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Salesforce CEO: tech billionaires 'hoard their money' and won't help homeless

61 points by apengwin 8y ago

taurath 8y ago
One of the primary properties of the tech boom (and, lets face it, almost all industrialized capitalism) is that it doesn't account for nor take responsibility for side effects of their overwhelming wealth. Some are even convinced that its a net positive and nothing should be done - despite the fact that the winners are investors and the upper class employees, and the losers are those adjacent who have to move 2 hours away. Maybe shame will get some people to budge, but I think the decision makers such as Jack/etc are so far away from being able to empathize with the people that are harmed that there's no real chance. Also slightly amusing: Jack doesn't think that this is the "best" way to solve homelessness. Whats the best way, since clearly he knows about it, and why isn't he doing it?
- monksy 8y ago
  You could also criticize the fact that businesses have done 2 things in the sake of profit: 1. Outsource their labor and production, that could be done stateside 2. They're refusing to use local materials (A business has to spend money to make money.. the money isn't following back in the local economy) They're doing to leverage poorer economies to get goods and services cheaper. (That should at least account for the portio of the homeless that want to work but can't find it)
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > One of the primary properties of the tech boom (and, lets face it, almost all industrialized capitalism) is that it doesn't account for nor take responsibility for side effects of their overwhelming wealth. How is the tech boom different from any previous period of explosive growth, in that regard? Examine similar periods in the past, and you will find far more harmful consequences, that were given far less attention or caring by their progenitors. Major developments in the past had far more disruptive and harmful consequences to affected communities, that were basically ignored and treated as "price of progress" by the people of the time. How much negative impact does the current boom even have on local communities? It's very misleading to blame it for homelessness in San Francisco. The homeless of SF by and large aren't people who can't afford rent anymore so now they live on the street.
- Kalium 8y ago
  > Also slightly amusing: Jack doesn't think that this is the "best" way to solve homelessness. Whats the best way, since clearly he knows about it, and why isn't he doing it? I mean, it's pretty obvious that the best way to address homelessness involves having homes so that the most vulnerable of our friends and neighbors can stop being homeless by being in homes. This idea has given rise to an approach called Housing First. Which, by an odd twist of fate, has actually been shown to work! This being San Francisco, this is utterly impossible. Nothing makes San Francisco politics break out in furious community meetings and protests and CEQA complaints like the prospect of building things. There's nothing Jack can do about that, even with all his money. As near as I can tell, San Francisco doesn't actually want to solve this problem. Instead, it wants to feel good about how kind and compassionate its policies are without actually accepting change into the city's fabric.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    > Jack doesn't think that this is the "best" way to solve homelessness. Whats the best way, since clearly he knows about it, and why isn't he doing it? This is by far the most irritating thing about reading CEO's "success story" profiles. It's always about going to market with the MVP, because if you wait long enough to make it perfect, the opportunity is lost to a competitor. But when it comes to tax policy, the plan has to be perfect and not annoy anyone and anything less should be rejected outright.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      For my part, I think it's worth considering that how perfect a plan has to be to implement should be a function of how readily it can be adjusted to match changing requirements. An MVP SaaS product is pretty tunable. It's possible that local tax policies, particularly as mandated by and only changeable by plebiscite, might be slightly more difficult to adjust (win an election, get one chance every two years) to changing requirements or to handle undesirable effects.
      - rchaud 8y ago
        You're right, it's far from a perfect analogy. And the electoral cycle means that the tax might not be in place long enough for it to make a measurable impact. My comment was more about the way in which taxes are discussed in American political discourse; there is this implication of a rigid permanence, as though such policies can never be reversed. They absolutely can; as you pointed out, incumbents can lose to candidates who promise to repeal the tax.
- YZF 8y ago
  Just because some guy has $1B in his bank account doesn't create the "loser" on the other end. It's not a zero sum game. You can just remove this person and their money from the economy and you'd be back where you were. The homeless person would possibly be homeless even if that guy only had $2M in his bank account. If this money is invested somewhere then that can create some distortions (e.g. inflate stocks if a lot of rich people buy stocks). At any rate, just because some people are "rich" doesn't mean their money comes from the "poor" people. Everyone could also be poor. That's not to say rich people shouldn't use their money to affect positive change but if they did that it's really just a bonus positive force. If they weren't rich where would the money to improve the community come from? Also if rich person gives every homeless person $2M to buy a house what do you think would happen to house prices? (not that homelessness is just about money, it's more complicated than that)
