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San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

californiapolicycenter.org

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Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#111

Post by Spooky23 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #59
Spooky23 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for government for a long time. It’s no different managing government employees, it’s about leadership. Most people just want to do their job and go home. You probably had a decent manager at McDonald’s — many of them frankly suck. In city government, frequently the professional managers are on a leash. Some councilman, friend of the mayor, etc has the juice to take care of their friends or countrymen. In ci…

I have come to appreciate that in the private sector, eventually, you will get fired. I recognize the nepotism and nonsense is rampant in the private sector. However there is the market test. In government it can be neverending.

Maybe. I think there’s more egregious bullshit in public sector for sure, in large corporations useless people, they just have to not work a little smarter.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#112

Post by politician »

pstuart wrote: post #83
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of states give prisoners open bus tickets on release if they have no one coming to pick them up. They are not technically sending them to LA, SF, Portland, or Seattle, but where else are they going to go? Living outside in LA is much better than doing the same in Houston. But this is another point of the problem: anyone who solves the problem well is bound to just attract more of the problem. People are not imm…

My second paragraph explicitly said it: it's a national issue and can only be solved at that level. It would be collectively cheaper and far more humane to boot.

This is just an excuse for why the party with decades of majority rule has failed to solve problems at the city and state levels. Why would the federal government be able to solve a problem that California has failed to address? California has a larger economy than many nations!

The correct solution for individuals is to move out of these mismanaged high density areas.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#113

Post by jscipione »

Chicago and San Francisco were about to default on their debts before the mass reduction of American living standards through currency inflation payouts to state and local governments to make these city budgets solvent again in 2020 and 2021. I’m paying dearly for it, we all are, whether you live in San Francisco or not. I like many Americans are being crushed financially to pay off debts that I had absolutely nothing to do with creating and never supported in the first place.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#114

Post by kortilla »

fortran77 wrote: post #101
rcpt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's directly related to Prop 13. Without that law we could rely on stable property taxes for public services and infrastructure. But instead we shift the burden of taxation to unstable sources and now here we are https://lao.ca.gov/publications/report/3497#How_Did_Proposit...

It’s extremely stable. And it raises 2%/year, and gets reset when property changes hands.

2% a year doesn’t match inflation. It’s literally codified to lower your tax burden on an inflation adjusted basis the longer you own the home.

There is no logical defense for it other than “fuck you, I got mine”.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#115

Post by HyperSane »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #63
HyperSane wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only one Koch left.

Yeah, I keep forgetting that, somewhat hilariously as I'm at radius 2 to the family. My dad's best friend worked for Koch industries and described his job as "keeping the brothers from killing each other." They are extremely unpleasant people based on all the stories I heard growing up.

You would have to be utter bastards to dedicate your life to the evil shit the Koch's did.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#116

Post by fortran77 »

kortilla wrote: post #114
fortran77 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s extremely stable. And it raises 2%/year, and gets reset when property changes hands.

2% a year doesn’t match inflation. It’s literally codified to lower your tax burden on an inflation adjusted basis the longer you own the home. There is no logical defense for it other than “fuck you, I got mine”.

It's to prevent people from being forced to sell their homes because speculators drive up the "values" in the neighborhood. There's no "fuck you" here.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#117

Post by tptacek »

Schiendelman wrote: post #110
rayiner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US seems especially bad, though. Do other countries do things differently in terms of incentives?

You can often trace the apparent efficiency of a bureaucracy back to the length of time that particular one has existed and its complexity. Because of World War II, and other mid-20th century government changes, European bureaucracies can sometimes be much newer than those in the United States, making them appear they are better designed, when they simply haven’t existed for long enough to become as terrible.

Then why is the federal IRS so much better than the state revenue services?

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#118

Post by kortilla »

fortran77 wrote: post #116
kortilla wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2% a year doesn’t match inflation. It’s literally codified to lower your tax burden on an inflation adjusted basis the longer you own the home. There is no logical defense for it other than “fuck you, I got mine”.

It's to prevent people from being forced to sell their homes because speculators drive up the "values" in the neighborhood. There's no "fuck you" here.

It went way beyond that intent. Not keeping up with inflation is a complete “fuck you” to everyone else who has to pay their fair share.

It has nothing to do with speculators. There are people with multi million dollar homes in the Bay Area paying a few thousand a year in taxes because they bought in during the 70s.

If they don’t want to pay the property taxes for the actual value, all of the profit from their home sale should go to the government as back payment for their societal delinquency. You can’t both claim that you’re just “being protected from speculators” while reaping the benefit of when you sell.

Finally, most of the buyers in the Bay Area are not speculators. They are regular people looking for homes and prop 13 is fucking them by making them shoulder the majority of the tax burden. When one of my coworkers paid property taxes on his home in Sunnyvale for the first time, he paid more than the rest of the block combined despite all of the houses having roughly the same value.

Complete insanity.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#119

Post by JamesBarney »

rayiner wrote: post #66
monero-xmr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t understand. The incentives are all wrong. There is absolutely zero benefit for a bureaucracy to make itself more efficient and require less money each year. No one is incentivized to ensure money is being spent well. The biggest incentive for a lifelong bureaucrat is to increase budget and headcount - the more money and headcount you have, the more important you are. There is never a time when you aren’t re…

The US seems especially bad, though. Do other countries do things differently in terms of incentives?

I think there are a two reasons the US is worse.

1. Scale, a lot of countries are closer to a city state than the size of the US government. State governments are run poorly for different reasons having to do with our political system. Yeah Luxembourg and Singapore are run really well but India and china aren't.

2. No political party is interested in fixing efficiency. The Democrats ignore it because they don't want to bring attention to government inefficiency/corruption issues. The Republicans want government to be as inefficient as possible so we are incentivized to get rid of it.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#120

Post by Schiendelman »

tptacek wrote: post #117
Schiendelman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can often trace the apparent efficiency of a bureaucracy back to the length of time that particular one has existed and its complexity. Because of World War II, and other mid-20th century government changes, European bureaucracies can sometimes be much newer than those in the United States, making them appear they are better designed, when they simply haven’t existed for long enough to become as terrible.

Then why is the federal IRS so much better than the state revenue services?

Better?? Taxes in the US are a byzantine monster. State taxes are far simpler.
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