Homelessness Tax Would Target Rich Tech Sector in San Francisco

So I'm confused. Are there people stupid enough to be making $117,000 a year (for a family of 4) who are homeless in SF? Because those people don't need money, they need a swift kick in the ass. If you're talking about people with legitimate mental health issues (IQ so low they can't be trained, PTSD, etc.) I agree they need help, but a tax refund (or even some stupid shelter) isn't going to cut it. We need to lose the stigma surrounding mental health in this country and start serving those who can't help themselves. That doesn't include the people capable of getting a job who are lazy, or (apparently) the people who have a damn good salary in most other parts of the country that want to live in a car where the weather doesn't suck. Pardon my french, but fuck those people. The AVERAGE household income in my state is ~$66,000. Ship the lazy fuckers here, they can probably afford to buy a house and quit shitting on the streets. Anyone else is going to be shitting on the streets whether or not SF taxes the rich.

I don't think that is the entire story. That is what considered poverty income, it doesn't mean you are homeless. Its just a stat. Like if you are going in now to the city making that income you probably can't afford to live there. Pretty much means with that income you can't live there because cost to buy a house or rent. Now here is the other problem, there are people there that can afford to live there and afford homes, otherwise you would have seen the shit crash. its just there are a lot of folks there making 200+ thousand. And also people that have been there for a long time just stay there.

I mean there is decent housing outside the city and stuff. That number just says if you made that much you likely can't live in the city! Plus they really don't have anywhere to expand either so space is limited and demand is high.
 
Considering that $117k a year is considered poverty, I'd say there are plenty of people whom are educated enough to make in that ball park range and are still living in their cars...

Not every one who lives on the streets are straight bums.
Living in their cars? Cool, then it wouldn't be too difficult to get the fuck out of one of the most expensive cities in the country.
 
And there is still someone that gets a $9000 refund every year, you pay federal taxes they don't, they actually get money back from the government.
So the video is a little wrong, the guys that drink for free actually get paid to drink.

And you don't 0 out unless you have a business loss, meaning you lost money doing business.
If you are referring to corporations, they are owned by shareholders and get taxed twice, once on actual profits and then the shareholders pay tax on the investment they made.
Everyone pays federal income taxes...
https://www.irs.com/articles/2018-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions

A refund just means you overpaid what was taken out of your paycheck. The other points you made are just made up nonsense.
 
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Everyone pays federal income taxes...
https://www.irs.com/articles/2018-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions

A refund just means you overpaid what was taken out of your paycheck. The other points you made are just made up nonsense.

Right on!
And there is still someone that gets a $9000 refund every year, you pay federal taxes they don't, they actually get money back from the government.
So the video is a little wrong, the guys that drink for free actually get paid to drink.

And you don't 0 out unless you have a business loss, meaning you lost money doing business.
If you are referring to corporations, they are owned by shareholders and get taxed twice, once on actual profits and then the shareholders pay tax on the investment they made.

Are you just making up numbers? Bla bla bla. I have seen people do taxes. There are more deductions then just business losses.
 
If they are educated living in cars they need to pickup and move. I have moved across many states for better income and upward mobility. Tried to comp my second home in SF, prices are very high as suspected. Only 3 homed were matched and I'm on 30 acres there were zero homes on .5 acre. What happens when you have 5th generation welfare receiptent with no accountability, no work requirement? You get Chicago and the many no go zones that come across all over America.
 
The more comfortable you make being homeless, the more folks will just say screw it and become homeless. The homeless lifestyle may have a higher risk but responsibility for anything goes way down. My guess is only a small percent of the homeless in SF are homeless because of mental issues. I think most chose the lifestyle because free food, mostly temperate climate and a city that pretty much tolerates anything they do.

I'm sorry, but being homeless sucks teh donkey balls even if you are elucky enough to be so in a climate like that in SF where you never need tonworry about freezing to death.

The fact that someone, anyone, might actually be arguing that homelessness is a choice that people make because they are lazy and don't want to work shows how fucked up we have become as a society.

