San Francisco voters approve taxes on highly paid CEOs, big businesses • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #210

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #188

It will work out well fiscally because giant companies will suck it up and pay, but it looks like a bad strategy from a forward-looking point of view. You want to incentivize future growth too, and you want to make sure that 20 years down the line, you have the new FAANGs of the world giving you millions in tax dollars, because history has shown that the largest of companies can eventually die out, and tech is full o…

So they show do nothing about today's inequality because this will get them more taxes in 20 years? (Unless someone makes the same point 20 years in that they should better wait another 20 years)

One thing I'd like to see them do is radically simplify the ability for regular people to start regular businesses. One thing we could do is pick some small industry and run experiments with it. An example might be food trucks. There's a lot of regulations around these today. As a thought experiment we could eliminate all sales tax, special licensing, etc. for food truck companies under a certain size (We don't McDonalds food trucks to count). We could see what happened, is there wide spread food poisoning? Are families brought out of the lower class?

It doesn't have to be food trucks exactly, that's just an industry that people like in a business that's relatively simple and imo has low systemic risk.

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

#232

Post by core-questions » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

dontreact wrote: post #220

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #188

It will work out well fiscally because giant companies will suck it up and pay, but it looks like a bad strategy from a forward-looking point of view. You want to incentivize future growth too, and you want to make sure that 20 years down the line, you have the new FAANGs of the world giving you millions in tax dollars, because history has shown that the largest of companies can eventually die out, and tech is full o…

This assumes that the performance of companies is driven by the CEO much more than the employees. If the Bay Area has great FANG companies because of talented workforce here, then CEOs will gladly take a pay cut to be able to employ the best workers.

> If the Bay Area has great FANG companies because of talented workforce here

The talented workforce is there because of the companies. Why would someone deliberately choose to live in San Fran when given the choice of many cleaner, nicer cities with a lower cost of living?

I guess if you really like fog and hills

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

#233

Post by dpoochieni » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #180

rglullis wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let the city collect taxes from all the woke millenials who are neck-deep in student debt and the homeless...

Or, move some of the obscene wealth away so the residents aren't gentrified out of existence, like they already have been? It won't just be CEOs, it'll be all the software engineers and the like too.

How naive to think salaries are not paid out of that wealth

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

#234

Post by rcpt » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

cheriot wrote: post #138

kmtrowbr wrote: post #70

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…

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 lac…

> Underlying _that_ problem is a lack of supply

And underlying that problem is Prop 13 - the insane multi billion dollar tax break that Californians bestowed on all land speculators. Until it's gone nothing will change.

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

#235

Post by danans » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #188

It will work out well fiscally because giant companies will suck it up and pay, but it looks like a bad strategy from a forward-looking point of view. You want to incentivize future growth too, and you want to make sure that 20 years down the line, you have the new FAANGs of the world giving you millions in tax dollars, because history has shown that the largest of companies can eventually die out, and tech is full o…

> What this does is, it collects money from today's FAANGs while disincentivizing future startups from starting here.

How many startups are there where the executives make 100x to 200x the median employee pay? That only happens via stock-based compensation at public companies. If that's the case, they're not a startup.

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

#236

Post by dpoochieni » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

ciarannolan wrote: post #218

Brings to mind the last paragraph here (see my comment below for the ending): > By the time of Plato’s death (347 B.C.) his hostile analysis of Athenian democracy was approaching apparent confirmation by history. Athens recovered wealth, but this was now commercial rather than landed wealth; industrialists, merchants, and bankers were at the top of the reshuffled heap. The change produced a feverish struggle for mone…

How did the poor fare in the end?

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

#237

Post by arrosenberg » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #86

spinningslate wrote: post #57

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?…

I think there are essentially three schools of thought. 1.) wealth/income inequality is inherently wrong, so redistribution is automatically good. private property is theft! 2.) whatever people get paid is theirs, fair and square. therefore redistribution is automatically bad. taxation is theft! 3.) some people are genuinely much more productive than others, and their pay may reflect that. at the same time, people ca…

I think #3 is close, but it's not just that some users concentrate a disproportionate amount of wealth. It's also the quirk of human society that great hoarding of wealth winds up distorting it such that economic worth becomes directly tied to human worth. This is undesirable generally, and taxes are the main mechanism for the government to regulate this tendency.

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

#238

Post by d33lio » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

stvswn wrote: post #203

d33lio wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't really agree with you characterization of where our taxes go -- federally, 64% of the government budget is related to mandatory spending, almost all of which is social security, medicare, and medicaid. 15% of the budget goes to the military. That makes the U.S. the largest military spender in the world. 15% of the budget may seem expensive, but it's not fair to compare it to Western Europe. NATO is a big reas…

"mandatory spending" - right

I take a bigger issue with programs like student loan debt forgiveness which would be a slap in the face to poor people like myself who worked their way through college in order to no longer be burdened by loans. Not to mention the fact that without a refresh of regulation on universities (specifically graduate degrees) loan forgiveness would just further embolden universities to increase tuition.

The issue with taxes in this country is that the budget is expected to always be met WITH excess. That's the disgusting part, the assumption that "well we can go over and shell out benefits to our beneficiaries (people who voted for us) and the american tax payer will foot the bill" is atrocious.

Both parties are guilty of this, however I also find it ironic that Americans (specifically privileged americans) seem to think that "taxing the rich" is a solution, when a) rich people already pay an overwhelming majority of taxes, b) the rich will always find ways to out-smart the government and avoid taxes they deem as unfit and c) even if you taxed earners above $400k 95% of their income it would only amount to maybe a trillion dollars - so not even close to bringing the national deficit down.

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

#239

Post by bduerst » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

dontreact wrote: post #220

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #188

It will work out well fiscally because giant companies will suck it up and pay, but it looks like a bad strategy from a forward-looking point of view. You want to incentivize future growth too, and you want to make sure that 20 years down the line, you have the new FAANGs of the world giving you millions in tax dollars, because history has shown that the largest of companies can eventually die out, and tech is full o…

This assumes that the performance of companies is driven by the CEO much more than the employees. If the Bay Area has great FANG companies because of talented workforce here, then CEOs will gladly take a pay cut to be able to employ the best workers.

Yep. Founders would likely be on the board and just give themselves different titles from CEO if they really cared, so it shouldn't impact startups.

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

#240

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #191

colordrops wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

or just use hollywood accounting. You have a parent company with high paid employees. You have a separate company with low paid employees. Or move. Or change title.

I see the headlines now: Darling Startup Raises $20 million Series-A As First CEO-less Company