A nice example from California, a little bit north of LA (where I've lived for three months at the expense of one of my customers) there is an area with lots of really really fancy houses. They must be worth upwards of several million $ a piece.

The driveways are absolutely immaculate, the road they empty out on is worse than some of the roads in Northern Canada. I've seen the exact same thing in countries that literally qualify as third world.

I refer you to this map:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world_country

In case you don't know what is meant by the term, but Colombia and Panama definitely qualify. By 'modern' standards some parts of Romania and eastern Poland do too, but I've been to plenty of other places that would count, either by that map or because of the local conditions. And I'm not talking package holidays here but stays of at least several months.

I'm using these roads as an example because at the time it struck me as indicative of what might be wrong there.

If your country is 'the richest in the world' by some measurements then that wealth should be translated to an increased higher standard of living for the poorest, and an increase in infrastructural spending that will benefit everyone, not just the rich.

If you can't manage that, in other words if your poor are still not provided health care, proper housing and education and if you have an underclass that basically has very few choices of making parity with those born into richer families (and hey, isn't that what that famous American dream is all about) as well as an enormous criminal problem then maybe we should propose redrawing that wikipedia map along more objective criteria.

And quite possibly, we'll find that California has much more in common with third world countries than with the first, no matter how rich the rich, and no matter how much the GDP.

Northern Canada is a good comparison because it probably has the lowest GDP per surface unit of any country in the world, but they also have one of the best health care systems, and their work on roads is nothing short of amazing, especially if you take in to account the effect of the climate on the roads there.

If everybody in California (including corporations) would be paying taxes relative compared to other 'first world' countries then such things would be taken for granted.

Until it is solved through taxation everybody, VCs included (who really are only in the game to turn a ton of money in to even more money) has a responsibility to look after their neighbours.