No one wants to be homeless. Even the laziest person on Earth would like to have a home to call their own. The problem is it is a negative spiral. Maybe at first they think it's cool, I'll only live in my truck for a few weeks until I find a new job, but then they realize how difficult it is to actually land a job when you are living in a truck, and things spiral out of control. Fast forward 10 years and now even a seemingly normal person with their wits about them is stuck in homelessness and lost. Whoever you are reading this. This could be you. One bad breakup, and fallout with your family and suddently, unless you have a really good support network of friends willing to take you in to live for a while on their couch, and this is you.

This problem repeats itself all over the country. SF has it particularly bad because of how bad their housing prices are, and that their weather is good enough to survive outdoors yea round, but we see it on the east coast too..

I challenge you to find me a homeless person who is actually happy with their situation and chooses to be there because they don't like work. I mean, there might be one. But this is not the norm. Overwhelmingly the homeless are either normal people who just got stuck, or the mentally ill. Either way, they need help to get out of a terrible situation.
 
I just don't get $117k being low income or poverty, here that would be in the Rich category. A nice 3 or 4 bedroom house sells for $90-150k.

Higher property values are mostly set by the government assessing the value for tax purposes, so the high cost of housing there is mostly on the government's head and then they want to tax people to solve the problem they are mostly responsible for.

Hold elected officials responsible for spending the money they receive in taxes efficiently and responsibly and half the problems in society will be solved.

And where I live, a 3 bedroom home is usually over $600,000. The 3 bedroom, 2200 sq foot house next door rents for $3,400 a month.
That does include a pool and a nice view, but that's far more than I could ever afford. Luckily I bought many years ago when homes where cheaper.

It has nothing to do with government tax assessments. It's mostly due to the lack of new homes being built, the high costs of regulations that increase building costs.
 
So what you're saying is that, in this regard, the homeless are like just about any population of humans?

I like to think there are more good than bad folks overall. It's just my experience with homeless has left me pretty jaded after 4 years.

This is where I think you have your priorities mixed up. Are you helping to help or to just make yourself feel better for helping?

So because I point out my actual experience I may have my priorities mixed up? I will go out on a limb and say if you think people who organize charities and events could do it JUST to feel good then I'm assuming you've never done it.
 
People arguing about taxes, volunteering, and homeless people in SF.

Most of the street homeless people are doing drugs. I have many pictures some posted im soapbox. A lot of people sleeping in their cars are the employed ones.

Gotta be honest as a native a lot of my friends have moved on.

Oh well. It’s expensive here get a good job and figure it out or move on to somewhere else. No one has a right to be here. Sorry guys.
 
Everyone pays federal income taxes...
https://www.irs.com/articles/2018-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions

A refund just means you overpaid what was taken out of your paycheck. The other points you made are just made up nonsense.
I highly, highly doubt it. You are literally making stuff up on the spot. If you aren’t, you are severely misinformed.

I am so misinformed I don't even know what a refundable credit is or who is eligible or how it works or what a standard deduction is. I don't even know what line 7 is for on a w-4 that must be for the rich people that don't pay taxes.
Hey let me know how much you charge to do taxes if its good I'll send all my clients to you but only after you file your first tax return next year.
 
Right on!


Are you just making up numbers? Bla bla bla. I have seen people do taxes. There are more deductions then just business losses.

My client got a little over $9000 back for 2017, yes some people get big refunds should I tell you why they do? Probably not you already know how it is possible.
You know what Social Security tax is, or what can offset it? You make any money that will result in more than a dollar of Social Security tax with no refundable credits or previous payments to the IRS and you owe taxes. But why am I telling you that you have seen people do taxes.
 
Everyone pays federal income taxes...
https://www.irs.com/articles/2018-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions

A refund just means you overpaid what was taken out of your paycheck. The other points you made are just made up nonsense.
Sorry but filip is absolutely correct on this one, refundable and partially refundable tax credits are most certainly a thing and they definitely reduce your tax liability below 0 (aka you get money back that you DID NOT pay in). Yes sometimes people pay a bit more in taxes than they should and they get that back every spring, but the big reason you see big tax prep companies like H&R Block offer refund loans secured by pending tax refunds is it is the single largest chunk of money lower income people get every year (5k to 9k is not uncommon) ... and they are right there to give it to em quick and take their slice ... and it is mostly fueled by tax credits that they never paid into the system.
 
