If that was not you advocating for taxing the rich and/or only taxing the "bad" rich, then my apologies. My posts were directed at them and the belief system which holds that tax rates should be increased on those with more wealth.
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Homelessness Tax Would Target Rich Tech Sector in San Francisco
- Thread starter cageymaru
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If that was not you advocating for taxing the rich and/or only taxing the "bad" rich, then my apologies. My posts were directed at them and the belief system which holds that tax rates should be increased on those with more wealth.
I don't know about you, but I've read there was a bunch of deregulation from 1980 to 2009.
and then in 2010, the US housing market crashed.
Honestly, I don't understand how anyone can trust banks to regulate themselves.
Captain Canada
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I think I see the miscommunication. I said that rich people who attempt to change the rules of the system so that others can't even compete with them are evil, and should be opposed. By "opposed", I just mean that we should not allow them to tilt the playing field solely in their favor. I'm not advocating for taxing them more or trying to take their wealth away. And it's not just rich people here--anyone that tries to crowd out competition and create an unfair system of laws should be opposed in this way.
The Ambassador Bridge guy should not be allowed to crowd out competing Bridges via the legal system. I'm not suggesting that we take his money away or anything crazy like that.
I'm very much against "Progressive" tax systems that target the wealthy at higher rates than everyone else.
sfsuphysics
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Yeah this is nothing new, in the late 90s when I was in grad school one of the students in the same program as me lived on a boat, at Pier 39 of all fucking places, and she paid like $350/month rent effectively.
Just looking at Oyster Point in SSF, a 30 ft boat docking fees are $250/month, 60 ft boats cost about twice that. However just to show you how much people try to avoid paying money for shit, it costs like anohter $300+ if you actually want to live on your boat, but people never fucking pay that. I mean oh no you can't be fucked with paying $600 to live in the bay area, but $250 then sure! And the people living on boats do all sorts of nasty stuff like dump their waste overboard, it's so fucking disgusting the level people will go through to save a buck.
sfsuphysics
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In a nutshell, no... no family that's bringing in nearly $120k/year is homeless in SF unless they choose to be homeless. After taxes you're take home is still $90k/year, that leaves $7500 a month for ALL your expenses, and while yeah it's expensive in SF it ain't that fucking expensive, sure day care for 2 kids could chomp half of that amount away, or not depending upon how you run with it.
There's plenty of room for buildings, they just aren't building the right kinds of buildings!
Once again, the real root cause: Demolishing the California Dream: How San Francisco Planned Its Own Housing Crisis
SamuraiInBlack
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What is deemed poverty in San Francisco is BALLIN' where I am at.
Maybe it's a good thing I don't make that kind of cash. I'd be utterly stupid with it.
Maybe it's a good thing I don't make that kind of cash. I'd be utterly stupid with it.
BloodyIron
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Working on the streets of what I assume is one city, is not indicative of poverty worldwide. People treat each other differently from one city to the next, let alone one country to the next.
Of course they need a job, you think they don't fucking know that? I know there's some that have their own reasons not to try to get a job, but they are most certainly the exception, not the norm.
Of course they need a job, you think they don't fucking know that? I know there's some that have their own reasons not to try to get a job, but they are most certainly the exception, not the norm.
painintheworld
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Thanks, Krazy925. 2-1/2 hours each way is crazy!
I'm sure someone has already touched on this but it's less of a homeless problem and more of a mental-health problem. The mentally ill are the red-headed stepchildren of society. Medical care is far more expensive than propping a sick person up with a sandwich and a blanket.
$700k-$800k +$500 HOA for a 1300/1400 square foot condo is pretty average at the moment.
It’s fucking nuts here— but I love it.
You got to be fucking kidding.
Let's start a little earlier.
Who didn't see the writing on the wall?
Who decided not to finish high school?
Who didn't see the end coming and retrain before they lost all income?
Who got their ass so far in a crack that they lost everything and was surprised when it happened?
Who doesn't know where to find the Public Library, that has computers, printers, (by the way, the only resume I print is my own, I email it to companies and post it on monster, I don't pass out a hard copy like a flier), email addresses work just fine for receiving job offers, and if you have a problem with phones, clothes, etc, TELL THEM.
And there isn't a homeless person in the united states that can't scare up enough for a haircut and a shave. If that were the case they'd be dead in days from starvation.
Now the hard part, yes poverty is hard. Yes some people were barely treading water and finally, the water just got too deep. But don't make stupid excuses for them or set foolish barriers and false hurdles. The homeless in this country are homeless for a very few reasons;
#1 Very bad life choices
#2 Failure to adapt
#3 It's not that hard, just give up, give in, stop trying and let it roll on. Get a bottle when you can, a handout, a needle, whatever your thing is. Then you don't have to do any of those difficult things people expect of you.
#4 Because they hate themselves, are punishing themselves, self pity, self loathing, etc.
#5 The one that should draw real pity and deserve real help, the mentally ill who have been turned out by those who no longer want to care for them.