jlmorton 8y ago
Link (PDF) to the City's economic analysis of Proposition C: https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Economic%20Analysis/hgrt_economic_impact_final.pdf https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Econo....
kenneth 8y ago
I'm really not a fan of the entitlement attitude that we should just take money from the rich to fix our self-inflicted problems.
- ForrestN 8y ago
  I think the question is whether or not "the rich" are part of "we" or not. Businesses are built using public infrastructure and in some cases (like Twitter) direct, massively valuable government subsidy. In my opinion, "we" are asking "each other" to pay more money to solve public problems in proportion to "our" ability to do so.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Everyone uses public infrastructure. That's what makes it "public infrastructure". Should we raise your taxes to 80% "because you use the roads that are built by taxes"?
    - ForrestN 8y ago
      No—but we should probably do what we can to make each person and company's tax burden proportionate to their size and income. And we probably shouldn't frame efforts to do so as "taking money from the rich" as if wealthy people are somehow living in a separate community.
      - newtothebay 8y ago
        Isn't a flat tax rate already "proportionate to size and income"? What's the justification for higher tax rate for the rich? I agree that their wealth depends on public infrastructure, but I'm not sure that their level of dependence is higher than us. (I'm asking as a proponent of progressive tax rate, just not for this reason. So I'd like to clarify)
        ForrestN 8y ago
        I may not have expressed my position clearly. Because most costs of living are fixed and not proportionate to income, taking 20% of the income of a poor person will have a disproportionate affect on them, as opposed to someone with a very high income for whom the difference will only marginally affect their standard of living. Take 30% of someone's $20,000 income and you will deeply compromise their ability to exist comfortably in society. Taking 30% of someone's $5,000,000 income will have no effect on their ability to cover their needs and live comfortably. A flat tax, then, is actually quite regressive, rather than neutral. Speaking in terms of companies, though, there is also a question of proportion vis a vis size—bigger companies and their employees tend to cost taxpayers quite a bit more than small businesses. There are no giant Twitter-like subsidies for five-man firms, for example. Larger firms are much more likely to make use of legal infrastructure, to need regulation, and to have the power to seek accommodation by the government for infrastructure needed for their given business.
emcarey 8y ago
Marc Benioff is one of Paul Ryan's big donors.... maybe he should start paying taxes with action instead of talking about it in self serving press interviews
- ForrestN 8y ago
  Source? I found an article from 2012 saying that he donated a measly $10,000 before Ryan was fully revealed to most as the craven monster we know him as today. Not saying you're wrong, just curious to know exact details.
ForrestN 8y ago
'Benioff also criticized Stripe, a payment platform and another major San Francisco tech firm opposing Prop C. The company claimed the measure lacked a “comprehensive plan” for spending in a recent op-ed and has also given more than $400,000 to a campaign fighting the measure, making it the largest donor.' As a company with deep connections to HN, I for one hope that the Stripe staff active here are doing everything they can to challenge this embarrassing activity by their company. A good start would be to publicly express your opinion about this sort of lobbying here on HN. These companies benefit hugely from government subsidies in various forms, and really the least they could do is abstain from using their tremendous power and resources to manipulate the government into making decisions that favor their bottom lines. The Stripe founders are entitled to whatever backwards, selfish position they want to take, but they shouldn't be spending $400,000 on behalf of the company (a community of people) to try to buy a given policy outcome. More broadly, it's sad that even the progressive mayor feels the need to make policy decisions based on fear that massively wealthy tech firms will punish the city if they ask them to pay a slightly fairer share of shared expenses. What we need is a cultural change, away from "anything that drives profit is justifiable" to "successful companies that side with their own profits against the public interest should be ashamed."
- manicdee 8y ago
  What value of taxes are they hoping to avoid for that $400k if bribery?
- manfredo 8y ago
  There's a good reason to oppose proposition C: throwing more money at San Francisco's homeless problem isn't going to make it go away. The city already spends an immense amount of money on homeless services. By some metrics, it meets or exceeds the average US income per homeless person. The reality is that San Fransisco can't house all is residents because it refuses to build more housing. And building more housing is something to which the city is highly adverse.