Am I on Yahoo or HardOCP?

We live in an age where everything is like a game of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", except now it's "Four Degrees Before A Thread Gets Political." We could be talking about ice cream, but that would just be ice cream -> Ben & Jerry's -> Bernie's Yearnings -> Liberal SJW Corporations in support of a socialism, and then we have to grease the poles to prevent the weasels from climbing to the top and stealing all the birdseed, because no one is gonna be talking about ice cream anymore.
 
Ok, this is simply on the ballot, we'll see if it actually passes.

Personally I almost hope it does pass, then we can see how absolutely futile any effort is to "help the homeless", there is no help, the city sells off parcels of land to rich developers so they can build housing and sure they have some "below market value" places but if you're on the street chances are those "below market value" places are still out of your price range The newest rage of homeless is RV homelessness, see that show Tiny House Big Living? Yeah think that with RVs 20-40 feet long, not sure how they afford to buy them or if there is some group out there renting them, but there is zero way they leave that life style because free (or really close) is still way better than the lowest of low rent. And all they have to do is move those things for street sweeping and not answer the door at night (because there are laws that prohibit living in a vehicle strangely enough from 10pm to 6am).

Personally I think they only way they can combat homelessness in this city is to help people find jobs elsewhere in the country and move, I don't mean simply give the homeless a bus ticket to anywhere they want, have some sort of "Employment Division" that works with other cities and takes into account the prices of housing in this areas and help people start a new life elsewhere. The fact of the matter is prices for living are not going down in this city, people need to accept that as fact and move the fuck on from "but I can't afford" type arguments, because if you can't afford today you won't afford it tomorrow or the day after either.

Oh and FYI, $117k is NOT poverty level in SF, it's "low income" for a family of 4, which is defined as 200% the poverty level, and to be really fair, that's two adults making $60k a year. The days of dad working and mommy staying home with the kids in this city are long gone. And that's another thing people need to realize about expensive cities like this, is you can't do the same shit that was done 40 years ago, or the shit that you can do in say Utah, or hell 1-2 hours OUTSIDE of San Francisco.
 
I'll put this as nicely as I can to avoid being banned again.

The video is a complete mischaracterization of taxes in the United States. Maybe the tax code is that simple in Australia, where they made the video. If the rich guy's accountant was letting him pay $59 out of $100 in the US, assuming a 59% tax rate, that accountant would likely end up sued for malpractice. Income is transferred into assets, investments, holdings, etc to avoid paying that high personal tax rate. Tax accountants do everything they can to minimize a client's tax bill, using all legal remedies available. I've personally seen someone make $300k in personal income and have it transformed into $120k of taxable income, legally. Like I said earlier, the tax rate does not give you the full story, even when explained in beer money.

Math:
Assuming a tax rate of 59%, the taxes due on $300k is $177k. Let's say your accountant gets your taxable income down to $120k. 59% of $120k is $70,800.

Let's see how that looks compared to the original taxable income.
$70,800 is 23.6% of $300k.

While the real taxation system is a bit more complex, the overall sentiment of the beer analogy is sound. But hey, why even bother to use an analogy? Let's just use real actual numbers:

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2015-update/

This is from the 2013 tax year--I didn't bother to search for newer numbers but I'm sure they look similar to these today. There are some amazing stats in there. Some of my favorite points:
  • The total share of federal tax paid by the top 1% of income earners is 37.8%. This is a higher amount than all the bottom 90% combined.
  • The top 10% of income earners (similar to the beer analogy video) paid 69.8% of all taxes. So, I guess "rich beer guy" got off easy--in real life, we soak the top 10% even worse than in the video.
The problem with our society isn't capitalism--in fact, capitalism has catapulted the United States into a powerful, rich, very not-poverty-stricken country. The problem is that in the past few decades we somehow went from admiring and appreciating the rich, to vilifying them and milking them for literally ~70% of every dollar we spend on military, infrastructure, and all the other stuff we spend on. It's utterly amazing--and incredibly immoral--that we vilify the rich this way. They literally pay 70% of our roads, 70% of our public institutional bills, 70% of our foreign aid to whatever banana republic idiot we're propping up, etc... and we have the nerve to say "bah, who cares about those guys--let's take EVEN MORE and give it to the poor!"

