Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 754 posts

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

#471

Post by hevelvarik »

subsubzero wrote: post #409
primitivesuave wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s not so simple.

1 and 2 are either your largest groups or at least very large groups.

Getting addicts ‘clean’ is a sub problem at least almost as hard as the general, and it’s somewhere between hard and impossible to keep someone in a rehab or a mental facility against their will, and I doubt Reagan is to blame for that.

Basically, a large proportion of 1 and 2 are effectively in camp 4.

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

#472

Post by runarberg »

smsm42 wrote: post #441
ransom1538 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 population can't figure out how to keep the tenderloin from being full of tents and open drug use? Or get some form of functioning public transit? Pretty pathetic." SF resident for 15 years until I left. I walked around and talked to homeless. From th…

So we have: 1. A lot of rich residents and rich companies which supply the city budget with sweet sweet tax money 2. A lot of programs and NGOs that draw large budgets to helping the homeless 3. Political climate that encourages spending money on helping the homeless without requiring anything from them, basically free money 4. Generous programs providing various freebies for homeless people, and no consequences for…

I downvoted this because as someone that has been what many consider homeless in San Francisco, I am a little insulted by this attitude. It comes across as someone that has never lived this life claiming that it is a good life and generalizing over the homeless population as freebies and criminals.

If there exists a complicated social problem that involves thousands of human beings and someone on the internet claims to have an explanation for it in 10 paragraphs or less, that explanation is probably overly simplistic.

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

#473

Post by [deleted] »

smsm42 wrote: post #441
ransom1538 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 population can't figure out how to keep the tenderloin from being full of tents and open drug use? Or get some form of functioning public transit? Pretty pathetic." SF resident for 15 years until I left. I walked around and talked to homeless. From th…

So we have: 1. A lot of rich residents and rich companies which supply the city budget with sweet sweet tax money 2. A lot of programs and NGOs that draw large budgets to helping the homeless 3. Political climate that encourages spending money on helping the homeless without requiring anything from them, basically free money 4. Generous programs providing various freebies for homeless people, and no consequences for…

[deleted]

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

#474

Post by hevelvarik »

rriepe wrote: post #395
primitivesuave wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'll vote for you. Setting up a welfare magnet for the homeless in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country is cruelty, not compassion.

Excellent point

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

#476

Post by hevelvarik »

runarberg wrote: post #446
ransom1538 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 population can't figure out how to keep the tenderloin from being full of tents and open drug use? Or get some form of functioning public transit? Pretty pathetic." SF resident for 15 years until I left. I walked around and talked to homeless. From th…

Speaking as someone that lived in van in SF for 6 month before I left for immigration reasons: 1. I’m not from SF, I came there to live with my partner who was in school there but we couldn’t afford a place to rent. 2. I’ve never been homeless anywhere else and I wouldn’t have been homeless in SF if rent was fair. 3. I’ve never pan handled, but I didn’t need to. Dumpster diving is easy, there is plenty of free food o…

This is the best example of “speaking from experience” I’ve ever read.

The question how representative are you of the general homeless population in SF. I would guess not much. Am I wrong?

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

#477

Post by rcpt »

bhupy wrote: post #429
rcpt wrote: 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%.

Nobody would ever sell. They'd just use the increased value as borrowing power if they ever needed cash. Housing prices would skyrocket.

If your idea were put on the ballot it'd probably pass.

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

#478

Post by yashap »

This is quite a small tax, even in the “worst” case (maxes out at 0.6%, if your top exec makes 600x the average employee). And it only impacts companies with massively overpaid executives - there’s no change for most companies, who have nowhere remotely close to a 100x discrepancy between top paid and average employees.

In reality, this will create a bit of extra tax revenue, and push down SF exec salaries ever so slightly. Both good things. No company is moving out of SF, replacing their staff with contractors, etc. over such a tiny tax. It’s a very small step in the right direction IMO.

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

#479

Post by mancerayder »

This is where I'm legitimately confused: the city is an expensive city, land prices are high and housing is expensive, rent is high and so forth. We're told that that is the major problem, and the major reason for the homelessness issue of SF (mentioned many times below in this thread by numerous commenters).

But other cities have lower land prices and cheaper housing. San Francisco has the highest land and rent prices of the entire country. The argument that "we need to lower the price of housing to address the homeless problem" sounds very appealing, until you consider: wait, why are they going there? The indications are that they're not from there.

Is the problem that they're coming from places that don't have social programs, and drug legalization, which SF kind of has? There are needle exchange programs and if you start to convulse in the street someone will run over right away and give you Narcan. There's free food. Showers and bathrooms are ... apparently a problem ... but it's warm out. It's not Chicago in winter.

So maybe it just make sense for homeless to hang out in Tenderloin. As in, if a magic wand made us homeless, we'd just logically go there because it'd be good and healthy for us to do that.

Going back to the article. Someone mentioned the Laffer Curve: if you tax the rich to get revenue, they'll leave and you'll get less revenue. Well maybe there's another curve: if you make it extremely comfortable and desirable for homeless people in order to solve the homeless problem, you'll have a bigger and bigger homeless problem?

Maybe the problem isn't "high land prices" in San Francisco. Or even, "inequality." Maybe the issue is that the rest of the state / country don't have the same degree and quality of social programs and drug legalization as SF, and so SF is a natural place to go.

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

#480

Post by jelliclesfarm »

runarberg wrote: post #472
smsm42 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we have: 1. A lot of rich residents and rich companies which supply the city budget with sweet sweet tax money 2. A lot of programs and NGOs that draw large budgets to helping the homeless 3. Political climate that encourages spending money on helping the homeless without requiring anything from them, basically free money 4. Generous programs providing various freebies for homeless people, and no consequences for…

I downvoted this because as someone that has been what many consider homeless in San Francisco, I am a little insulted by this attitude. It comes across as someone that has never lived this life claiming that it is a good life and generalizing over the homeless population as freebies and criminals. If there exists a complicated social problem that involves thousands of human beings and someone on the internet claims…

I downvoted you because I am insulted by this attitude. As someone who comes from a country of starvation deaths, I can easily see how the homeless in SF would be considered the 1% of the world.

If the milk of human kindness is all about spreading the wealth..how about spreading the wealth to other countries?

Why should I pay for the homeless in SF when they live in the richest country in the world when I can send the money to Kenya or Vietnam or India and truly create meaningful impact. And so that’s what I do. My taxes already pay towards the healthcare, food and if in SF..smart phone and BART tickets for the homeless. No more tax hikes without an explanation for the $350 million dollars spent in just one year for SF homeless population.

Post reply on HN