Why do you presuppose that the money was spent irresponsibly?
It seems to me the onus should be on the government, since they're the ones taking our money. Once they've (1) proven they spend our money wisely, and (2) shown they have real need of more, they should be given more.
The constitutional limits definitely have their drawbacks, but they prevent the frogs (us) from being boiled alive.
BART drivers. Coming in from New York, another high-tax state, the paucity of services in California is surprising.
All bad laws were started with good intentions. That should never be what defines a law's value, only cause & effect to the best of our current understanding (and hopefully backed by data).
Note: I'm not saying this is a bad law as I'm not familiar with the local political environment which motivated this nor the particular negative consequences it objectively has.
Last time I was there (California DMV) it was to pick up a custom license plate. I made an appointment and was in and out in less than 5 minutes. I spent more time in the parking lot removing my old plates and installing the new ones.
>Social Security Administration?
Had to get my Social Security replaced a few years ago. Was in an out in a reasonable time (comparable to a doctor appointment)
>The Post Office
USPS works fine for me.
Also had no problems getting a business license from either the City of Mountain View, or San Francisco. The staff at Mountain View City Hall were also very helpful in verifying that local zoning permitted me to run my software consultancy out of my home (it does).
The thing is, there are actual parts of government that are terrible. Caltrans (aka California Department of Transportation) is quite incompetent. Apparently, if there's a big transportation project in California, often the first goal is to try to figure out how to get someone other than Caltrans to run it. When that fails, you get messes like the new Bay Bridge.
The VTA (who runs public transportation in Santa Clara County), also seems quite inept, with light rail lines that are little used and obviously dumb ideas like a BRT lane on El Camino Real.
It would be nice if people who are skeptical of government would direct their skepticism at the parts that are the most broken, rather than just pulling out Stereotypical Examples of Government Incompetence (DMV, Post Office) that actually work fairly well most of the time.
And I've used all of them with little or no issues. The DMV being the biggest pain point in one state, but it works quite well in my current state.