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

latimes.com

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

#401

Post by ponker »

core-questions wrote: post #232
dontreact wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One thing about the world cities is that you find that they remain the world cities through thousands of years of civilization. London has been a city for 2000 years, Damascus 4000... San Francisco had appeal before the tech industry was here and will have it after it’s long gone.

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

#402

Post by cam0 »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #377
macspoofing wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I have never seen a high density city have low rents. Mumbai, Hong Kong, London, NYC. Is there any factual and proven example of a city that has increased density and housing became affordable and cheaper as a result of more units?

I'm glad you pointed this out. I've had this thought floating around in my head for a long while. The only affordable high-density cities I can think of are in Thailand, Africa, and maybe Eastern Europe? I think NYC is our best comparison though... it's actually much more expensive per square foot to buy in Manhattan than it is in SF, and the rental prices are approximately the same.

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

#403

Post by czbond »

raegis wrote: post #356
czbond wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

While I don't disagree that my suggestion is what will happen - in speaking with many founders they cited the egregious tax (it was more than 0.5%) as a reason for setting up shop outside the city. Which leads me to believe it was impactful - the amount was 3.62%

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

#404

Post by rland »

NoRagrets wrote: post #391
dheera wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But do you think those who don’t use these services should be burdened with the cost of fixing them? Yes. In /most/ cases, the wealthy are only wealthy because they have (directly or indirectly) profited from the middle class. The wealthy should be paying a fair share of taxes in return, for upkeep of the public services the middle class use, and which the wealthy are perfectly entitled to also use. The middle clas…

In a capitalist economy, we create Capital. It is capital that funds industry. You can’t take capital and make it spending money. What do you think the wealthy spend their money on other than ‘basic necessities’? Why would anyone be wealthy and only spend on basic necessities? They spend on luxury. They spend on high living and expensive things. So there are resorts. And staff that work in resorts. There are sports c…

Most money that wealthy people have is not spent on consumer goods. It is plowed into more investment.

Who spends more of their income? A paycheck-to-paycheck worker, or a wealthy person? The wealthy person puts most of their money into retirement accounts, college accounts, real estate equity, investment accounts, trusts, tax havens, shell companies... If you have 5 million paycheck-to-paycheck workers they will spend every cent; while if you have a single billionaire making exactly the same amount, almost none of it will be recirculated.

Once there's enough of it, it turns into political power. Which has a tendency to benefit the wealthy class, almost always at the expense of everyone else. At the other end of every single massive failure of government there is a very wealthy person reaping the benefits of the power their wealth has enabled: healthcare, military, housing, transportation, education... etc etc.

Just praying that they'll spend their money on charity or something that benefits everyone is not enough.

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

#405

Post by suyash »

sadfev wrote: post #261
dicroce wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in San Francisco have long been angry at tech workers for driving up prices... Driving them out may be on purpose!

If that’s the goal then I think this is a good initiative.

That would be a foolish goal, SF is part of Silicon Valley, that will be like a suicide.

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

#406

Post by victor106 »

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…

I agree.

And also in general I am not sure if it makes sense to tax millionaires or billionaires at the city or state. They'll just move some place else. Just ask New York[1]. After NY imposed a tax on the uber rich. All of them moved to Miami and maintain two residences. One in NYC and one in Florida. IF you tax its best to do it at the country level

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/nyregion/wealth-tax-budge...

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

#407

Post by maerF0x0 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #173
singron wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a gross receipts tax on the business. E.g. so if you make $100, but the business has $1,000,000 in gross receipts, then 0.1% would be $1000 in taxes or 10x your total compensation. It's got teeth.

its a function of number employees and gross receipts. So companies with more employees relative to gross receipts will have less incentive to increase wages. also increasing the taxes by an additive 0.1 points (ie not multiplied by 1.001) disproportionately targets the lower gross receipts companies (such as restaurants, which would more than double their GR tax) Still seems like bad policy

EDIT ^^ And to be clear i mean the actual policy, not the intended goal of the policy (to help shrink Exec pay gap w/ average pay)

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

#408

Post by reverend_gonzo »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #353
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 afford…

Jesus. There is a lot of elitism embedded in here.

For one, you’re not paying the Starbucks employee so they can be consumers out of the goodness of your heart. They’re charging what you’ll pay because that is capitalism.

If you don’t want to pay the Starbucks employee, you don’t have to. You can go brew your own coffee, but you probably figure $2 isn’t worth your time so instead you’d rather just pay them for the convenience.

The other great thing about all this is if you don’t like how San Francisco wants to tax you, you can leave. And it’s not even like leaving the country or even leaving the state. You don’t actually even lost anything of substance.

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

#409

Post by subsubzero »

primitivesuave wrote: post #369
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…

I used to live in the Tenderloin in 2013 and it has actually improved a lot since marijuana was legalized and public restrooms added in - back then, there was a guy on every street corner trying to sell you something, and certain alleyways/corners where there was daily cleaning for piles of human waste. It's become much less dangerous but still quite depressing to walk through. I started talking to people living on t…

> "get tough on homelessness" attitude would be vilified by our political climate, so it won't ever be up to me.

You and me both, the solution is really straightforward. I feel like homeless in general falls into 4 camps:

camp 1 - drug addiction, this one would be to get people off the streets, Open rehab clinics, get them clean, and back into a functioning society.

camp 2 - mental illness, This one would be opening mental institutions(Reagan closed these in the 70's which led to our current culture of homelessness in alot of large california cities). Money would go towards either medication to get people in a functioning state or full time commitment based on severity.

camp 3 - Those down on their luck, this one would be the easiest as job skills could be taught along with temporary free housing and counselors to ease the individual back into a job, once a job is found a stipend towards rent can be given until the person is fully independent again.

camp 4 - Those that want to stay homeless. This is the most difficult group to deal with, and having them escorted out of the city would most likely be the only solution.

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

#410

Post by lesdeuxmagots »

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…

An institution can both grow revenues and increase efficiency at the same time.

The ideal solution to being more efficient is also usually not by cutting budgets.

Fixing policy issues especially doesn’t come from changing budgets.

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