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

latimes.com

571–580 of 754 posts

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

#571

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 this way because American individualism is a cult of selfishness. People are dogmatic when they need to be logical.

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

#572

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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 th…

We can do both. This post is not helpful or productive as it trivializes the argument it responds to and serves as a diversion rather than a productive response; it’s a red herring argument.

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

#573

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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…

I met a guy walking home in the TL, he had hitchhiked from a trailer park in North Carolina to SF. His neighbor in the trailer park made amateur porn websites, so he pretty much learned web development purely in the context of pornography. He was addicted to meth and came to SF looking for a job and the free methodone treatment. His laptop got stolen so I gave him an old Macbook I had lying around and told him to check out Codecademy.

I was hoping to get a feel-good story out of it after reading about Leo (https://www.businessinsider.com/leo-the-homeless-coder-2015-...), but the truth of the situation is he simply wasn't skilled or educated enough to actually learn computer science or even get past a phone interview (meth really ruins one's ability to maintain a train of thought). Somebody told him the legends of high-paying tech jobs in SF, and reality was a harsh teacher like it is to many people everywhere. He lived in shelters and on the streets for a while until he lost his phone, which was my only way of connecting with him. Haven't seen him on the streets for years and no idea what ended up happening with him.

My point being that people have really complex reasons for being homeless in SF and it's hard to put everyone into distinct groups, but for the most part your camps describe at least 90% of homeless people I've seen.

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

#574
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF has a $360 million dollar a year budget for addressing the homeless situation. I'm not sure what funding they may also get in addition from the County and State Level.

Maybe if other states could be blocked from buying one way bus tickets for their homeless citizens and instead be responsible that would help.

This is an urban legend and gets claimed in every major city.

San Francisco has great weather, lots of well off people to panhandle from, and treats the homeless relatively better than its neighbors. It really is that simple.

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

#575
post #551

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This is partly because the private security force employed by the wealthy Bass brothers forcefully (and sometimes violently) discourage the homeless from existing in downtown Fort Worth, especially the Sundance Square area. I used to work downtown (Oil & Gas Commerce building) and became friends with the night-shift security guard, who told some really shocking stories about how the Bass goons would drag the homeless…

That might be 0.1% of the city’s land area. Not really a significant cause. If you applied that exact same factor to Austin there would still be a ton of homeless people everywhere.

The homeless tend to congregate where they're treated better.

The cities that treat the homeless better, when confronted with a new influx of homeless, work to confront the problem with more spending and social programs, and the cycle continues.

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

#576
post #504

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Yes, people from all walks of life may end up homeless but I'm tired of hearing stories of my friends being robbed at gunpoint/knifepoint or straight up assaulted for a phone and a wallet. People walk into stores and steal without impunity, shoot up drugs, shit in the middle of a street, etc. It's truly appalling. As far as being homeless goes, the homeless here are free to fuck things up for the rest of us.

Honest question why are you blaming the homeless for fucking up things for the rest of us? In my experience the rich are far more guilty (as a generalized group) of fucking things up for me. The rich have polluted the planet, raised the global temperature up a whole degree. The damage is that now I can’t go outside in late summer, if it doesn’t rain the week before, because the air is poisoned by soot from forest fir…

I agree that the scale of damage is greater. I just caution anyone grouping people based on belonging to a category. Being rich doesn’t mean you polluted more than others. Al Gore is rich, but he was kind of focused on that issue.

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

#577
post #397

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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.

> You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 How many miles away from the city though?

Quite a few, and not somewhere most would probably choose to live

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

#578
post #463

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I always hear bay area friends tell me how it's not that bad there if you have room mates. Mean while the engineers here in their 30s are collecting income from their 3rd rental property already.

How many billion dollar start ups came out of the Austin ecosystem? SF is expensive because it is productive. It’s producing wealth so prices go up. If you want to raise money, recruit talent SF adds value which is paid for with hire expenses. I would rather own equity in a high growth start up than 3 rental houses; at least from a growth perspective.

> I would rather own equity in a high growth start up than 3 rental houses; at least from a growth perspective.

But that isn't the choice, the choice is between three rental houses and a maybe 1 in 20 chance of owning equity in a high growth startup that may or may not IPO in the next 15 years.

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

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if other states could be blocked from buying one way bus tickets for their homeless citizens and instead be responsible that would help.

This is an urban legend and gets claimed in every major city. San Francisco has great weather, lots of well off people to panhandle from, and treats the homeless relatively better than its neighbors. It really is that simple.

Absolutely not an urban legend.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/nevada-patient-bu...

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

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if other states could be blocked from buying one way bus tickets for their homeless citizens and instead be responsible that would help.

This is an urban legend and gets claimed in every major city. San Francisco has great weather, lots of well off people to panhandle from, and treats the homeless relatively better than its neighbors. It really is that simple.

> This is an urban legend and gets claimed in every major city.

It's not an urban legend, it's well documented and there have been lawsuits based on it.

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