- hueving 8y ago
  They are well within reason to lobby against policies they see as more destructive to the business community than the claimed net benefit. If you want an example of why you can't whimsically tax businesses for whatever you want, look at what happened to the yacht building industry in the US. Idiotic taxation destroyed it and cost thousands of jobs and millions in lost tax revenue. You can simultaneously be for fixing homelessness and be against destructive taxation of an industry. >they ask them to pay a slightly fairer share Let me stop you there. Your notion of calling this a "fairer share" is completely subjective and political. Why isn't a 99% tax of all profits fair, why not 0%? The phrase "paying their fair share" is nothing more than a baseless appeal to emotion, unless you're literally suggesting everyone pay the same amount for services they use. However, given that you are advocating raising taxes on entities already paying vastly more than the bottom 1/3rd, I strongly doubt you actually want equal taxation.
kenferry 8y ago
Because I looked it up: the sf chronicle endorses "no" on prop C (so opposite of Benioff). https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2018/november-elections-guide/ https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2018/november-elections-gui...
ghobs91 8y ago
While I don't doubt billionaires hoard money, I think trying to solve this with taxes is misguided. They should look at the stats showing how many homeless ended up in that situation because of rising rents. I'd be willing to bet NIMBY antics are a large cause of this problem. SF metro area has the 4th highest rate of homeless people per capita, I have to imagine absurdly high rents is a part of it. SF politicians don't want to admit this because of the donations/support they receive from NIMBY groups, but they are very clearly the cause of many problems in the bay area, whether its housing or slow transit expansion. It's especially ironic that such a "progressive" area would be so rife with elitism and gate keeping.
- zkms 8y ago
  > I'd be willing to bet NIMBY antics are a large cause of this problem. SF metro area has the 4th highest rate of homeless people per capita, I have to imagine absurdly high rents is a part of it. There's a robust correlation in US between homeless population and the stringency of zoning/land-use laws that restrict/delay/obstruct new housing: https://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/Raphael_homelessness_and_regulation_November_2009.pdf https://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/Raphael_homelessness_an... Homeless problem is downstream of NIMBY problem -- it's not an issue with "mental health" or "drug use" (sure, the most flagrant instances of homelessness have those involved, but that's because of what makes things flagrant, not what makes people homeless), it's to do with pathological overpricing and undersupply of housing (especially and most crucially at the lower end of pricing) in US. And no, "SF has earthquakes" isn't an excuse. So does Tokyo and they manage to build apartments and have rents far far lower than those in SF -- while having a /much/ higher population.
- i_am_nomad 8y ago
  If someone can’t afford rent in SF, they have other options besides living on the streets. For example, they can move somewhere cheaper. The homeless in San Francisco are mostly people who can’t afford to live anywhere because they are incapable of generating or maintaining anything of monetary value. Rents could fifty bucks a month and they’d still be on the streets. The problem, then, is how to take care of those people.
acchow 8y ago
This tax is supposed to generate $250-300 million per year. This is a crazy amount of money for a 47 sq mile city with 885k people. Say you hand out this $300 million to people. Without building any more housing, this would clearly just raise rental prices with almost no change in homelessness. Say you try to build 1000 new units of housing and pay out $300 million to the jobs created in that process. The people with these new jobs being given this $300m would drive up rental prices and shift a different group of people onto the street who can't afford the higher costs anymore. Suppose you have rent control to try to avoid that shift. Then where will the people doing these newly created jobs live? There's a housing shortage throughout the entire bay area. They will probably have to commute huge distances. You can't just build housing for homeless. You need to build more housing for everything else in the chain too.
- Retric 8y ago
  ~25$ per person per month for a city as rich as SF does not seem like a crazy amount of money to me.
qubax 8y ago
Not just tech billionaires.
dymk 8y ago
The current budget is $300 million per year for homeless relief in SF. There's approximately 8000 homless in SF. 300000000 / 8000 => $37,500 per individual per year. How is the problem getting so much worse with almost $40k per year being spent on each individual homeless person? Where is that money going? How are these programs so inefficient that $40k spent on bulk relief is ineffective? Why does anyone think that just increasing that number per person is going to solve anything, without a detailed plan about how to spend it? Given the above, it's entirely rational to oppose Prop C, which doesn't provide details, transparency, or accountability about how the money will be spent.
- refurb 8y ago
