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

Post by proc0 » Fri, Nov 06, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #422

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…

"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…

Post by hevelvarik » Fri, Nov 06, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

jm_l wrote: post #421

kansface wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the city spends quite a bit of money on the homeless indirectly in various forms. The bigger problem is the growth in the budget: 2012: 7.3 billion for 829,027 people = 8805/resident 2020: 13.7 billion for 896,047 people = 15289/resident Why did the budget increase 51% in 8 years when the population increased by 8% (1.13% inflation)?

The economic context has also changed a lot. In 2012 SF's total GDP was 350b, today it's 500b (a 40% increase). It shouldn't necessarily be that surprising that as the economy grows the government's spending does as well.

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 06, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

primitivesuave wrote: post #385

jm_l wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a common line of thinking that doesn't actually reflect the reality of how much the city is spending per year. SF's spending in 2019 was 12b dollars (roughly $12,000 per resident). Of that, 1.6b went to MTA ($1600 per resident, or 13% of total spending) and 360m went to addressing homelessness ($360 per resident, or 3% of total spending) Comparatively, SF's GDP was 500b (500,000 per resident). To conc…

One number you're missing there is the total homeless population estimated in 2019 to be around 8000 people [1], which works out to around $45k per homeless resident. 1. https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep...

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 06, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

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…

Post by titzer » Fri, Nov 06, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

rcpt wrote: post #477

bhupy wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.