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

latimes.com

431–440 of 754 posts

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

#431
post #77
post #31

San Francisco is the 16th largest city by population and has a budget of around 14 billion which is like 6 or 7 times larger than many cities with much bigger population. This is just a badly run city and throwing more money at their problems isn't going to help them.

San Francisco is a combined city and county (the only one in California), so its budget includes things that would be in county budgets for places like Los Angeles and San Jose. For example, SF MTA is part of the SF budget, but LA MTA is a county agency, and isn't part of the LA city budget.

A fair comparison would be Philadelphia which is a city and county and has an airport.

Their per capita budget is half of SF's.

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

#432
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 and we still have a growing homeless problem. I'd look more into providing mental health, relocation, and incentives to stay off heavy drugs.

Surely that number is not right - probably lacking two digits?

You can get out of Austin pretty quick. 30 mins in some directions can get you out of the metro area. Also, 5k sqft is 1/10 of an acre.

That said, I don’t know anything about land prices in Texas right now.

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

#433
post #429
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A pet crusade of mine: California can pass a 100% (or close to that) land appreciation tax (capital gains tax on land), and that wouldn't violate Prop 13. High land appreciation taxes are essentially indistinguishable from Georgist LVT. China taxes land appreciation between 30-60%.

>China taxes land appreciation between 30-60%.

Doesn't the government technically own all the land in China and then just lease it to individuals? Slightly different system.

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

#434

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 for one is not content with my city having enough money to build and maintain expensive infrastructure. I care more about living in an equal society where the rich don’t constantly dunk on the less fortunate, where the rich don’t hold disproportionate power and are frequently causing issues that disproportional effect people like me.

I want to tax the hell out of the rich, not just to get money to manage our shared spaces, but also to take their money away from them. In my eyes they don’t deserve this money. Me and my fellow laborers worked for that money, but they get to keep it. For me this is unfair, and unjust. In my perfect world the rich would not only pay marginally higher taxes, but they would pay most of their income in taxes. A person making a million a month should receive less after taxes then a person that makes a thousand. That for me is a fair economy. And that is the reason why I—and many like me—want to see the tax rate of rich CEO raised to 100%.

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

#435
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spe…

Of course, it’s plowed back into investment. The prime directive of a capitalistic system is to create CAPITAL. Capital creates industry and jobs and money circulation. Taxes are the bloat in the beast called Big Govt. it sits there like inside the belly of a constipated beached whale.

Even pension funds and unions invest in the companies that make the profit. Chicago Teachers Union, iirc, has over 45k shares of AMZN. They also took a guillotine outside a Jeff Bezos building to make a ‘point’. It’s just hypocrisy if one believes it and ignorance if one parrots the ‘eat the rich’ line.

So when exactly do people start becoming responsible for their own lives? Social net is for those who genuinely need help. The weak, unfortunate, disabled and for those who need a helping hand. Society cannot shoulder the responsibility to take care of individuals whose are supposed to know better.

Political power does not benefit the wealthy class at all. This is absolutely untrue, but is often parroted over and over without people questioning the meaning of it.

A lot of the attitude comes from people without looking into the homes of people who have means and wondering why they can’t have what someone else does..what they don’t see is the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice and time away from family and other things that people take for granted. Why do they do it? To be wealthy is one of the goals. It is absolutely cruel to punish people for chasing their dreams. Taxes on the wealthy is punitive because they have to pay the troll under the bridge to cross it.

When I see someone railing against millionaires about the drug addicts and homeless on SF, I want to ask if they ever asked the parents of these model citizens? Their blood relatives? Their so called friends? Their community? Their high school friends?

If everyone took care of 1. Themselves 2. Their immediate family 3. Their extended family 4. Their friends 5. Their community 6. Their extended community FIRST, we wouldn’t have to knock on the doors of millionaires. Who cares how the rich live...most of us should look at how we ourselves live and how our loved ones and those we care about live.

It’s like watching a child in a park watching a rich kid hack into an obscenely large cake. Another parent who is feeding his own kid a modest snack drags the starving kid to the rich kid’s parents and demands that they share their big fat cake with the starving kid. Hey! Isn’t it always easier to make plans for how others should generously share their wealth?

The problem is not ‘the wealthy’. The problem is lack of healthy community and healthy supportive families. No amount of wealth sharing or stealing from the rich or taxes or plain old money will fix it.

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

#436

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…

[deleted]

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

#437
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 McDon…

What about all those regular people who do not have the skills, knowledge or risk capital to start a business?

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

#438

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…

"Just solve homelessness" - GhostVII

Why didn't we think of that?! Thanks GhostVII we'll get right on that.

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

#439
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do instead?

I would recognize that taxing pay ratio is a ridiculous concept because temp agencies can be used (and already are used) for lowest-wage jobs like janitors. These are not independent contractors, these are W2 employees of a temp firm. What I would do instead is tax highly paid executives. This does not have the side-effect of making companies only use temp firms (as described above) if they need a barista or receptio…

> What I would do instead is tax highly paid executives

How do you define who is a highly paid executive?

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

#440
post #397
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 and we still have a growing homeless problem. I'd look more into providing mental health, relocation, and incentives to stay off heavy drugs.

Can you build on that? Is there water, electricity, gas and cable?
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