New York strikes a more sustainable urban balance than San Francisco. We embrace social programs, but not at the expense of quality of life or development.

A lot of the balancing comes from development. It's rare for e.g. a city block to come together to demand better policies. When they do, it's often a NIMBYist backlash against productive policy. Developers, on the other hand, care about the impact of policies on their aggregate holdings. Since they're typically developing a pipeline, their NIMBYist instincts tend to be relatively dulled.

Everything seems to point in the same direction. Cities which refuse to grow, instead transferring the fruits of growth to a land-owning elite, fail.

I have a very pessimistic view of how shitty (literally) SF is run, but this strikes me as being just as wrong in the opposite direction. The NYPD strikes me as the law enforcement branch of a police state. Surely there are other big cities that have a decent quality of life that aren't SF or NYC.

Can you name any big cities with an underclass of antisocial criminals, without a crime problem, and also without aggressive law enforcement to keep them in check?

Would Tokyo count here? It's a case of if-you-can't-beat-'em though, which probably isn't the example you want.

I've never been to Tokyo and have no idea. How does Tokyo avoid disorder caused by undesirables?

The Yakuza is heavily integrated into the government and it has become tolerated by the people. A few decades ago the government cracked down on the Yakuza as they had too much hold on how the government was run, so they splintered and different chapters took different parts of crime (ie Yamaguchi-gumi are heavily against drug trafficking and Dojin-kai are heavily involved in it).

Japan is one of the most crime-free countries in the world, because serious crime is monopolised by the criminals (and penalties for cutting their lunch are pretty heavy, which is common amongst most Asian gangs) and "respect" or "honour" is considered sacred. They don't romanticise or make "being an asshole" look fun or positive (ala "Wolf of Wall Street" is a perfect example).

>Never before had such a plan—known as “fiscal equalization”—been tried at the metropolitan level.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/the-mira...

tldr: the twin cities tax businesses and put the money into low income communities to prevent crime, and in the 70s and 80s, 70% of subsidized units were built in the wealthiest white districts, to prevent ghettos from forming.

But unfortunately Minnesota consistently ranks among the worst regarding the disparity between white and minority educational achievement.

Police in California cities are extremely expensive once you factor in the low retirement age, generous pension plans and lifetime health benefits.

And SF's particular flavor of idealism is carried to a remarkable extreme in the public arena.

The homeless (and others who are considered "marginal") get the benefit of the doubt from the police and society in general, even when they're pissing in the street.

This is a special kind of thinking which is specific to SF (and perhaps Berkeley and a small number of other cities). I don't believe such thinking is part of progressivism in general.

People may think what they will of my comment, but I visited San Francisco once and probably will never go back. I worked in downtown Seattle, walked to and from work at all hours in the city and saw all kinds of stuff, but in San Francisco I felt alot more unsafe. Seriously sketchy people that didn't just seem like they were harmlessly going about their crazy business. I wish San Francisco and its people the best, but from a distance.

1) So you are happy to pay "drastically higher taxes" to fund some social programs, have you actually calculated what percentage of your income would be necessary to achieve that? And even with higher taxes, that would not be possible at all? And since taxes are coercively taken from everyone, not only from people that are apparently fine with that, that people who would otherwise hire or build new business that could employ poor people are running out? 2) Do you really expect outsource either money (taxes) and time (you do nothing) to politicians and get results as an outcome? 3) Do you know that you can be a capitalist without being a heartless capitalist pig? 4) Do you know that your progressive ideas is killing America because that didn't work in any country in no time in history?

I used to say "San Francisco is so beautiful that humans, try as they might, just can't ruin it."

I was wrong.

Where did you move to?