As a result, fewer and fewer rich people give a shit about the other 90% of the country. And why should they. Guys like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet--these guys are somehow charitable even in the face of tremendous vilification just for being rich. I suspect they remember the days when the prosperous and successful were venerated. But the next generation of super rich people... those folks have every reason to horde their money and tell everyone else to screw off. We've done nothing but stab them at every possible opportunity.

Paul Allen's death today feels somehow fitting to this topic; a guy who has given $2 Billion to charity in his lifetime, co-founded a company that massively boosted the productivity of much of mankind, and yet is the poster child example of the guy that many think we should tax even harder. "Let's go take that Rich Bastard's money!"
 
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A serious question, as I am completely unlearned about areas near SF and Cali in general (I’ve only been to Cali once and that was less than a day on business in Sacramento). How long, in transit time, would it take outside SF to make that $117k go considerably further (idk, able to afford housing, utilities, etc)?
 
Here is an option for probably many people living in poverty in SF (Not homeless or jobless, but under earning for the cost of the area). If you have skills and jobs, move to a cheaper part of the country where you can actually make it work. Or just choose to stay there, and then really i have no sympathy. I'm talking about people who could leave, but choose not to because its too much fun "roughing it" or being a hippie in CA.

FYI

I live on Maui Hawaii, and i see it EVERYWHERE. People working 3-4 minimum wage jobs, living in a house with 6 roommates, who moved here because "its cool". I call it poverty by choice. I support myself completely with one career. I moved here because i had / have a plan / career. And I'm being smart about my choices. I Don't see a reason to subsidize people who moved here with no job or place to live. That's subsidizing stupidity. Anyone who COULD move away from SF, and instead choose to stay there, doesn't deserve help, aside from a moving truck to a less insanely expensive place to live.

Hate me if you want. People's choices have repercussions and I'm not afraid to tell them.
 
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just deport them to the midwest.

everything is cheaper over there, and they're short on labor
 
Personally I think they only way they can combat homelessness in this city is to help people find jobs elsewhere in the country and move, I don't mean simply give the homeless a bus ticket to anywhere they want, have some sort of "Employment Division" that works with other cities and takes into account the prices of housing in this areas and help people start a new life elsewhere. The fact of the matter is prices for living are not going down in this city, people need to accept that as fact and move the fuck on from "but I can't afford" type arguments, because if you can't afford today you won't afford it tomorrow or the day after either.

While I do not agree with throwing money at the unfixable homeless problem, I am behind an idea assisting people with traing and starting life out elsewhere. So they can contribute to society.
 
Homelesness is just a reflection of society. It cannot be solved as other systems in place which produce it are not "solved", or in other words are feeding this particular branch of the social issue through the other problems which are not addressed.

One aspect - mental health - pretty much unresolved, you address it, a large portion of the homeless problem will be resolved. Another aspect - welfare statre - in the US is it a clusterfuck (money largely given for nothing, no re-education, no progress required into being self-sustainable, just perpetual waste for the most part etc), you resolve it, another large portion of homeless problem will be addressed, and so on.

"The west" as such is pretty much in a downwards spiral, we are used to not addressing issues for decades now, only papering over the cracks, on state, corporate, legal etc - most levels, in many cases it is a personal culture too. Once the next financial crisis hits - will be fun, or not. 2007 will look like "good old days" for large majority.
 
Some of my favorite points:
  • The total share of federal tax paid by the top 1% of income earners is 37.8%. This is a higher amount than all the bottom 90% combined.
Outstanding! The top 1% in the US control 38% of the US wealth! (Go look it up.)

