Pretty hard to like a city where a non-trivial portion of the residents are hating on you and blaming you and others like you for many problems of their own doing.
I left a year ago and I personally hope both San Francisco and all of California suffers fiscal collapse. The state grossly mistreats it's most productive citizens, when its those very citizens that fund the greatest chunk of the state's largesse. Hopefully enough major taxpayers will leave that it creates a fiscal crisis that can only be solved by increasing taxes further, driving more productive citizens out and sending the state government in a death spiral.
You'd be bitter too if you paid several hundred thousand in state taxes in 2019 to a state whose politicians probably at least halved your net worth by using your company as their whipping boy for years just to make themselves look good.
We as a people have failed to create a society with space for these people to exist in peace, happiness, and good health. Now we can’t let ourselves conveniently overlook their humanity due to the inconvenience their state creates for us as a whole.
8 years of liberal politicians claiming to care, and 8 years later it is significantly worse. I could excuse the lack of progress if the city government wasn't rolling in money the entire time. If they can't solve the problem with the way things were, they are going to have a hell of time doing it with the way they are headed.
Edit: I'd also like to point out society does not exist to gift every person peace, safety, and health. A just society offers opportunities, not guarantees.
Tell that to the people who made a mistake when they were younger, got a criminal record, and are now vilified for the rest of their lives and are turned down from the vast majority of jobs. Is it any wonder you see those people turn to crime to make a living?
Helping to guarantee things like physical safety is one of the fundamental parts of the social contract. Laws governing those areas are covered by the Constitution (depending on how you interpret “peace”)
In that case I won't guarantee not to nick your stuff, just give you the opportunity to not have it nicked.
Go volunteer to tutor at-risk middle school students if you don’t believe me. Many of them can barely read. Do you think they have an equal opportunity to successful higher education in fields that are worth getting degrees in?
I had a coworker who visited sf. A homeless person threw a bottle of urine all over him.
Do you think that made it more or less attractive? Seriously we all suffer, but most of us suffer in such a way that we don't make the world too much worse for others.
Thanks so much for teaching me how to live.
I'm sorry that the city where you live is such a terrible place, I come from a poor country in Europe and homeless people here are treated freely by the State, because people taxes pay for public universal health care.
And every neighborhood in every city has their own local homeless that are part of the living tissue of the place, not a nuisance (or something to bring up when you talk with others about what's wrong in your city, we use holes in the road and waste management).
I understand that when you are a rich country, you can't afford to waste resources on it.
I also understand that it's easier to blame a middle aged man like me for "virtue signaling" (I don't even know what that means, sorry) than apologizing.
Homelessness as "a problem" is the symptom of a selfish society, more than a failure in city management.
Anyway "that incident" is an anecdote, it doesn't prove anything, nobody knows if it's the truth, it's simply blaming the poor, disguised as caring about the city.
Boiling everything down to 'homelessness means society is selfish' is over simplifying an incredibly complicated problem. There are things that can be done, but it requires a lot more thought than holding hands and handing out free stuff. SF is probably the least selfish city on the planet, which is arguably part of the problem.
A society where people refuse to see it as a social issue, like sickness, and one that requires a lot of thought because you have to remove them from the eyes of people but don't want to deal with the consequences because it's actually a cleanse under a different name (decency, decorum, etc.).
If SF is the least selfish on the planet (which it isn't, unless you consider a few American cities the World), why people refuse to live with what is obviously a byproduct of their lifestyle?
You can't have all the advantages without any of the drawbacks.
Thinking that it is indeed possible is a symptom of a selfish society.
I live near the Colosseum in Rome and there are homeless living here, in the city centre. Some of them have been living here more than I've been alive.
Nobody thinks they are a problem or have to accept the help, people here accept that where there are people with a lot of money there are gonna be desperate people as well.
Because it's only natural.
And because many have been poor or come from poor families, before being wealthy enough to afford a better life.
It's easier for homeless to find what they need to survive in the big city in the wealthy neighborhood than in the small village in the country in the poor quarter.
They also feel more protected, for obvious reasons (more people with money means more people willing to give, means more wasted food, better illumination, better public services, etc.)
For those in need of medical attention, there is the national healthcare, we call the ambulance, they already know who these people are, bring them in, give them food, a bed and a warm shower and they already know they'll be out on the streets again in a couple of days. At least they have been checked and their health conditions assessed. Because it's their job, they don't have to respond to some kind of profit based mechanism, people taxes already paid for it.
