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San Francisco is the 16th largest city by population and has a budget of around 14 billion which is like 6 or 7 times larger than many cities with much bigger p
by textech 6y ago
San Francisco is the 16th largest city by population and has a budget of around 14 billion which is like 6 or 7 times larger than many cities with much bigger population. This is just a badly run city and throwing more money at their problems isn't going to help them.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoEven if you don't account for anything else, the high cost of living here translates to expensive city employees and expensive services. If you account for the "exchange rate" between San Francisco dollars and other city dollars, I wonder how the per capita spending stacks up. I expect it still doesn't look good, but I bet it looks a lot less ridiculous.
- reducesuffering 6y agoIt is the city's fault the housing is expensive, which is the reason for the high cost of living.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoMaybe if San Francisco did things differently, costs might look like other cities and counties in the Bay Area. Either way, it's going to be much more expensive than your typical city.
- reducesuffering 6y ago> costs might look like other cities and counties in the Bay Area True, but most likely in a way that also reduced the cost in other cities and counties, because the high cost of SF has pushed people out to lower cost areas in the outskirts. If SF wasn't so expensive, more people from the surrounding area would live there, having the desire if price wasn't the issue, therefore reducing demand and thus costs for the outer areas.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- toast0 6y agoSan Francisco is a combined city and county (the only one in California), so its budget includes things that would be in county budgets for places like Los Angeles and San Jose. For example, SF MTA is part of the SF budget, but LA MTA is a county agency, and isn't part of the LA city budget.
- tomjakubowski 6y agoSeems like a fair comparison to make would be with NYC, whose city government similarly subsumes the counties/boroughs. NYC's per capita budget is about 2/3 of SF's; there may be economies of scale and other non-linear contributors at play with NYC's 10x larger population, or maybe SF is just less efficient. edit: NYC's MTA is funded separately, including huge state contributions, so this is a terrible comparison. Let this comment be a reminder of the difficulty in comparing municipal budgets.
- refurb 6y agoA fair comparison would be Philadelphia which is a city and county and has an airport. Their per capita budget is half of SF's.
- albacur 6y agoEven accounting for MTA, SF’s per-capita spending remains much higher than most other US cities. DC is the only other city that is comparable.
- randyrand 6y agoThe point has never been to fix problems - it’s to minimize the amount of money rich people have. Even if the money was burned that would be okay.
- noobermin 6y agoIt's surprising that you can't conceive of a tax being confiscatory instead of merely being for the paying of something.