  • The top 10% of income earners (similar to the beer analogy video) paid 69.8% of all taxes. So, I guess "rich beer guy" got off easy--in real life, we soak the top 10% even worse than in the video.

And the top 10% control 73% of the wealth! LOOKING GOOD! (Go look it up.)

By the way, your analogy doesn't show that the bottom also owns the debt, which feeds back to the wealthy.

I had a whole month's worth of soap box typed up, but I just couldn't be bothered to finish it, it was too much to read, and you wouldn't care anyway. We have many unsustainable problems in this country, whether it is the inability for 30% of the country to pay for health care, global warming, the national debt, our failure to hold people accountable for business crimes, or our severe wealth compression. But the people in power, and the people who support them, don't care. And it seems you don't care, if you bought into that silly beer analogy, no economist took that cartoon seriously. Maybe you'd like the pie analogy. We've spent 50 years being irresponsible, does anyone give a shit what this country looks like 30 years from now?

All I want is to get the conservatives, the Moral Majority, and the Christians out of my Republican Party so we can get back to supporting business.
 
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If it is why don't I have shit in my city streets? I was in San Fransisco like 5 years ago, it was a really nice place, now you got shit on the streets, drug addicts, and mentally ill every where. What changed in 5 years, from what i understand it is the administration there and their dumb fucking ideas, and they elected these fucks again.

Seriously? What changed in 10 years? Housing prices. Go educate yourself.
 
big tech saying govs cant do crap

well, i say dump the entire problem on to big tech's hands then. Imagine the PR nightmare these righteous few would have...
 
I know lets define rich to mean anyone who makes as much money as you do! Then we can freely just take all of your money. After all, if we define you as rich then you have too much and we can take it and just give it to someone else. And, if you don't want to give up all of your money then we will show up with guns and take it from you!
I'm sorry, but being homeless sucks teh donkey balls even if you are elucky enough to be so in a climate like that in SF where you never need tonworry about freezing to death.

The fact that someone, anyone, might actually be arguing that homelessness is a choice that people make because they are lazy and don't want to work shows how fucked up we have become as a society.

No one wants to be homeless. Even the laziest person on Earth would like to have a home to call their own. The problem is it is a negative spiral. Maybe at first they think it's cool, I'll only live in my truck for a few weeks until I find a new job, but then they realize how difficult it is to actually land a job when you are living in a truck, and things spiral out of control. Fast forward 10 years and now even a seemingly normal person with their wits about them is stuck in homelessness and lost. Whoever you are reading this. This could be you. One bad breakup, and fallout with your family and suddently, unless you have a really good support network of friends willing to take you in to live for a while on their couch, and this is you.

This problem repeats itself all over the country. SF has it particularly bad because of how bad their housing prices are, and that their weather is good enough to survive outdoors yea round, but we see it on the east coast too..

I challenge you to find me a homeless person who is actually happy with their situation and chooses to be there because they don't like work. I mean, there might be one. But this is not the norm. Overwhelmingly the homeless are either normal people who just got stuck, or the mentally ill. Either way, they need help to get out of a terrible situation.


I work in a Hospital, we see a lot of homeless people. The Number one common denominator for being on the streets is drug use. The park next to our main entrance is rapidly becoming unsafe and a haven for dealers and junkies, and this isn't some inner city slum, it's a small town in the Eastern US. And a lot of those druggies started out normal people that were given narcotics legally. I'm not drawing any conclusions here, just making an observation based on where I live. I suspect SF's problem has very different demographics.
 