Homeless are not treated like a problem, like rejected or defective people, they are taken care of. Because it benefits the society at large.
Of course some of them are a problem, but it's a tiny minority, our biggest issue is finding as many as possible in winter so they don't die in the street for hypothermia or other cold related disease.
Of course is not all roses, we are still talking about people living in the edge of society and sometimes dealing with them is not a pleasant experience, but it's rare.
Also the police here don't treat them like criminals, which is an important difference as well, police usually protect them from bad people. They are in fact much more often victims of violence than perpetrators.
(According to LAPD report in January this year more than one out of three times police officers used force against homeless people in 2019, a 26% increase from 2018)
It's really not that hard, especially for one of the richest cities in the richest country in the World.
Unwillingness is a form of selfishness.
Not learning from what others already do better is a form of entitlement.
Which is a form of selfishness.
I'll be honest, it seems like english is your second language and you're struggling to connect a few different ideas, but I'm just not getting where you're going.
I'm saying it should be easy to solve for the richest country in the World given the sheer amount of resources it possess.
It looks impossible for the same exact country, because the society there doesn't like the solution.
Or to be more precise, they don't like being told that if other have solved it, they should just copy what the others have done.
Looks like that if you try to teach America something, the knee jerk reaction is always "X is of course underestimating something, the problem is hard, the solution can't be that easy and if X is proposing it is obviously wrong, or X would be richer then us"
Other countries have solved it, so it is solvable.
Solvable doesn't even mean it will disappear in this case, it means the situation can drammatically improve just by tuning a few knobs.
Like wearing and not wearing a mask, keeping or not keeping social distance, etc. you put all of these precautions together and you magically have much better chances of avoiding the contagion.
It is that simple.
Why it isn't in the US?
Because they don't want to solve it.
It would be as easy as reading the Wikipedia page on homelessness in Japan, for example
I'm taking Japan as an example because it was struggling with the problem, then they changed approach to it and have radically improved the condition of homeless people and reduce their number.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Japan
> At the beginning of the 1990s, the homeless in Japan were viewed as a nuisance. The government tried to get rid of the people on streets because of "beautification programmes". Only in 1997 did Tokyo at last acknowledge the existence of homeless group representatives and start listening to their issues.
> I'll be honest, it seems like english is your second language and you're struggling to connect a few different ideas
I could write it in Italian, French, Spanish and even in bad German, but that would make it harder for people to follow.
The best I can do is my confusing English, sorry.
Second, the US has a lower incidence of homeless people than many countries with much more generous social programs (Canada, France, UK, New Zealand). Saying we just aren't throwing enough of our wealth at the problem is also evidently wrong. (You can look that up on Wikipedia)
Third, the homeless rate in the US has been on the decline for decades. So blowing San Francisco's problems up into some larger conversation that the US as a whole is failing is just inaccurate.
US have 17/100k of population, Italy has 8.
We are not famous for being big on personal responsibility.
> Japanese homeless are very very homeless
They are 0.3/100k of population though or roughly 56 times less than US.
At that level the problem is solved, not completely, but at least the number the country has to deal with is manageable.
If US had the same share of homeless people of Italy (and they could do muuuuuuch better than us) they would have half of the homeless population.
Which is a radical improvement if you ask me.
> Third, the homeless rate in the US has been on the decline for decades.
Is it?
According to the stats it increased from 2018 onwards from previous years
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/18/surprisin...
I didn't say we were the best, just that we are doing better than some who are throwing much more money at the problem. So money obviously isn't the issue.
>They are 0.3/100k of population though or roughly 56 times less than US. >At that level the problem is solved, not completely, but at least the number the country has to deal with is manageable. >If US had the same share of homeless people of Italy (and they could do muuuuuuch better than us) they would have half of the homeless population. >Which is a radical improvement if you ask me.
Yeah, again, the US isn't the best. You can find many countries with lower homeless rates. We can do better. The countries with the best rates can do better. So what? Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Italy has double the unemployment of the rest of the EU average. "Do what they do" is obviously not good advice in a general sense. Homelessness is a hard problem, but San Francisco specifically is doing an awful job, even relative to the US as a whole, managing it because of local politics.
>According to the stats it increased from 2018 onwards from previous years
And I'm sure COVID-19 made things worse as well, but I said decades, not years. Years are lumpy, but the trend line at least since 2007 is very much downward.
