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'Benioff also criticized Stripe, a payment platform and another major San Francisco tech firm opposing Prop C. The company claimed the measure lacked a “compreh

'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.
- rchaud 8y ago
  > If you want an example of why you can't whimsically tax businesses for whatever you want, When in the history of post-WW2 America has there been a situation where politicians have both the votes and the leverage to impose these kinds of frivolous taxes on corporations with the resources to fight them? The mere fact that "lobbying" in the US is not called bribery, like it is everywhere else, means that a local politician's spine is only as erect as the size of the cheque he gets for his/her 're-election efforts'.
- ForrestN 8y ago
  We're talking about politics, and I'm saying that Stripe should be ashamed of themselves. That's an inherently subjective and political claim. If you want to structure society and government according to empirics, well, good luck with that. An appeal to emotion doesn't have to be baseless. The broader tax environment in the United States is leading to growing income inequality. There are other countries with successful economies who tax the highest earners much more than we do. In my subjective opinion, fairness requires those who have been lucky enough to become rich to pay more taxes than they do in the U.S. at the moment. If it were up to me, companies who resist paying more taxes while their founders become overnight billionaires should be made to feel ashamed of doing so, hopefully driving up the cost of acting contemptibly toward their surrounding community by making it harder for them to hire. My subjective belief is that the problem of homelessness is worth spending more money on, and that it's really the least these companies can do to sit out of taxation debates. Having $400,000 to spend manipulating public opinion is having a thumb on the scale. The ideal of democracy is not that whoever has the most power should have the loudest voice.

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.

rchaud 8y ago
> If you want an example of why you can't whimsically tax businesses for whatever you want, When in the history of post-WW2 America has there been a situation where politicians have both the votes and the leverage to impose these kinds of frivolous taxes on corporations with the resources to fight them? The mere fact that "lobbying" in the US is not called bribery, like it is everywhere else, means that a local politician's spine is only as erect as the size of the cheque he gets for his/her 're-election efforts'.
ForrestN 8y ago
We're talking about politics, and I'm saying that Stripe should be ashamed of themselves. That's an inherently subjective and political claim. If you want to structure society and government according to empirics, well, good luck with that. An appeal to emotion doesn't have to be baseless. The broader tax environment in the United States is leading to growing income inequality. There are other countries with successful economies who tax the highest earners much more than we do. In my subjective opinion, fairness requires those who have been lucky enough to become rich to pay more taxes than they do in the U.S. at the moment. If it were up to me, companies who resist paying more taxes while their founders become overnight billionaires should be made to feel ashamed of doing so, hopefully driving up the cost of acting contemptibly toward their surrounding community by making it harder for them to hire. My subjective belief is that the problem of homelessness is worth spending more money on, and that it's really the least these companies can do to sit out of taxation debates. Having $400,000 to spend manipulating public opinion is having a thumb on the scale. The ideal of democracy is not that whoever has the most power should have the loudest voice.