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Seems unfair to call a suggestion to fix the main cause of many problems “mental gymnastics”. Raising police salaries and lowering housing costs are both about

Seems unfair to call a suggestion to fix the main cause of many problems “mental gymnastics”. Raising police salaries and lowering housing costs are both about making things more affordable, just from different ends.

pfannkuchen 3y ago
That isn’t what I was calling mental gymnastics. > Asserting that e.g. people pooping in the street is caused strictly by expensive housing would require some mental gymnastics Key word being strictly, i.e. expensive housing is the cause of street pooping, and there is ultimately no other way to prevent street pooping other than to reduce housing costs broadly. Raising police salaries is obviously a much easier problem to solve, right? It is something that is already under government control and it can be modeled using a simple spreadsheet. Housing cost on the other hand is not really possible to model accurately, the system is too complex and has too many inputs.
- peter422 3y ago
  The starting salary for an SF police officer is over 100k. At some point money isn't the only issue. Also like any other job, the best way to get good police officers is to have lots of competition. If you are desperate for staffing, you aren't getting the best.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    100k while living in SF is peanuts. Paying, say, 500k per officer and increasing the number of police would be tremendously easier and cheaper than fixing the systemic housing problem. If we still can’t find good candidates at 500k I would be very surprised. Also need to follow through on prosecution of course. And, again, not saying this is necessarily what should be done, just commenting on whether it is physically possible to make SF nice if we decided to ignore progressivism completely.
    - peter422 3y ago
      So currently 9% of the city budget is spent on police and you are suggesting we increase that to 40%? That is a better solution than building more housing? A community is a social construct, you have to keep a lot of things in balance for it to work properly. The most important part is giving people a roof over their heads. Overpaying for police (or teachers, or nurses, etc) isn't going to save the day. It's the same reason you can't buy your way out of the homelessness problem!
      - pfannkuchen 3y ago
        Police departments have a lot of costs other than salary. It appears that only 3% of the budget goes towards salaries. So, yes, I don’t think it’s completely unreasonable to massively increase that in order to curtail street pooping. I don’t think anyone has really tried to buy us out of the homelessness problem. The issue is pretty clearly a lack of will, not a lack of resources.

pfannkuchen 3y ago

That isn’t what I was calling mental gymnastics. > Asserting that e.g. people pooping in the street is caused strictly by expensive housing would require some mental gymnastics Key word being strictly, i.e. expensive housing is the cause of street pooping, and there is ultimately no other way to prevent street pooping other than to reduce housing costs broadly. Raising police salaries is obviously a much easier problem to solve, right? It is something that is already under government control and it can be modeled using a simple spreadsheet. Housing cost on the other hand is not really possible to model accurately, the system is too complex and has too many inputs.

peter422 3y ago
The starting salary for an SF police officer is over 100k. At some point money isn't the only issue. Also like any other job, the best way to get good police officers is to have lots of competition. If you are desperate for staffing, you aren't getting the best.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  100k while living in SF is peanuts. Paying, say, 500k per officer and increasing the number of police would be tremendously easier and cheaper than fixing the systemic housing problem. If we still can’t find good candidates at 500k I would be very surprised. Also need to follow through on prosecution of course. And, again, not saying this is necessarily what should be done, just commenting on whether it is physically possible to make SF nice if we decided to ignore progressivism completely.
  - peter422 3y ago
    So currently 9% of the city budget is spent on police and you are suggesting we increase that to 40%? That is a better solution than building more housing? A community is a social construct, you have to keep a lot of things in balance for it to work properly. The most important part is giving people a roof over their heads. Overpaying for police (or teachers, or nurses, etc) isn't going to save the day. It's the same reason you can't buy your way out of the homelessness problem!
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      Police departments have a lot of costs other than salary. It appears that only 3% of the budget goes towards salaries. So, yes, I don’t think it’s completely unreasonable to massively increase that in order to curtail street pooping. I don’t think anyone has really tried to buy us out of the homelessness problem. The issue is pretty clearly a lack of will, not a lack of resources.