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

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

#691

Post by mleonhard »

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…

Another problem is that SF shelters have schedules that exclude working people.

Shelters require folks to line up for entry in the early afternoon. Many unskilled jobs require late evening work (restaurant dishwasher, line cook, bus boy, janitor, etc). So folks leaving work at 11pm cannot get into the shelters.

Shelters kick everyone out in the early morning. Folks who work at night cannot get in to shelters at all. Night shift work is very important for unskilled folks (security guard, janitor, warehouse, etc).

Also, many shelters are run by religious organizations and require guests to spend time attending religious presentations every day.

I think 80% of the homelessness problem can be solved by providing free housing for these extremely poor people. Housing will not turn them all into successful citizens, but it will stop them from sleeping on the streets. Comprehensive health care (including therapy and long-term psychiatric care) can solve another 10%. The last 10% are folks who just prefer to live on the streets.

Unfortunately, free housing in SF is very expensive because of the housing shortage. The city already houses many formerly homeless folks, spending $200M/year. Housing the remaining 8,000 would take at least $200M/year more. This would be a 4% increase in SF's $5B annual budget.

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

#692

Post by adamkf »

skohan wrote: post #680
haxney wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. There's actually another solution, but people don't talk about it: reduce demand. Break some windows. Have a few organized robbery parties. Hold monthly "Stabby Sundays" where you just stab people randomly. That'll drive down demand, and prices will drop like a rock. Obviously, I'm joking. Building more houses is th…

I would argue the solution is build a lot of affordable housing. I've noticed in Berlin, a lot of new development follows a pattern: small footprint apartments with luxury amenities. This is great if you're a landlord, and you want to maximize the revenue of your property. But it's terrible if you're just looking for a safe, clean place to live, and you end up paying double the rent because luxury units are the only…

Small, luxury apartments are going to be more profitable than something more affordable. Landlords will build the most affordable thing they can, to do anything else would be irrational. If only luxury apartments are being built, that means demand for such apartments hasn't been satisfied yet. The solution is to allow MUCH more building, so that something affordable will eventually be built. Even without that, having luxury apartments prevents the renters from competing on more affordable units, so it likely does have a positive impact.

I don't know anything about Berlin, but in San Francisco, there are plenty of affordable housing requirements placed on developers of new apartment buildings. This ends up just making new construction MUCH more expensive, as a single unit has to support itself as well as some fraction of an affordable unit. The result is that it's even less profitable to build new housing.

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

#693

Post by mleonhard »

_RPL5_ wrote: post #684
subsubzero wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

For groups 1 and 2, who gets to decide if a homeless person is to be committed? This seems like a non-trivial question, or am I missing something?

A person's social worker can make that decision. It is based on documented observations, interactions, interviews with neighbors, police reports, and hospitalization reports. Local and national laws provide a legal basis and rules for it.

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

#694

Post by arcticbull »

zamfi wrote: post #690
arcticbull wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. Lower property values caused by an increase in supply will yield lower rents because rents are generally indexed to mortgage rates which are indexed to property values. The problem is twofold. 1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting i…

> 1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting it to be affordable. These are mutually exclusive. If you want something to be a good investment you want it to become less affordable over time. This comes up a lot, but is false. It's easy to have every single home become more expensive over time while the average unit remains affordable. Let me paint a picture of how it would work in a city where you…

I see what you're saying, that densification and building up vertically means each unit represents a smaller proportion of the footprint of the building. This in turn means that the ground under the building becomes progressively more valuable as the average density of construction increases. This can happen either by permitting smaller units or by building taller, or both.

This feels transient to an extent no? At some point your building is tall enough and your unit as small as people are willing to accept.

But does this not apply primarily to the land underneath the building? Once you reach a certain plateau a 700sqft apartment on the 10th floor of a 50 story building isn't worth any more than an apartment on the 10th floor of a 70 story building is it?

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

#695

Post by newfriend »

runarberg wrote: post #514
sushid wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The rich have polluted the planet

Rich people aren't tipping over trashcans or shitting on my sidewalk.

> raised the global temperature up a whole degree

This doesn't actually affect you, you've just been brainwashed into thinking it's the most important thing ever. Emissions are going down in all of the most highly developed countries. As technology improves, this will improve as well. You're complaining about progress that has lifted billions of people out of squalor to having powerful computers in their pockets and being able to transport goods across the globe.

> 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 fires.