US spend 3 billions, France only 800 millions but was spending much less
> As the news of homelessness steadily increased in the country, the French government increased the budget from 305 million euros to 820 million euros between 2012 and 2017
While the US
> First, HUD's Homeless Assistance Grants received an additional $130 million compared with FY 2017, bringing total funding to $2.513 billion.
> Congress should invest in proven solutions to homelessness by providing at least $3.1 billion for Homeless Assistance in FY 2021. This represents a $323 million increase over the FY 20 level
If we compare the population they are spending the same amount, but France is facing (as most of the Mediterranean EU countries) a huge migration from Africa, that brought millions of people in just 10 years.
> the trend line at least since 2007 is very much downward.
It's only 13% better 647,000 in 2007 Vs 567,000 in 2019
Also, COVID hit in 2020, not in 2018.
It's never been about budget alone, but what each country does with that budget.
Most of the US spending is not helping the homeless situation, it's simply trying to hide it without much success.
The original point is that given how much money US has to spend and how much money they are throwing at the "problem" the results are underwhelming at best.
Maybe trying something different could change things.
2) France has a higher homeless rate than the US, as does much of Europe. As does much of the world. Much of the world also has a lower rate. Again, so what? If the US were on the bad end of the spectrum, this whole line of conversation might make sense in context, but we aren't, so it doesn't. As far as the migration issue: Every country has special circumstances, that's my point. Saying "do what they do" is obviously a bad faith view because of that.
3) I'm not saying the US can't improve. Even if the homeless rate were 1/10th what it is now we could still do better. I'm just saying the problem in San Francisco (look at the post you're in) isn't because the US is doing a particularly poor job, it's because San Francisco is doing a particularly poor job.
Look up, my original comment above was essentially: San Francisco is doing a bad job with the homeless issue.
If I ever pay several hundred thousand dollars in state tax in a single year I will be a millionaire many times over, with far more money than I will ever need, and will be grateful for my remarkably good fortune.
And you are surprised that the residents hate you? I dislike plenty of cities but ideating about their absolute collapse speaks a lot.
I don't have an English degree or anything, but I'm pretty sure he's complaining about the several hundred thousands in state taxes.
Easy come, easy go. When you are productive enough to earn a salary of several millions of dollars, your tolerance for being extorted disproportionately because of your productivity might be different. You might also be upset at the wastefulness of those institutions and individuals who performed the extortion and spent your money unwisely.
Fair enough!
Though, ahem, that might describe the feeling of Californians who have moved anywhere else lately.
Same with Elon Musk and Tesla’s absurd stock price. And probably a lot of other people given the hot IPO market.
Point is it’s so disingenuous for these people to say it’s because of SF or California when it has everything to do with taxes and not much else.
To blast the Bay Area and state which made them rich and then flee before they owe a penny is gross.
Regarding their actions being a symbolic betrayal of the Bay Area, I suspect most of them feel betrayed. High income tax in California doesn't reflect high provision of services. It's due in part to poor cost control and in part to poor property tax policy, such that California's income tax is a de facto transfer of wealth from working people and capital investors to property owners. These investors, companies and workers have paid a tremendous amount in taxes, and have been repaid with ever greater taxation, ever decreasing access to the property they are helping to subsidize, poor services, and even disrespect.
There's no reason to assume that every tax, fee or levy that the government issues is justified. The authors refer to Twitter and other companies as being "...let...off the hook..." for a tax but fail to mention that this was San Francisco's effort to impose its own payroll tax!
The reason some people are surprised by tax bills when they move is because they vested their shares or options while in California as part of their compensation and then later moved. Logically it makes sense in that situation to owe state taxes on income that you earn in the state you earned it.
When you later sell you shouldn’t owe taxes in California if you’re out of state for that tax year.
Why should VCs get a tax preference employees don't get?
This is one of a few examples where California's progressive politics haven't lead to progressive policies, whereas states that are much more non-progressive in their politics -- states like Texas -- have, as a practical matter, policies that are much better for working people.
I suppose that, hypothetically, when you purchase shares with cash it's "post-tax" cash; whereas when you purchase shares with labor it's "pre-tax" labor.
when you get equity as an employee you’re taxed when you vest and when you sell. you shouldn’t be taxed when you sell by California if you’re out of state.