  It’s been stated a few times on HN, and I think it’s a fair argument that you should be looking at all the people that are not only homeless, but also those housed (I.e. those receiving assistance). That said, SF’s budget is one of the largest of any city in the US. I think i read that Pittsburgh (which is also a city + county) has a per capita budget less than half of SF’s. Last I checked Pittsburgh wasn’t a wasteland, so where is all that extra money going?
  - bsder 8y ago
    > Last I checked Pittsburgh wasn’t a wasteland, so where is all that extra money going? Pittsburgh has a self-correcting mechanism around homelessness that San Francisco does not have. It's called "winter". A significant cold snap results in a lot of unfortunate deaths in the homeless.
    - refurb 8y ago
      I was commenting beyond the homeless problem. Why does it cost SF twice as much per capita to run this city?
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        Local labor and real property costs.
pg_bot 8y ago
I think Benioff's biggest character flaw is that he doesn't do any analysis past the point where it supports his political position. Instead of understanding the root cause of the problem he has his solution in hand and castigates anyone else who disagrees. Prop C is bad public policy because it does nothing to prevent homelessness, which is what San Franciscans should care most about. The homeless problem has been caused by the government distorting the housing marketplace. Allow people to build housing and get rid of rent control and the problem will solve itself. I think Benioff should be open to listening to other people instead of being so adversarial.
jarjoura 8y ago
Progressives in the city are quick to demonize Breed for calling out that the proposition doesn't add any kind of accountability to the funds. Yet, I bet if the proposition added a 1% sales tax, or general city tax applied to all residents, suddenly those same progressives would go silent. It's so easy to sit on your butts and complain that Dorsey and the Collisons aren't doing more to help the homeless, but then to not call out SF's shitty non-profit grant system that makes the current funds hard to trace. Trust me, every single person in this city would be all over a concrete plan to fix the problem. I just don't think taxing the biggest businesses is going to do anything except make it more expensive to run your business in SF.
Zhenya 8y ago
I literally spit on my keyboard: A yes vote is a vote in favor of authorizing the city and county of San Francisco to fund housing and homelessness services by taxing certain businesses at the following rates: 0.175 percent to 0.69 percent on gross receipts for businesses with over $50 million in gross annual receipts, or 1.5 percent of payroll expense for certain businesses with over $1 billion in gross annual receipts and administrative offices in San Francisco If your business is low margin, high gross collectibles, this will KILL your business. Transaction and retail companies will get murdered.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  It's very strange to see a tax written against gross income, not net income. When did this start becoming a thing?
  - refurb 8y ago
    Weird indeed. What happens if the company had $100M in revenue, but a $10M loss? Are they expected to take out a loan to pay the tax?
    - toyg 8y ago
      Taxes can be deferred / delayed if the taxman agrees.
    - rchaud 8y ago
      They work with the taxman to figure out a payment plan over time. Tax payments can be deferred under GAAP, and also by the IRS if the entity isn't able to pay.
  - toyg 8y ago
    Probably when corporations started being a bit too good at siphoning profits to tax havens, waiting for the periodic amnesty to repatriate them. Several of the best companies in the world at this game, are headquartered in California.
  - mstrum 8y ago
refurb 8y ago
The one thing I don’t like is how when someone becomes super rich, suddenly their opinion becomes super important. Benioff’s opinions are no more important than your next door neighbor’s. Even though Benioff May be worth billions, he still only has one vote.
theptip 8y ago
Wikipedia says there are ~7k homeless people in SF [1]. We are spending $250m/year [2]. That's $35k per person. At $3k/mo we could be housing everyone at market rate in SF studios, or housing them somewhere cheaper plus paying them a basic income to cover food & clothing. I may be thinking about this wrong, but it seems like doubling our spend might be a bad idea when we're doing so badly with what we're spending already. (Interested in input from folks that actually know how these numbers compare to other cities' spending). However if we're actually doing well with the money we're spending (e.g. comparison to other cities is favourable) then absolutely let's increase the spend. I'm a little suspicious about the "let's tax the tech companies" mentality though; why not just a progressive individual income tax? (Or a moratorium on tax breaks for companies?) If we treat the tech companies like a piggy bank, then we'll eventually drive them away, and the whole region will be much less well off. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area#San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Franci... [2]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-increase-for-San-Francisco-12902707.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre...
bfrog 8y ago
While my large metro center has homeless, compared to the west coast cities its nothing. It was a humanitarian crisis 10 years ago. Today its a caste system.