Maybe they should do some forest management with the billions in taxes they take every year, instead of giving it to street-shitting, drugged-out hobos.

> The rich are the reason I couldn’t afford a place to rent in San Francisco, their speculative housing investment and gentrification raised the marked rate so much that a working class person from one of the richest country in the world couldn’t afford to live there.

When demand goes up, and supply doesn't, the price goes up. This isn't rich people's fault, it's basic supply and demand.

> The rich are the reason—unless you are one of them—that you are not making significantly more money from your current job, they consistently take away from your contribution to the wealth you generate in your current job without contributing anything of value.

They provide you with a job. You are free to start your own business. Rich people can't stop you.

No one owes you anything.

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

#696

Post by arcticbull »

lrem wrote: post #683
arcticbull wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. Lower property values caused by an increase in supply will yield lower rents because rents are generally indexed to mortgage rates which are indexed to property values. The problem is twofold. 1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting i…

> Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. Uh, no? Suburbs reaching further out, without the infrastructure to support them, are not a happy ending. High risers in the wrong places cause infrastructure overload too. Putting high risers in the right places will ruin someone's vista. Hardly unsolvable, but far from "just build more".

> Uh, no? Suburbs reaching further out, without the infrastructure to support them, are not a happy ending.

So cap how far out you can build. Generally, of course, that already exists.

> High risers in the wrong places cause infrastructure overload too.

More houses means more residents means more jobs means more tax revenue. This revenue can then be plowed into shoring up the infrastructure to fit. That's what a city is.

> Putting high risers in the right places will ruin someone's vista.

And that sucks for them, but they've no right to a view.

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

#697

Post by yonran »

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%.

> High land appreciation taxes are essentially indistinguishable from Georgist LVT

A capital gains tax is not “essentially indistinguishable” from a land value tax if rents rise and the owner never sells the property. The owner gets to collect increased rents for as long as his family owns it, and even his heirs don’t have to pay the tax on transfer (since capital gains are untaxed on inheritance in America due to the step-up basis and apparently also for the Chinese Land Appreciation Tax). Kevin Erdmann has written a good series of articles on focusing on the rental value of land rather than only sales prices: “A Conceptual Starting Point for Housing Affordability and Public Policy” https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/conceptual-starti...>

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

#698

Post by skohan »

adamkf wrote: post #692
skohan wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the solution is build a lot of affordable housing. I've noticed in Berlin, a lot of new development follows a pattern: small footprint apartments with luxury amenities. This is great if you're a landlord, and you want to maximize the revenue of your property. But it's terrible if you're just looking for a safe, clean place to live, and you end up paying double the rent because luxury units are the only…

Small, luxury apartments are going to be more profitable than something more affordable. Landlords will build the most affordable thing they can, to do anything else would be irrational. If only luxury apartments are being built, that means demand for such apartments hasn't been satisfied yet. The solution is to allow MUCH more building, so that something affordable will eventually be built. Even without that, having…

I don't agree that the free market is the only way to allow for more affordable housing, or even a good one. To some extent, housing has inflexible demand. If you work in a city, you need to find housing at least within commuting distance of that city. Because of this, landlords can build tiny palaces, and people will pay 50% of their income or more to live there, even if they really want affordable housing. In some sense, you could argue that real-estate developers can operate like a cartel and control the supply of affordable housing.

One clear alternative to this public housing. In Vienna, for example, about a quarter of the population lives in social housing. And these are poorly maintained slums, these are nice, well-located and affordable apartments. The city/state can optimize for the actual housing needs of the city rather than for profit.

I would argue that housing, much like healthcare, can function better when managed as a public good, as there are too many perverse incentives at play when there is a profit motive involved.

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

#700

Post by scottlocklin »

rmk wrote: post #668
kortilla wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being woke doesn’t translate to voting for good policies. You’re even more susceptible to voting for heartstrings boondoggles when you’re extra woke.

Completely agree with everything you said. But how does woke and liberal politics square with almost complete apathy to the the plight of the homeless (or of those verging on homelessness)? Almost nothing has been done to make housing affordable (even very modest, incremental bills in this regard have been shot down). If you consider the plight of agricultural workers and housing for them, you would be even more befu…

What you're missing is the "left" has long since transferred its affections away from poor people who are not wards of the state.

"Woke" politics magically appeared in 2008 when leftists were manning occupy wall street, which pretty much immediately degenerated into escalating virtue signalling instead of, you know, making some reforms to wall street. I'm sure that was a total coincidence.

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