It is not really correct to cast this in terms of owing taxes on income in the state that you earned it because options are not income. There is a non-symmetry here with financial options generally: if you lived in California and bought some options, then left the state, and then, as a non-resident, exercised the options and sold shares, you would not be taxed in California because there was no income in California. Income on a stock transaction is generally recognized at the time a security is sold. Obtaining options and stocks both represent an outflow of money, not an inflow. It's a regressive policy to treat options purchased in-kind with labor in an unfavorable way, with regards to taxation, relative to those purchased with cash.
So this tax question doesn’t apply to them. Rabois can move to Miami now and if he sells his IPO shares next year he owes California nothing.
It is likely that Rabois has a mix of compensation from his firm, as a practical matter, and some of it is likely to be options -- but even if not, Rabois and people like him have paid a lot of taxes in California. A lot more than they would have paid in most states. When you consider how much they paid relative to how well the state government has provided services -- taking other states into consideration -- it's hard to see how the people moving are betraying anyone. They paid and paid and paid.
Also see Uber/AirBNB "disruption" of not paying benefits/hotel taxes. I would be more surprised if they didn't "optimize" like that.
My point is don’t fall for their public relations spin BS.
A VC is investing in a company, like any other stock investment. There is no earned income.
An employee that forward exercises their options pay taxes on date of hire and vest automatically. Post IPO you’re only taxed when you sell.
1. Federal:
a) Income tax of 10% on income over around $12k (single) or $24k (married) up to 37% on income over $518k (single) to $622k (married). Capital gains tax is at the same rate for assets held less than a year but up to only 20% for assets held more than one year.
b) FICA, a wage tax. You pay for 7.65% for social security and medicare/medicaid on all wages up to around $133k and 0% above that.
2) State. This varies widely. Some states have no income tax, some states have income tax rates of as high as 13.3% (California). Most are around 5%. Each state has different deductions and rules. Capital gains is usually included in this. Most states (but not all) also levy a sales tax of around 4% to 8% on retail transactions.
3) Local. Most local taxes are in the form of property tax on real estate. The rates vary from around 0.5% to 2% of property value. Some towns levy a separate sales tax on top of a state one (if it exists). The real estate and sales taxes are used to fund schools, police, fire, etc. Many municipalities also levy fees for water, trash, etc. Some cities also have an income tax (for example NYC).
To give you an idea of just how complex it is, the US has approximately 11,000 different sales tax jurisdictions. And it's not just a matter of rates. What is taxed and in what context varies. For example, in NYC, food from groceries is not subject to sales tax. But food from restaurants is. Unless, I think the restaurant has no more than some minimum of seats and you orders your food to go. Some sales taxes can also vary by date (i.e. sales tax during summer, but otherwise none). There are also occasional sales tax "holidays" where no sales tax is charged.
Unsurprisingly, tax lawyers and accountants make good money in the USA :-)
SF afaik and all of Pennsylvania does the same.
NYC's rate is 3.9% I believe.
I think I mixed up discussion of a wealth tax with income tax. Or maybe that was somewhere else.
Thanks for straighting it up for me! :)
FICA is also paid equally by the employer (.9% ACA add-on excluded), so it’s only an accounting gimmick that prevents it from being a 15% tax on income.
If we are trying to be precise it was the Spanish who stole their land.
Not all Europeans are made equal.
Their hard work coupled with many others like them that worked with them made them rich. The same group of people could have been in another state and done just as well.
The people in California that made people successful are the Peter Thiels, Elon Musks and Keith Rabois of the area. VC money is the king maker. In the Bay Area it all started with Fairchild. It's the same reason why Seattle is successful. All the Microsoft money seeded the tech scene there.
These kingmakers have had enough of California and are leaving for greener pastures where they can continue to build successful companies without the state leaching off their work.
If they show up in Texas and other states and succeed in replicating their success, it will be clear it was them and not California that was responsible for the success. I'm glad California is rapidly losing its undeserved monopoly on tech.
And I’m speaking about his investments. Cutting a check is not “hard work”. You could argue Musk is different because he’s actually the CEO of the his company.
California and the SF Bay Area doesn't get credit for that. Heck, Silicon Valley was a bunch of fruit orchards for decades. Could have been a different set of fruit orchards in a different state.
Had Fairchild been elsewhere, the Traiterous 8 would have become the kingmakers they became in a different place and Keith Rabois or someone like him would have moved to that ecosystem instead to develop relations at the right time and become rich.