61 points by apengwin 8y ago

One of the primary properties of the tech boom (and, lets face it, almost all industrialized capitalism) is that it doesn't account for nor take responsibility for side effects of their overwhelming wealth. Some are even convinced that its a net positive and nothing should be done - despite the fact that the winners are investors and the upper class employees, and the losers are those adjacent who have to move 2 hours away. Maybe shame will get some people to budge, but I think the decision makers such as Jack/etc are so far away from being able to empathize with the people that are harmed that there's no real chance. Also slightly amusing: Jack doesn't think that this is the "best" way to solve homelessness. Whats the best way, since clearly he knows about it, and why isn't he doing it?

monksy 8y ago
You could also criticize the fact that businesses have done 2 things in the sake of profit: 1. Outsource their labor and production, that could be done stateside 2. They're refusing to use local materials (A business has to spend money to make money.. the money isn't following back in the local economy) They're doing to leverage poorer economies to get goods and services cheaper. (That should at least account for the portio of the homeless that want to work but can't find it)
dunpeal 8y ago
> One of the primary properties of the tech boom (and, lets face it, almost all industrialized capitalism) is that it doesn't account for nor take responsibility for side effects of their overwhelming wealth. How is the tech boom different from any previous period of explosive growth, in that regard? Examine similar periods in the past, and you will find far more harmful consequences, that were given far less attention or caring by their progenitors. Major developments in the past had far more disruptive and harmful consequences to affected communities, that were basically ignored and treated as "price of progress" by the people of the time. How much negative impact does the current boom even have on local communities? It's very misleading to blame it for homelessness in San Francisco. The homeless of SF by and large aren't people who can't afford rent anymore so now they live on the street.
Kalium 8y ago
> Also slightly amusing: Jack doesn't think that this is the "best" way to solve homelessness. Whats the best way, since clearly he knows about it, and why isn't he doing it? I mean, it's pretty obvious that the best way to address homelessness involves having homes so that the most vulnerable of our friends and neighbors can stop being homeless by being in homes. This idea has given rise to an approach called Housing First. Which, by an odd twist of fate, has actually been shown to work! This being San Francisco, this is utterly impossible. Nothing makes San Francisco politics break out in furious community meetings and protests and CEQA complaints like the prospect of building things. There's nothing Jack can do about that, even with all his money. As near as I can tell, San Francisco doesn't actually want to solve this problem. Instead, it wants to feel good about how kind and compassionate its policies are without actually accepting change into the city's fabric.
- rchaud 8y ago
  > Jack doesn't think that this is the "best" way to solve homelessness. Whats the best way, since clearly he knows about it, and why isn't he doing it? This is by far the most irritating thing about reading CEO's "success story" profiles. It's always about going to market with the MVP, because if you wait long enough to make it perfect, the opportunity is lost to a competitor. But when it comes to tax policy, the plan has to be perfect and not annoy anyone and anything less should be rejected outright.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    For my part, I think it's worth considering that how perfect a plan has to be to implement should be a function of how readily it can be adjusted to match changing requirements. An MVP SaaS product is pretty tunable. It's possible that local tax policies, particularly as mandated by and only changeable by plebiscite, might be slightly more difficult to adjust (win an election, get one chance every two years) to changing requirements or to handle undesirable effects.
    - rchaud 8y ago
      You're right, it's far from a perfect analogy. And the electoral cycle means that the tax might not be in place long enough for it to make a measurable impact. My comment was more about the way in which taxes are discussed in American political discourse; there is this implication of a rigid permanence, as though such policies can never be reversed. They absolutely can; as you pointed out, incumbents can lose to candidates who promise to repeal the tax.
YZF 8y ago
Just because some guy has $1B in his bank account doesn't create the "loser" on the other end. It's not a zero sum game. You can just remove this person and their money from the economy and you'd be back where you were. The homeless person would possibly be homeless even if that guy only had $2M in his bank account. If this money is invested somewhere then that can create some distortions (e.g. inflate stocks if a lot of rich people buy stocks). At any rate, just because some people are "rich" doesn't mean their money comes from the "poor" people. Everyone could also be poor. That's not to say rich people shouldn't use their money to affect positive change but if they did that it's really just a bonus positive force. If they weren't rich where would the money to improve the community come from? Also if rich person gives every homeless person $2M to buy a house what do you think would happen to house prices? (not that homelessness is just about money, it's more complicated than that)

jlmorton 8y ago

Link (PDF) to the City's economic analysis of Proposition C: https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Economic%20Analysis/hgrt_economic_impact_final.pdf https://sfcontroller.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Econo....

kenneth 8y ago

I'm really not a fan of the entitlement attitude that we should just take money from the rich to fix our self-inflicted problems.

