San Franciso is a city, so I imagine what will happen is that companies will move out of the city limits and this new tax will be completely ineffective.
Seriously, how hard is it to find a new office in Oakland or San Jose?
San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
131–140 of 754 posts
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#132Why do these discussions always revolve around the collection of taxes instead of how the taxes will be used? Would anyone be complaining if they knew the taxes would be more beneficial? Conversely, wouldn't we reject these new taxes if we knew they weren't going to be a greater benefit? Does anyone even know how the taxes will be used?
This is such a good point. It's as if the argument is that more taxes is good no matter what rather than knowing what/why you're taxing in the first place.
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
BTW, Stripe has already left San Francisco for South San Francisco (which is a different city).
That was fast. Unless this tax targets all of the bay area, the moving cost is not really much and your workers could still commute with a WFH option. Imo, San Jose is in prime position to build a real city with the possible exodus from SF.
> San Jose is in prime position to build a real city
San Jose is already 25% bigger than SF. It's the third largest city in California after Los Angeles and San Diego.
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#134does this target only CEOs? what about COOs, CTOs, and other C-level executives? Board members?
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#135The financial success of San Francisco has covered for a lot of bad policies. I feel like the tech boom is somewhat like a "resource curse". Obviously tech has a lot more positive economic development associated with it, but a lot of it can just pick up and move to the peninsula or south bay.
It seems like a potentially bad mix where a lot of people live in SF just for the money, and as soon as a downturn hits amd the bad policies start to have consequences it will just hollow out. That may be happening now.
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me weigh the pros/cons here: Pros: lots of funding, lots of experienced employees who have taken companies from seed to IPO, probably a higher chance than some other areas to go from well off to ridiculously rich Cons: I get taxed more if I start making 200x what the average employee in my company makes. Can you see how no one would care unless they're 100% sure they're gonna be making 200x what their average emp…
They don't need to be 100% sure at all. The whole point of the startup is to get ridiculously rich.
This reminds me of that episode of South Park where they form a band but refuse to play until internet music piracy stops. I doubt that someone talented enough to build that kind of company is going to factor this into their decision to run it from SF.
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#137SF has so much tax revenue, but where is it spent?
https://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/CSF_Budget_Book_June...
Trains, streets, cops, hospitals, public works, 31k employees, and so on.
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
More likely, this will just result in businesses continuing to leave San Francisco. The pandemic has given most companies a good reason to do so already and my bet is on most of them not returning to their overpriced San Francisco headquarters when this is eventually over.
I have lived in San Francisco since 2005. Over the time I've lived here, we've had the opposite problem: lots of highly paid tech firms moving into SF. This has changed the nature of San Francisco in a way that many dislike, including me. I was initially attracted to San Francisco because, it was chill, it was beautiful, and it had a lot of eccentric, really interesting people. Many of our good friends had to leave o…
I've seen people take that position and I see a fundamental mistake. Look at rust belt cities. Look at NYC in the 70s. When employers leave the people left behind are not better off. This doesn't mean we need to kiss big tech ass, but we have a city where getting a job is a solved problem. Very few places on earth have that.
Rent prices are the underlying problem pushing people out. Underlying _that_ problem is a lack of supply. SF zoned for and issued permits for a large number of offices, but not the corresponding residential structures to house those new workers. So they came here and were forced to compete with existing residents for a place to live.
The fix is to keep the economic prosperity and build more housing.
> Meanwhile socioeconomic disparity is an oozing sore in San Francisco
I'd argue that mixed income neighborhoods are the best kind. Many of the mechanisms for disadvantaging poor communities require geographic segregation. School quality, policing practices, etc
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#139The politicians have shown their hand by not designing this legislation to instead have companies pay their employees more. Why do I say that? It's currently cheaper to pay the tax than give the raises to your employees. So politicians have shown it's just a money grab _For the Government_ more than for the employees.
Let's say I make $100 and the mean is $1. I'll pay 0.1% on tax payments.
Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have lived in San Francisco since 2005. Over the time I've lived here, we've had the opposite problem: lots of highly paid tech firms moving into SF. This has changed the nature of San Francisco in a way that many dislike, including me. I was initially attracted to San Francisco because, it was chill, it was beautiful, and it had a lot of eccentric, really interesting people. Many of our good friends had to leave o…
> if SF wants to tax excessive income disparity, I say, fair enough. None of the billionaires here made that money from their salary. This will not touch them at all. > If they do leave, I don't see that as a bad thing. Chasing away jobs and the tax base will not end well. There is a decent chance SF enters a financial death spiral from its pension obligations. At the very least, massive cuts are in order. SF will no…
That’s fine. The SF people think is SF, that used to be SF, does really well with 700,000 people and everyone with a shitty job.