Charie:
You wrote: “This could work in NY as well, if we can just get over our allergy to supporting politicians who are willing to raise taxes.”
You’re kidding. The tax rates here are obscenely high, and we obtain the least bang for the buck. And this makes sense, since there is a significantly higher proportion of takers from the system than other locales where taxes are much less. This, my friend, is an intended and predicted result of the “dependency culture” promoted by the Democrats and liberals. Aside from the morally bankrupt policy of spreading wealth, it creates a self-sustaining system of takers that vote for the establishment. If this weren’t so corrupt, one might marvel at the genius of it. But I suspect that I will trigger your wrath in a barrage of nice sounding slogans and aphorisms, none of which are acceptable to the morally tuned mind. After all, we reads of this in a Mishna.
שלי שלי ושלך שלך זו מידה בינונית, ויש אומרים זו מידת סדום.
Such opposite opinions! Doesn’t it make sense to say that what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours? Certainly. But that is not the reason for this. It is because the Torah says so. If we rely only on our logic, we will deteriorate into what made סדום a place that could not respond to change, and Hashem needed to destroy it completely.
So before responding, just think a bit into this. It’s not about who you vote for, but what you vote for. I am repulsed by Trump’s personality, and continue to cringe at so many of his messages. But I have yet to see a Democrat behave properly, within tolerable morality.