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

#351

Post by thomasahle » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:01 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…

> 1.) wealth/income inequality is inherently wrong, so redistribution is automatically good. private property is theft!

There is a version of this that doesn't care about "right and wrong": Wealth inequality may happen for good and natural reasons, but too large quantities lead to a worse society for wveyone, and so redistribution is one way to reduce it.

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

#352

Post by jcims » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

Agree with it or not, at least this will add some data to the discussion. I have a feeling the result will be somewhere in the middle of the speculation and have both good and bad consequences that weren’t intended.

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

#353

Post by jelliclesfarm » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #309

San Francisco's solution to everything seems to be to just keep raising taxes, and throwing money at things which don't work. At some point you have to realize that more money isn't always the solution, you actually have to fix your beurocracy. It's insane to me that the city with so many rich people and incredibly valuable companies is such a mess, your telling me that a small city with an incredibly wealthy populat…

Big Govt thrives on bloat. All unionized public sector employees rely on unfunded pension liabilities after their retirement. To continue with the pyramid scheme, you need more people to keep voting tax increases. That group is cultivated in public schools from when they are kids and then with social programs for the youth.

If we socialize education and then young people and then the middle aged who can’t find affordable homes and yet need to be home owners and then the retired public sector community. And then special groups. Who is left? I guess the ones who are actually paying more into the system than they are taking out. It’s like the oxen that plows an entire field with the poor farmer whipping it’s hide. Why not?

All the jobs out there except a handful are fluff jobs with no real production value. Yes, I am glad someone is making my latte at Starbucks but at the end of the day, I am also paying for that. To maintain jobs so that everyone can be employed. As the pandemic proved, we can do without Starbucks. The value of most of the non productive job is to provide the public a wage so they can be consumers to purchase from the producers. Like smart phones. Or a car. See the pattern?

So all this cultivated vote base need to be cared for and fed. This is when you bleed the tiny tech community by injecting them with guilt and self loathing for being b productive and wealthy. This is usually done with clickbaitey articles and outrage porn publishing farms and social justice yellers.

Now you have a large vote bank that will keep voting yes to taxing the tiny little taxable sector(many of whom probably don’t even vote if tech employees come as immigrants and are not voting citizens).

San Francisco keeps throwing money at problems that don’t get solved because it’s not their money. When there are 12 people in the room and the vote is yes or no for taxing just the top two wage earners in the group, why should it be surprising that it’s at least 10-12 for YES on taxation.

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

#354

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

astine wrote: post #248

core-questions wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

San Francisco is a well known culture hub. The startup industry started source of it in Silicon Valley but shifted north because of the appeal of living in San Francisco.

True, but none of these things exist in isolation. Culture is created by people, it is not a geographical feature like mountains or lakes.

The Silicon Valley wasn't nominated as the tech hub overnight, it became one through an organic process thanks to a mix of good weather, access to capital, a pool of talented employees etc.

Don't take any of that for granted (well except the weather I guess, but with Global Warming and earthquakes who knows).

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

#355

Post by TuringNYC » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

stainforth wrote: post #295

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The measure wasn't to tax based on CEO pay. It was based on the highest paid managerial employee. So title doesn't matter.

Just want to comment that thank god we can actually build rules that can't be loopholed.

Not sure if this was sarcastic, but this law will absolutely be loop-holed.

Prediction: Many lower-paid staff will be outsourced (Think Apple and Foxconn; Think big companies and their outsourced cleaning company).

Currently, typically things like cleaning staff, internal mail, dining get outsourced. Expect customer support to also start getting outsourced. The unfortunate thing is that now there would be a middle-person also collecting a spread from the company/worker (but to the company, the spread will be lower than the tax.)

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

#356

Post by raegis » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

czbond wrote: post #256

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…

People will attempt to prove the counter with theoretical, I have an actual to support your claim. Years ago, Denver placed a tax on companies that create software. By "magic", companies decided to found outside the county lines including Boulder. Boulder has an active software scene. Denver is getting there, but still not the advanced companies Boulder has. I believe Denver recalled the tax, but unsure.

When looking to rent an office in the Los Angeles area, my wife discovered that the city of Beverly Hills taxes a percentage of your business income, so she decided not to locate there. If I recall it was a flat tax, not a "luxury" tax either. Yet plenty of businesses thrive in Beverly Hills. So this example is an "actual" which does not support the claim :)

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

#357

Post by afiori » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

umeshunni wrote: post #227

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…

Around 2007, a gentleman named Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and unleashed another tech boom, driven primarily by the increased adoption and use of the smartphone and apps within them. The spoils from this boom primarily benefited companies and people based in and around the Bay Area. People there didn't realize that the rest of the country (and much of the developed world) were still struggling and haven't fully re…

Your description made me think of California as the Xerox of the US

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

#358

Post by huevosabio » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

rcpt wrote: post #339

GhostVII wrote: post #309

San Francisco's solution to everything seems to be to just keep raising taxes, and throwing money at things which don't work. At some point you have to realize that more money isn't always the solution, you actually have to fix your beurocracy. It's insane to me that the city with so many rich people and incredibly valuable companies is such a mess, your telling me that a small city with an incredibly wealthy populat…

Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago so we don't have to wonder about this: > THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power: > As productive power…

Everyone works but the empty lot.

I was not aware that Henry George was from San Francisco.

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

#359

Post by booboolayla » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

newbie578 wrote: post #3

Why doesn’t anyone want to address the elephant in the room, which is affordable housing? Why not convert vacant offices to apartments?

So, effectively kick the productive people out of offices and move the homeless in? Sounds wise.

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

#360

Post by sushid » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

gcheong wrote: post #310

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

So how does one "speak up" as a janitor then? I think as long as maximizing shareholder value is the dominant incentive of corporations, your job will always be at risk of being outsourced unless you have either a clear competitive advantage or a strong collective bargaining ability.

One would have been voting down on this stupid measure. SF has a child's notion of how to fix problems. Rich CEO bad? Tax companies for rich CEOs. Tenderloin full of shit? Create a whole new division of people with more taxes to clean up shit. It never addresses the root cause.

There won't be a Bay Area exodus anytime soon but you bet a startup is going to move out of SF when it starts to get big. The additional taxes will only hurt the companies that have a firm root here and will discourage future companies from forming in SF.

Sf wants everything to remain exactly the same in a world that's changing faster than ever. It's time to encourage new residential units, properly tax land/property, and start actually proactively fixing its problematic neighborhoods.