ForrestN 8y ago
I think the question is whether or not "the rich" are part of "we" or not. Businesses are built using public infrastructure and in some cases (like Twitter) direct, massively valuable government subsidy. In my opinion, "we" are asking "each other" to pay more money to solve public problems in proportion to "our" ability to do so.
- SilasX 8y ago
  Everyone uses public infrastructure. That's what makes it "public infrastructure". Should we raise your taxes to 80% "because you use the roads that are built by taxes"?
  - ForrestN 8y ago
    No—but we should probably do what we can to make each person and company's tax burden proportionate to their size and income. And we probably shouldn't frame efforts to do so as "taking money from the rich" as if wealthy people are somehow living in a separate community.
    - newtothebay 8y ago
      Isn't a flat tax rate already "proportionate to size and income"? What's the justification for higher tax rate for the rich? I agree that their wealth depends on public infrastructure, but I'm not sure that their level of dependence is higher than us. (I'm asking as a proponent of progressive tax rate, just not for this reason. So I'd like to clarify)
      - ForrestN 8y ago
        I may not have expressed my position clearly. Because most costs of living are fixed and not proportionate to income, taking 20% of the income of a poor person will have a disproportionate affect on them, as opposed to someone with a very high income for whom the difference will only marginally affect their standard of living. Take 30% of someone's $20,000 income and you will deeply compromise their ability to exist comfortably in society. Taking 30% of someone's $5,000,000 income will have no effect on their ability to cover their needs and live comfortably. A flat tax, then, is actually quite regressive, rather than neutral. Speaking in terms of companies, though, there is also a question of proportion vis a vis size—bigger companies and their employees tend to cost taxpayers quite a bit more than small businesses. There are no giant Twitter-like subsidies for five-man firms, for example. Larger firms are much more likely to make use of legal infrastructure, to need regulation, and to have the power to seek accommodation by the government for infrastructure needed for their given business.

emcarey 8y ago

Marc Benioff is one of Paul Ryan's big donors.... maybe he should start paying taxes with action instead of talking about it in self serving press interviews

ForrestN 8y ago
Source? I found an article from 2012 saying that he donated a measly $10,000 before Ryan was fully revealed to most as the craven monster we know him as today. Not saying you're wrong, just curious to know exact details.

ForrestN 8y ago

'Benioff also criticized Stripe, a payment platform and another major San Francisco tech firm opposing Prop C. The company claimed the measure lacked a “comprehensive plan” for spending in a recent op-ed and has also given more than $400,000 to a campaign fighting the measure, making it the largest donor.' As a company with deep connections to HN, I for one hope that the Stripe staff active here are doing everything they can to challenge this embarrassing activity by their company. A good start would be to publicly express your opinion about this sort of lobbying here on HN. These companies benefit hugely from government subsidies in various forms, and really the least they could do is abstain from using their tremendous power and resources to manipulate the government into making decisions that favor their bottom lines. The Stripe founders are entitled to whatever backwards, selfish position they want to take, but they shouldn't be spending $400,000 on behalf of the company (a community of people) to try to buy a given policy outcome. More broadly, it's sad that even the progressive mayor feels the need to make policy decisions based on fear that massively wealthy tech firms will punish the city if they ask them to pay a slightly fairer share of shared expenses. What we need is a cultural change, away from "anything that drives profit is justifiable" to "successful companies that side with their own profits against the public interest should be ashamed."