I work in a Hospital, we see a lot of homeless people. The Number one common denominator for being on the streets is drug use. The park next to our main entrance is rapidly becoming unsafe and a haven for dealers and junkies, and this isn't some inner city slum, it's a small town in the Eastern US. And a lot of those druggies started out normal people that were given narcotics legally. I'm not drawing any conclusions here, just making an observation based on where I live. I suspect SF's problem has very different demographics.

drugs is to escape.

money is the root cause . It always have been. Even the entire pharma crisis is about earning as much $$$ as possible.

for the issue of homelessness, it is obvious they just don't earn enough, and those that earn enough don't give a shit about empathy and uplifting those much less fortunate. Even their billionaires tech gurus , billionaire sports mogul, billionaire role models say not to care about these people, but just to push gov to kick them out of the city

the sad thing is that NO PRESS will ever ask these questions direct to these billionaires in interviews, and no billionaire has come out and shame all those other billionaires
 
I work in a Hospital, we see a lot of homeless people. The Number one common denominator for being on the streets is drug use. The park next to our main entrance is rapidly becoming unsafe and a haven for dealers and junkies, and this isn't some inner city slum, it's a small town in the Eastern US. And a lot of those druggies started out normal people that were given narcotics legally. I'm not drawing any conclusions here, just making an observation based on where I live. I suspect SF's problem has very different demographics.

Yeah, the opioid epidemic is a huge contributor as well.

Let's not forget - however - that addiction is a disease, not somethibg the affected can just snap out of with willpower.
 
drugs is to escape.

money is the root cause . It always have been. Even the entire pharma crisis is about earning as much $$$ as possible.

for the issue of homelessness, it is obvious they just don't earn enough, and those that earn enough don't give a shit about empathy and uplifting those much less fortunate. Even their billionaires tech gurus , billionaire sports mogul, billionaire role models say not to care about these people, but just to push gov to kick them out of the city

the sad thing is that NO PRESS will ever ask these questions direct to these billionaires in interviews, and no billionaire has come out and shame all those other billionaires


I think there are many causes that trigger addiction. Poverty and unhappiness is one of them. Another is simply getting addicted to painkillers after an operation and not being able to quit.

The opioid epidemic we currently have is not like crack epidemic in the 80's. It's not just affecting the poor. It transcends classes and income levels. I mean, it tends to destroy the finances of those who get caught up in it, but people start out all across the class/income spectrum.
 
drugs is to escape.

money is the root cause . It always have been. Even the entire pharma crisis is about earning as much $$$ as possible.

for the issue of homelessness, it is obvious they just don't earn enough, and those that earn enough don't give a shit about empathy and uplifting those much less fortunate. Even their billionaires tech gurus , billionaire sports mogul, billionaire role models say not to care about these people, but just to push gov to kick them out of the city

the sad thing is that NO PRESS will ever ask these questions direct to these billionaires in interviews, and no billionaire has come out and shame all those other billionaires
Money has never been the root cause. Addiction and mental illness are the root causes of most homelessness.
You can give a drug addict all the money in the world and you'd just have a druggie who has money for a minute. What problem/issue would that solve?
I really do think the mentally ill in this country get a raw deal though. We closed way too many mental health facitilies in the 80's.

Being an addict is a choice. Being homeless because you're an addict is not any less of a choice.
Seriously, if the threat of being homeless or actually being homeless didn't kick somebody into sobriety, I couldn't imagine what it would take.

Not sure why we see so many excuses being made for people who make shitty decision upon shitty decision. If you can magically find money for drugs and/or booze then you can find money for clothes and a shower and even a bus ticket if need be. AA/NA meetings are free.
By the way....one of the things that hurts people who really did just get hit with a string of bad luck and need work to get on track.....a high minimum wage.
 
I am in the opinion that there's something seriously wrong with the housing market in SF, when $117k annual income is considered poverty line for a family of 4

So, doing the math of 40hrs/wk and 48wk/yr, the family would need to earn $61/hr, among 4 persons. $30.5/hr if two of them are not working, $15.25/hr if all of them are working.

And since this must be the poverty line, that must mean that over 90% of that annual income must go towards bills and taxes.


Maybe the answer is not so much taxing the rich or subsidies for the homeless, but clamping down on the housing market?
 
Seriously? What changed in 10 years? Housing prices. Go educate yourself.
I'm sure housing prices are the only reason, not the fact they spend tax payers money to give out clean needles to junkies, from what I understand they want to open up centers where drug addicts can shoot up safely, and they are not arresting drug users. If they did not make a haven for these people most would not be there or at the very least the behavior would change. Why is there a haven? The administration made it so.
 
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