Seattle is the perfect counterfactual to the narrative you're invested in. Microsoft is Seattle's Fairchild.
Saying that all they are doing is "cutting a check" betrays the fact that you've likely never actually worked with a successful VC. The successful ones do so much more than cut a check. For example, the hard work they put in to help you identify and hire talent is indispensable.
Considering this concentration of talent, I think it's no surprise that the Bay Area is a hub for innovation, and the impressive list of companies founded by Berkeley [1] and Stanford [2] alumni is a testament to this. The concentration of talent is the environment that attracts funding and VCs, and will ensure that the Bay Area will remain the place to be in tech.
And Seattle, your "perfect counterfactual", has University of Washington, another state-funded top institution.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_U... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_S...
Being an investor is not “hard work” in the same way it is if you’re a founder or employee. Anyone who says it is is lying.
I've worked heavily with VCs when I was the first employee at a startup that did well for a few rounds and they worked very hard to help us out. The only difference is that they lived better while helping out because they were already wealthy, but they certainly worked hard for us and for their other investments.
You can be fiscally comfortable and still work hard.
Now I'm not defending how much ownership they take relative to what they put in. Both us and our VCs worked hard. They just took a greater chunk of the equity because of the capital provided.
And the other way to look at it is California is expensive because the opportunity to become rich is greater here than elsewhere.
I can't tell if you're upset by their disingenuousness, or by their refusal to give a cut to the state. If the former, I sympathize. But it mostly seems to be the latter. The obvious rejoinder to which: why should they feel so eager to fork over their money to an institution that did ~nothing to contribute to their success?
> California is expensive because the opportunity to become rich is greater here than elsewhere
Your statement only explains the e.g. high housing costs. The tax question is orthogonal.
It's not gross to minimize your obligations towards people who have done nothing for you. Seattle is the relevant counterfactual: flourishing tech scene without the punitive tax burden that we're supposed to believe enabled California's success.
It’s a lot of cogs. There is no comparison when it comes to startups created in, say, the last 10 years or so.
I've lived both places. Seattle is not a low-tax paradise, nor are tax dollars completely and utterly squandered in California.
It is gross how, the more money one makes, the more entitled one feels to not have to give a dime back. It's a game to them.
Excepting special situations for certain PR and USVI residents, Washington state is as close to a tax haven as a US citizen is going to find.
> nor are tax dollars completely and utterly squandered in California
This depends on what you think the dollars should be used for. Most taxpayers would like to see their taxes used for provision of public services, and not in service of a vast public employee enrichment scheme. From this POV, the money is in fact squandered.
> It is gross how, the more money one makes, the more entitled one feels to not have to give a dime back
It's less about greed and more about abuse of generosity. See prior point.
Con artists can have a long view of things.
And most people who move are just regular people who lost their jobs.
Frankly, I don't think there's too much space between 'get rich quick' and 'get really rich over a longer period' people.
A lot of those folks aren’t going to find happiness with their move but some will. The grass is always greener until you’re standing on it.
For all the faults I take issue with, the SFBA is probably the single place I most fit in culturally in the world. It’s where I want to be. But I can’t justify paying the absurd rents to live there when my job doesn’t require me to be there AND socialization/networking/most leisure activities are on pause. After March there was nothing for me to do except enjoy nature activities/exercise outside, and my social life was in shambles.
I can’t wait for everything to go back to normal and move back to the Bay Area, but for now I am very happy I moved back in with my parents.
I don't want to get into details but the other thing I like about the people staying in SF because they chose to is a healthy disregard for authority together with a very smart sense about how to take care of themselves and others. It's saving me from terrible depression or going into complete isolation in COVID times.
The Bay Area is beautiful and the people are wonderful, but its just not where I want to be living my life.
I had some friends like this, they just never really liked the city. Now they're all leaving because their job is not making them stay. That's fine and I'm happy they have more choices now.
But there's a flip side to that. One of my least favorite part of San Francisco was actually that group of people! I loved SF and I was always bothered by the constant complaining by tech workers who were there semi-involuntarily. They weren't willing to give the city a chance and instead always wanted to change it to be more bland or more like somewhere else.
If a bunch of those people are now leaving and the rent is dropping a bit, all of a sudden I really want to come back. I also think the city will be easier to govern if more of the residents are there because it's where they actually want to live.
(Note: I was in SF for 6 years, left just before the pandemic for a temporary assignment in London)