manicdee 8y ago
What value of taxes are they hoping to avoid for that $400k if bribery?
manfredo 8y ago
There's a good reason to oppose proposition C: throwing more money at San Francisco's homeless problem isn't going to make it go away. The city already spends an immense amount of money on homeless services. By some metrics, it meets or exceeds the average US income per homeless person. The reality is that San Fransisco can't house all is residents because it refuses to build more housing. And building more housing is something to which the city is highly adverse.
hueving 8y ago
They are well within reason to lobby against policies they see as more destructive to the business community than the claimed net benefit. If you want an example of why you can't whimsically tax businesses for whatever you want, look at what happened to the yacht building industry in the US. Idiotic taxation destroyed it and cost thousands of jobs and millions in lost tax revenue. You can simultaneously be for fixing homelessness and be against destructive taxation of an industry. >they ask them to pay a slightly fairer share Let me stop you there. Your notion of calling this a "fairer share" is completely subjective and political. Why isn't a 99% tax of all profits fair, why not 0%? The phrase "paying their fair share" is nothing more than a baseless appeal to emotion, unless you're literally suggesting everyone pay the same amount for services they use. However, given that you are advocating raising taxes on entities already paying vastly more than the bottom 1/3rd, I strongly doubt you actually want equal taxation.

kenferry 8y ago

Because I looked it up: the sf chronicle endorses "no" on prop C (so opposite of Benioff). https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2018/november-elections-guide/ https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2018/november-elections-gui...

ghobs91 8y ago

While I don't doubt billionaires hoard money, I think trying to solve this with taxes is misguided. They should look at the stats showing how many homeless ended up in that situation because of rising rents. I'd be willing to bet NIMBY antics are a large cause of this problem. SF metro area has the 4th highest rate of homeless people per capita, I have to imagine absurdly high rents is a part of it. SF politicians don't want to admit this because of the donations/support they receive from NIMBY groups, but they are very clearly the cause of many problems in the bay area, whether its housing or slow transit expansion. It's especially ironic that such a "progressive" area would be so rife with elitism and gate keeping.

zkms 8y ago
> I'd be willing to bet NIMBY antics are a large cause of this problem. SF metro area has the 4th highest rate of homeless people per capita, I have to imagine absurdly high rents is a part of it. There's a robust correlation in US between homeless population and the stringency of zoning/land-use laws that restrict/delay/obstruct new housing: https://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/Raphael_homelessness_and_regulation_November_2009.pdf https://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/Raphael_homelessness_an... Homeless problem is downstream of NIMBY problem -- it's not an issue with "mental health" or "drug use" (sure, the most flagrant instances of homelessness have those involved, but that's because of what makes things flagrant, not what makes people homeless), it's to do with pathological overpricing and undersupply of housing (especially and most crucially at the lower end of pricing) in US. And no, "SF has earthquakes" isn't an excuse. So does Tokyo and they manage to build apartments and have rents far far lower than those in SF -- while having a /much/ higher population.
i_am_nomad 8y ago
If someone can’t afford rent in SF, they have other options besides living on the streets. For example, they can move somewhere cheaper. The homeless in San Francisco are mostly people who can’t afford to live anywhere because they are incapable of generating or maintaining anything of monetary value. Rents could fifty bucks a month and they’d still be on the streets. The problem, then, is how to take care of those people.

acchow 8y ago

This tax is supposed to generate $250-300 million per year. This is a crazy amount of money for a 47 sq mile city with 885k people. Say you hand out this $300 million to people. Without building any more housing, this would clearly just raise rental prices with almost no change in homelessness. Say you try to build 1000 new units of housing and pay out $300 million to the jobs created in that process. The people with these new jobs being given this $300m would drive up rental prices and shift a different group of people onto the street who can't afford the higher costs anymore. Suppose you have rent control to try to avoid that shift. Then where will the people doing these newly created jobs live? There's a housing shortage throughout the entire bay area. They will probably have to commute huge distances. You can't just build housing for homeless. You need to build more housing for everything else in the chain too.

Retric 8y ago
~25$ per person per month for a city as rich as SF does not seem like a crazy amount of money to me.

qubax 8y ago

Not just tech billionaires.

dymk 8y ago

The current budget is $300 million per year for homeless relief in SF. There's approximately 8000 homless in SF. 300000000 / 8000 => $37,500 per individual per year. How is the problem getting so much worse with almost $40k per year being spent on each individual homeless person? Where is that money going? How are these programs so inefficient that $40k spent on bulk relief is ineffective? Why does anyone think that just increasing that number per person is going to solve anything, without a detailed plan about how to spend it? Given the above, it's entirely rational to oppose Prop C, which doesn't provide details, transparency, or accountability about how the money will be spent.

