Most Californians don’t live in the Bay Area, where basic housing costs $1.5M

Can a family of 4 live on $250k in the Bay Area? Of course. But you’ll never own a home.

And working for the wealthiest companies in the world doing the most in-demand job in the world, yet never being able to own a home, that’s a bizarre situation to be in.

We want to incentivize more people to work in tech. Not less.

Whatever you get paid in Europe is irrelevant since it’s a completely different system (from healthcare and education down to public transport and housing).

And if Europe wants to be at all competitive with the US or China in tech (right now, it’s not), maybe you should be getting paid more than a mid-level accountant?

But raising taxes while not addressing the supply problem will make it worse for those who have not already "cashed out" their capital gains into tax-advantaged real estate.

I have 10 weeks vacation and a <20 hour workweek. I'd really rather _not_ be competitive with the US or China.

Yes, somebody making 400k in Palo Alto isn't rolling in stacks of cash (though you are certainly doing a lot better than the grad students making 30k). But this sort of "hey but in this extreme edge case the policy is sort of frustrating" argument is consistently overused to prevent reasonable policies (see estate taxes and farms for a classic example).

I might've been able to buy a condo at one point, but that's about it.

Most of these are well within reach, even moreso before the current bubble, if you make that kind of money. And an 8 minute BART ride from the city. Your not wanting to live there does not imply that somebody does not live there.

Your example is beyond cherry-picked. The population of that region is only 21k. It is not remotely representative of the reality the vast majority of residents face.

Humans are constantly dissatisfied with their situations and seek continuous improvement. This causes a lot of friction but it's what breeds innovation.

The "why can't you just be happy with what you have?" argument applies at all levels of life. You could take this same argument from the bottom of the class hierarchy all the way to the top and it still won't stop humans from wanting more. This is in fact the same mental mechanism that enabled us to climb _from_ the bottom. You can't just turn it off no matter how high you climb.

I speak from personal experience climbing from working in fast food, warehouses, construction then to white collar IT leadership positions. I can't turn off the drive to be better no matter how good things get and I don't want to because it's the core of how I survive.

Just my $0.02

Are you sure this will make for a good incentive for:

- people who excel at business to stay.

- lazy people to work instead of relying on welfare.

Besides that, needless to say that taxing is unfair in itself and taxing depending on how much you make is like treating you different because you belong to a group or another. Reminds me, in some ways, to Europe's middle age: you were judged different depending on different rules according to groups. I understand US is very different from my country, but my advice is that do not give a centimeter to any kind of positive discrimination (taxes, race, sex, religion or whatever). Once you have that one part will abuse the other. The only solution is to be as dilligent as possible applying same rules to everyone equally.

Yes, they sell all with nice words and good causes in-between, with you being spoiled with no word on what to do with that. But at the end, this is involution IMHO.

I use to believe what you're saying. In fact I often quoted very similar lines in arguments.

The more I've made, the higher up I've moved, the more senior executives I've worked closely with, the less I believe it though. Most "Sr. Execs" have just put in time, had some luck & networked well.

Higher salaries are rarely the incentive to become amazing at something. If you become amazing at something, usually you just love that type of work. Money as an incentive, for anyone who is living comfortably, has shown time & time again to not be a great incentive. Many people now are preferring remote work over higher salaries. Time > Money.

In middle & upper class incomes, the only thing I've seen higher salaries encourage are fast track MBAs and butt kissing.

Those in the upper income have done very well by encouraging favorable tax laws on themselves. They donate to politicians. They receive favorable tax breaks through real estate, capital gains, avoiding FICA tax of 15.3%, business deductions, low interest loans, etc. If you donate & network enough, you can also get some nice business contracts from the government.

> good incentive for: > - lazy people to work instead of relying on welfare.

Welfare is not for the lazy. It's for the burdened & hopeless. It's also to keep people well off enough to work but not go around stealing & attacking people out of hunger. It's like trying to dig out of a hole with a shovel while wealthy people are driving tractors & digging your hole deeper. Cheap labor is what makes wealthy people wealthy. A CEO can hire cheap labor, the govt will tax them "FICA" & income tax. The CEO will take their money in stock, so no "earned income" & no "FICA". If they do take an income, FICA is only on a small portion of their salary. The CEO can also get almost interest free loans on that stock, so no need to even sell stock & pay any tax.

Yes, but it still belongs to them. They did it. Noone did it for them. And I am sure they know one or two things that a regular person do not know about their business, that is why they are there. We are not entitled to say who does it better or not. They are there for some reason, right? Of course, lobbying and using politicians to regulate would sound to me like a dirty sh*t. But if you built your things from your time and effort... why, why someone can touch that? No way... it is not about the amount. It is about something belonging to where you invested your time and/or effort, money, life, sacrifices you made to get there...

> Higher salaries are rarely the incentive to become amazing at something. If you become amazing at something, usually you just love that type of work. Money as an incentive, for anyone who is living comfortably, has shown time & time again to not be a great incentive. Many people now are preferring remote work over higher salaries. Time > Money.

Sure, my point here that if the money is made by providing a service, noone is entitled to come and tell you: hey, this is too much, give it to me, I will manage it. It is just absurd at all levels: a person who did not spend a minute in building all that comes and tells you what to do with it...

> Welfare is not for the lazy. It's for the burdened & hopeless

I am sorry to say this. I am going to sound really bad: of course there are hopeless and burdened people in it. I am pretty sure of it. Yet there are people that actively take advantage of it. I know this for a fact from the position I have through some relatives. But that is not even the point. The point is this one: with a huge welfare there is incentive for the lazy? Yes, there is. Sorry, it is like that: there are people who want to live from you.

What about the hopeless and burdened? I think this is also something to talk about, and a serious one. I really think civil organizations would do a better job at choosing who to help and who not to help, based on better knowledge on the terrain and close interaction. However, this welfare is: oh there are so many "poor" people (yes, burdened and lazy, both) so let us inject more taxes. And you feed the ball further and further. And when people stopped being poor as before (as in extreme poverty), then the discussion is shifted to equality, to have a justification to keep extracting resources from people who earn their own. So what you have all in all is that people who work or make money in the market are paying all the others and you expect this incentive to be sustainable forever. There is a reason why socialism failed so badly. And all the failure is about coaction and killing incentives. That is the way forward we are building.

Honestly speaking, I see this (and I did not like 15 years ago) like a huge scam. We cannot promote welfare-style societies. We have to promote individual autonomy and association. And that does not makes us any worse or more selfish: it makes us responsible. At the end, we do know when someone is burdened and I think most of us will have an eye to know when someone needs a lift.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.