals and do away with early parole. Prosecute the politicians and elected officials who have enabled this theft. Thousands of years ago, Hammurabi established a simple principle: consequences must match actions, and failure carries accountability. Today, we have replaced that clarity with a system in which failure is funded, and no one is accountable. It is time to make punishments effective again. Since the rot starts at the top, let’s start by prosecuting the enablers in high office who allowed billions to be stolen from the public. Maybe it’s time to bring back chain gangs?
(Eliot Cohen has served on the Neighborhood Council for 12 years, served on the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, is on the Board of Homeowners of Encino, and was the president of HOME for over seven years. Eliot retired after a 35-year career on Wall Street. Eliot is a critic of the stinking thinking of the bureaucrats and politicians that run the County, the State, and the City. Eliot and his wife divide their time between L.A. and Baja Norte, Mexico. Eliot is a featured writer for CityWatchLA.com.)
