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San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

californiapolicycenter.org

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Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#71

Post by jltsiren »

monero-xmr wrote: post #70
jltsiren wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A concrete example: In many countries, most taxpayers don't have to file taxes. Those countries have taken many steps over the decades to make the tax bureaucracy more efficient. The US could try to do the same, but the existing institutions make it difficult. Another example: Many countries have a system of administrative courts. If someone challenges a decision made by a public official, the case goes there. The pr…

I am a "tax return should fit on a postcard" type of guy so we have no argument there. However I don't think you will find many in the center or right political axis that thinks we don't want to streamline tax filing and make the whole thing more efficient. The reason in the US that things aren't easier is endless lobbying. Literally every sector that makes a few million bucks hires a state lobbyist to ensure no one…

The lobbying problem is worse than usual in the US, because you chose to make corporate lobbying constitutionally protected speech. That made proper regulation of it impossible. And then it's difficult to change the decision, because it was made by the Supreme Court, which has somehow assumed a significant legislative role. In principle, it would be possible to change the Constitution, but that is also more difficult in the US than in most other countries.

Structural issues like these are a major reason for the inefficiency of American bureaucracy. You chose to shape your society in a certain way, and these are some of the consequences.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#72

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

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.

There absolutely people who just keep messing up in the private sector until they reach retirement, never suffering consequences. You just have to be executive level.

This dichotomy you're making between the free market and government is cartoonish and not particularly useful.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#73

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jltsiren wrote: post #67
monero-xmr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not disagree more. In the countries where the bureacracy is considered "efficient", it's because in that time and place the best jobs for the most talented were in the government. In the US context that was 1930 to 1970, when the Great Depression, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, and the aftermath made stable government employment attractive. Once the situation tilts back to the private sector, which IMO is the nat…

A concrete example: In many countries, most taxpayers don't have to file taxes. Those countries have taken many steps over the decades to make the tax bureaucracy more efficient. The US could try to do the same, but the existing institutions make it difficult. Another example: Many countries have a system of administrative courts. If someone challenges a decision made by a public official, the case goes there. The pr…

You don’t have to do tax returns in China. But you have to fill out a form with some numbers from your pay check stubs as HR tells you. It’s absolutely bizarre, it doesn’t change what taxes you pay at all, but you are in trouble if you don’t file the form (which is in Chinese anyways and I’ve never read through).

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#74

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bagacrap wrote: post #61
inferiorhuman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco International Airport is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco and policed by San Francisco Police Department.

Surely the airport turns a profit?

It does. But it is still part of the “budget”, which is only money going out, and doesn’t count money coming in.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#75

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pstuart wrote: post #34
mellosouls wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A left wing pressure group identifies the article publisher as a right wing pressure group. Ok, cool, but whatever the quality of the arguments in the article that's probably not the devastating hammer blow to defeat them.

Many of their points are valid and should be addressed, but the criticism is rather narrow. Case in point: homelessness. Yes, it's a huge problem, but San Francisco is a dumping ground for the homeless, e.g., other states buy one-way bus tickets for their indigents/miscreants to shift the burden. It's a national issue that needs to be addressed on a national level. Then there was this pandemic thingy, and the WFH shi…

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 immobile, and will move to where they have the best chance of surviving, so if Seattle is rumored to be handing out tiny houses to the unhoused, it will simply attract more of the problem. Whatever local resources are thrown at the problem will not make a noticeable dent in the problem locally (though the national problem will get some small improvement relative to its size).

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#76

Post by hintymad »

Didn’t it cost $130K to offer just housing to a homeless person? That’s after-tax money. That is, it cost around 3x as much as the US median household income, right? If this is not corruption, I don’t know what is. But wait! People in SF elected the officials, so why should I complain about anything? /s

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#77

Post by RC_ITR »

onos wrote: post #50
inferiorhuman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The old navy is not closing, then?

Having an old navy in a tourist corridor that does a very bad job of serving local residents is your metric of whether a place is a healthy city or not?

I’m sure all those AI specialists will flee now that they can’t get fast fashion jorts on market street.

It’s amazing to me that on a forum of supposed hackers, legacy businesses failing is some sort of harbinger of doom.

E-commerce won in SF. This forum should be the place celebrating that and asking what’s next for those spaces.

Detroit didn’t die because it was a bad place for stores. It didn’t even die. It’s still a huge wealthy area.

It declined because people didn’t ask what’s next.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#78

Post by pstuart »

proc0 wrote: post #60
pstuart wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the problem is that SF is liberal? That caused the homeless to be sent from around the country? It's expensive there because a lot of people want to live there (ye olde supply demand thang, ya know?), and the more affluent squeeze out the poor folk. A lot of that affluence seems to be all of us lucky tech people, so in a sense we're part of the problem (not blaming, just noting). There is corruption and incompeten…

Isn't it beyond liberal? I would almost say it's so left it's not even liberal anymore, but that's a different matter. i think for sure it is a factor because the people who make decisions in the city, who are elected to manage the city, are probably not afraid of losing their jobs or the consequences of the decisions they make. There is so little pushback they can just run experiment after experiment with zero reper…

Are you familiar with the Overton Window? It's shifted hard to the right.

So if you want to say: is San Francisco tolerant of the LGBQT+ community? Absolutely, with flying rainbow flag colors.

But that's the key driver in the culture wars, and it has nothing to do with the business of running a government (other than minimizing government persecution of that community.

All of these issues could and should be dissected, analyzed, and addressed. But blaming it on the boogeyman of "DemonRats are destroying everything" is tiresome.

You state "experiment after experiment" but don't give any examples. I'd be happy to discuss them individually if you'd like.

p.s.: My mother was one of those awful homeless people littering the streets of SF in her final years. She migrated from the burbs so she wasn't the city's fault. How she got there is the complicated issue of many of them and never gets properly discussed or addressed. That's my skin in the game of this story.

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#79

Post by rcpt »

fortran77 wrote: post #25
rcpt wrote: post #24

[flagged]

There are many cities in California that are not having a financial crisis. Stop trying to confiscate homes from people because their neighbors paid too much money for their houses, condos, or apartments and "raised the property value." That's pure evil.

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...

Re: San Francisco’s Financial Crisis

#80

Post by rcpt »

zjp wrote: post #33
fortran77 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cities in California that are not having a financial crisis. Stop trying to confiscate homes from people because their neighbors paid too much money for their houses, condos, or apartments and "raised the property value." That's pure evil.

[flagged]

Right. If revenue came from the land then it couldn't leave so easily.
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