refurb 8y ago
It’s been stated a few times on HN, and I think it’s a fair argument that you should be looking at all the people that are not only homeless, but also those housed (I.e. those receiving assistance). That said, SF’s budget is one of the largest of any city in the US. I think i read that Pittsburgh (which is also a city + county) has a per capita budget less than half of SF’s. Last I checked Pittsburgh wasn’t a wasteland, so where is all that extra money going?
- bsder 8y ago
  > Last I checked Pittsburgh wasn’t a wasteland, so where is all that extra money going? Pittsburgh has a self-correcting mechanism around homelessness that San Francisco does not have. It's called "winter". A significant cold snap results in a lot of unfortunate deaths in the homeless.
  - refurb 8y ago
    I was commenting beyond the homeless problem. Why does it cost SF twice as much per capita to run this city?
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      Local labor and real property costs.

pg_bot 8y ago

I think Benioff's biggest character flaw is that he doesn't do any analysis past the point where it supports his political position. Instead of understanding the root cause of the problem he has his solution in hand and castigates anyone else who disagrees. Prop C is bad public policy because it does nothing to prevent homelessness, which is what San Franciscans should care most about. The homeless problem has been caused by the government distorting the housing marketplace. Allow people to build housing and get rid of rent control and the problem will solve itself. I think Benioff should be open to listening to other people instead of being so adversarial.

jarjoura 8y ago

Progressives in the city are quick to demonize Breed for calling out that the proposition doesn't add any kind of accountability to the funds. Yet, I bet if the proposition added a 1% sales tax, or general city tax applied to all residents, suddenly those same progressives would go silent. It's so easy to sit on your butts and complain that Dorsey and the Collisons aren't doing more to help the homeless, but then to not call out SF's shitty non-profit grant system that makes the current funds hard to trace. Trust me, every single person in this city would be all over a concrete plan to fix the problem. I just don't think taxing the biggest businesses is going to do anything except make it more expensive to run your business in SF.

Zhenya 8y ago

I literally spit on my keyboard: A yes vote is a vote in favor of authorizing the city and county of San Francisco to fund housing and homelessness services by taxing certain businesses at the following rates: 0.175 percent to 0.69 percent on gross receipts for businesses with over $50 million in gross annual receipts, or 1.5 percent of payroll expense for certain businesses with over $1 billion in gross annual receipts and administrative offices in San Francisco If your business is low margin, high gross collectibles, this will KILL your business. Transaction and retail companies will get murdered.

CydeWeys 8y ago
It's very strange to see a tax written against gross income, not net income. When did this start becoming a thing?
- refurb 8y ago
  Weird indeed. What happens if the company had $100M in revenue, but a $10M loss? Are they expected to take out a loan to pay the tax?
  - toyg 8y ago
    Taxes can be deferred / delayed if the taxman agrees.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    They work with the taxman to figure out a payment plan over time. Tax payments can be deferred under GAAP, and also by the IRS if the entity isn't able to pay.
- toyg 8y ago
  Probably when corporations started being a bit too good at siphoning profits to tax havens, waiting for the periodic amnesty to repatriate them. Several of the best companies in the world at this game, are headquartered in California.
- mstrum 8y ago

refurb 8y ago

The one thing I don’t like is how when someone becomes super rich, suddenly their opinion becomes super important. Benioff’s opinions are no more important than your next door neighbor’s. Even though Benioff May be worth billions, he still only has one vote.

theptip 8y ago

Wikipedia says there are ~7k homeless people in SF [1]. We are spending $250m/year [2]. That's $35k per person. At $3k/mo we could be housing everyone at market rate in SF studios, or housing them somewhere cheaper plus paying them a basic income to cover food & clothing. I may be thinking about this wrong, but it seems like doubling our spend might be a bad idea when we're doing so badly with what we're spending already. (Interested in input from folks that actually know how these numbers compare to other cities' spending). However if we're actually doing well with the money we're spending (e.g. comparison to other cities is favourable) then absolutely let's increase the spend. I'm a little suspicious about the "let's tax the tech companies" mentality though; why not just a progressive individual income tax? (Or a moratorium on tax breaks for companies?) If we treat the tech companies like a piggy bank, then we'll eventually drive them away, and the whole region will be much less well off. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area#San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Franci... [2]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-increase-for-San-Francisco-12902707.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre...

bfrog 8y ago

While my large metro center has homeless, compared to the west coast cities its nothing. It was a humanitarian crisis 10 years ago. Today its a caste system.