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San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

latimes.com

161–170 of 754 posts

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#161

This raises some interesting questions / side effects: 1) Companies may now have a direct incentive to have their lowest income earners be outsourced/contracted out to boost the median pay amount. 2) It was smart of them to include compensation such as stock options. However if a city starts to expect this income, it will all go away in recessions when CEO's stock options are not valuable. ie more money to the city i…

CEOs are all just going to move out of San Francisco.

Maybe not a bad thing really

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#162

Sounds like business will be booming for temp agencies as well as janitorial and facilities maintenance contractors. Whatever the net positive here is wholly negated by the number of stable long term jobs that are going to go away and be replaced by whoever the body shop chooses to send that day. Working for these middle men really sucks compared to working for whoever the service is being provided for (and I say tha…

CEO compensation historically wasn’t orders of magnitude greater than worker pay like it has ballooned to today and there were plenty of long term jobs. This just formalizes the idea that there shouldn’t be an egregious difference in compensation that was commonplace before the idea that a corporation’s sole purpose is to maximize shareholder value became the main driver of CEO compensation.

I think you missed parent’s point, which is that companies will have (yet another) incentive to replace their lowest paid workers with contractors.

First they came for the janitors, but I did not speak up, for I was not a janitor...

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#163
post #66
post #29

"Critics call the surcharge a blatant attempt at redistribution of wealth..." Um, yes? "Critics call John Travolta 'blatantly an actor, playing parts in movies.'"

It's funny/sad that people act like "redistribution of wealth" is a scary concept. Wealth is constantly being redistributed by commerce, and mostly it is being redistributed to the people with the biggest piles already. Overpricing products, underpaying workers, lotteries, taxes, rents, and investor/borrower arrangements are all mechanisms to shift wealth around.

A trade between two parties is not a redistribution of wealth .

If I buy a car for $10,000, then I now have a car worth $10,000, and the seller has $10,000. Wealth was not redistributed, we’re both where we started.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#164

This is a terrible law. How exactly do you measure the compensation of the CEO of Ikea (moving into SF soon at 6th and Market), Adidas, DJI, Atlassian, Spotify etc? Exchange rates fluctuate a lot and stock based compensation is tricky.

The cost of compliance is never factored into the making of law.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#165
Feels like a great way to encourage companies to leave the state.

I left California many years ago. Every single part of my life is much better. Fiscally , romantically, mentally. SF over values how essential location is. With Covid it's clear remote work is the future, base the company out of Delaware and go full remote

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#166
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that was my reaction too. I don't live in the US, so this is an honest question. Most of the comments here are disparaging about the policy. Is that because: 1. you agree with the principle of addressing wealth polarisation, but don't agree with tax as the mechanism? (in general or the proposed model specifically) 2. you don't agree that increasing wealth polarisation needs to be stopped/reversed? 3. something else?…

Most motivated people with the means to scrape enough cash together to even try to start something dislike legislation and the idea of "redistribution" because usually these plans raise far less money than politicians think, but moreover the politicians coming up with these plans have already proven they have no clue how to spend taxpayer dollars. To be frank, as a supporter of capitalism - I generally support the no…

> to cease the cycle

sooo ranked choice voting? :D

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#168

Earlier 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…

>we've had the opposite problem: lots of highly paid tech firms moving into SF. Quite the problem ... the kind of problem that multitudes of cities and regions in the world are desperately trying to recreate. >This has changed the nature of San Francisco in a way that many dislike, including me. This is where progressives don't live up to their name. The nature of cities is constant change. Meanwhile the activists ar…

>Rents will drop if you increase density ... but that would mean building higher density housing and thereby accepting that the character of cities and neighborhoods change.

I keep hearing proponents of strict exclusionary zoning laws arguing that they don't like the risk of having the value of their investment decrease because of this. SF will be a great example of how change happens weather you like it or not and allowing dense housing is what makes the change good or bad. You either sacrifice some of the view or sacrifice not having homeless camps.

Re: San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses

#169

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?

Might be effective in reducing rents though!
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