5 ms·

I've never been to SF. Never met Bob and have barely any personal experience with crime at all. And I'm fairly high on the bleeding heart liberal scale but my

I've never been to SF. Never met Bob and have barely any personal experience with crime at all. And I'm fairly high on the bleeding heart liberal scale but my opinion looking at the crime stats for the US (and other western countries) is that you get the society that you are willing to pay for. When teachers, social workers, doctors, police, justice systems and prisons cannot teach, help, cure, protect, judge, punish, and rehabilitate people who are not following the laws because there aren't enough of them and they have insufficient resources then this is what you get. There are people out there who are unintelligent, vulnerable, mentally ill, and occasionally just sociopathic. You need a comprehensive system to try and help those people and protect the rest of society from them. We've (across the western world) have decided to not put our tax dollars into solving these problems. Just my 2 cents worth. RIP Mr Lee.

vanilla_nut 3y ago
Agreed that we're not using our tax dollars effectively to help people in SF. But SF (and CA in general) have some of the highest tax burdens per citizen in the entire nation -- very similar to many European nations. We should emphasize that taxes provide more than enough money to make a functional city, but some combination of internal corruption or mismanagement is preventing those dollars from effectively helping those in need.
- badcppdev 3y ago
  Well you've made an assertion that the there is more than enough money but not provided evidence. My understanding is that a lot of the homeless people in SF come from elsewhere so if that's true then a straight comparison of taxation might not be valid. But this is a very very big topic so I'll just point out that actually society is not taking care of the people who need it anywhere in the US or the western world. This is a choice that people make.
  - vanilla_nut 3y ago
    Very true, especially on a worldwide scale: we could allocate resources much more efficiently to take care of a lot of people who are suffering around the whole world. Within the microcosm of SF? I would make the basic argument that SF's population has grown and its tax rate has increased over the past 20 years, yet there are now orders of magnitude more people suffering in the city from high rent, homelessness, and other affordability issues. It's hard to point to any specific numbers but I recall a much nicer city back in 2005, and even as recently as 2015. Of course you're also very correct that no city is an island so there could be a lot of suffering people coming to the city because in SF they can access social programs that aren't available elsewhere.

vanilla_nut 3y ago

Agreed that we're not using our tax dollars effectively to help people in SF. But SF (and CA in general) have some of the highest tax burdens per citizen in the entire nation -- very similar to many European nations. We should emphasize that taxes provide more than enough money to make a functional city, but some combination of internal corruption or mismanagement is preventing those dollars from effectively helping those in need.

badcppdev 3y ago
Well you've made an assertion that the there is more than enough money but not provided evidence. My understanding is that a lot of the homeless people in SF come from elsewhere so if that's true then a straight comparison of taxation might not be valid. But this is a very very big topic so I'll just point out that actually society is not taking care of the people who need it anywhere in the US or the western world. This is a choice that people make.
- vanilla_nut 3y ago
  Very true, especially on a worldwide scale: we could allocate resources much more efficiently to take care of a lot of people who are suffering around the whole world. Within the microcosm of SF? I would make the basic argument that SF's population has grown and its tax rate has increased over the past 20 years, yet there are now orders of magnitude more people suffering in the city from high rent, homelessness, and other affordability issues. It's hard to point to any specific numbers but I recall a much nicer city back in 2005, and even as recently as 2015. Of course you're also very correct that no city is an island so there could be a lot of suffering people coming to the city because in SF they can access social programs that aren't available elsewhere.