My wife helps this old Korean woman, she was married to a G.I. back in the day. Korean women back then often didn't finish high school, their families couldn't afford it, so this old gal is completely illiterate, not just English, Korean too. So her husband died, she get's Social Security, lives in low income housing, used to work as a bagger for tips at the commissary on base, but not much anymore, she's like 80, it's too hard for her now. This woman is completely dependent on others for everything.
So by know you should be wondering where I am going with this?
If an 80+ year old, illiterate with no skillz, no capacity to read, etc, has a roof, money to burn at the casino, etc. Then why are these people out on the streets again?
My opinion is, you should stop making excuses for these people and their bad choices in life. That, and you should accept that some people are there by choice.
This is without any doubt a big part of it. It's not all of them by any stretch, but it's undeniably a noteworthy part of the homeless population and it's shameful.
So many think it's being homeless that made them nutz when it was being nutz that made them homeless.
Please understand, I do not intend disparagement on the mentally ill when I call them "nutz". The word just felt right for my message, or how I wanted it to read.
theBrownLlama
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the continued hook and reliance on off the shelf , or mass prescribed painkillers directly indicates a lack of post-op care , which is expensive to implement thoroughly. That ties in to being about money , or the lack of money being budgeted by the gov. (for one reason or another)
give money to a drug rehab + job training + job placement + welfare institution and see these addiction problems disappear. These cost magnitudes more $ than just giving cash to a drug user.
Then the amount of money to implement a comprehensive overhaul of the medical industry to eliminate bad players like those behind oxy ( they knew it was addictive) , and a decades long ( at least a couple of generations) overhaul of the primary goals cherished of being in the medical industry. ( the main goal now is to get rich enough to pay off student debts and get rich. )
which ties in to what i said earlier. It's all about the $
theBrownLlama
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that is why an empathetic government which cares for the population is important. If using your life story as an example of how to treat others whom are less fortunate, then we get the exact crisis we are facing now.
theBrownLlama
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i have commented during those articles about those mass shootings which occurs quite often, that mental health is still very much a taboo in the US
the goal would be to have mental health to be on the health checkup list together with basic flu and biannual medicals.
Which i think will become even more important in the near future as artificial, goal-oriented conversations will be dominant . ( who talks about fears and hope , and all those other ambiguous feelings , these days? Company psychs are m.i.a , private psychs rare and too exp, and religious surrogates are shunned )
Sure. Addiction would just dissappear if only we spent more money!
The billions upon billions we spend annually obviously isn't doing the trick, so we should spend more and somehow..... people who make shitty decisions and mentally ill people will no longer exist.
You're daft.
The idea with those being tax funded is the more essential something is, the less you want to leave it to chance. Essential services in rich neighborhoods tend to be very well funded and do well and would probably continue doing well without government intervention, since the rich have a vested interest in them. Meanwhile services in poor neighborhoods with underfunded government are so lacking they reflect conditions in 3rd world countries. I get your logic, but the bottom line is this tends not to work universally, and if anything furthers the divide between the wealthy and the poor. How many millionaires do you see living next door to the poor after all?
I think you're cherry picking what you're looking at. Our country celebrates wealth tremendously. Athletes, actors, musicians that are millionaires are by and large looked up to. Our current president is a billionaire and has the richest cabinet in history. His opposition was worth tens of millions of dollars. The majority of our Congress is composed of millionaires. The richest people in the country frequently making magazine coverages, and most of our media is owned by billionaires. If you look at how our country is run, it is by the rich, for the rich. Again, most of the attacks on tax persecution are trying to undo what occurred after the Great Depression. As for the reason we have so many poor and hungry, I would argue it's due to large systemic problems, no one real cause. A good starting point is to compare the poor in our country to other developed nations with a better track record and see what they're doing differently.
As for wealth being necessary for innovation, sometimes, sometimes not. A lot of inventions tend to emerge simultaneously as people can devote their time to it (like the telephone for example). There are loads of counter examples where private investment is not what led to breakthroughs, like the Polio vaccine, the internet, most medical research, it's a long list.
As for taxation leading to people not wanting to help one another, I think that's a tenuous connection that may not exist at all. If someone's tax rate goes up or down 3%, that's unlikely to affect if they volunteer at a soup kitchen.
I'm actually not advocating for prosperity and comfort for all, a rough existence isn't a problem, so long as it's adequate. You mention freedom, I'm talking about freedom from hunger, homelessness, sickness, malnutrition. I'm talking about base needs being met. Anything past that I think is much more ambiguous. As for declaring war, Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world has stated how his class is winning.
I'm not sure what you're basing this off of, worker productivity has been through the roof for decades. You seem to be arguing that there's a bunch of lazy people lying around that's dragging down everything. The majority of welfare recipients are working and have jobs. They're not earning enough to get by. So the masses have been producing MORE and have less. It could be that all the wealth of the rich is not enough to solve our problems, however, if that's the case, a system with less intervention isn't any more sustainable, it's just a clock as to how many people are going to die. In that sense, you're essentially advocating for those with wealth deserve to live, and those without have survival of the fittest. Wealth and money in and of itself is a human invention. You get more into philosophical territory then as to determining who is most worthy of surviving. A person's wealth is NOT a correlation to how much they contribute to society however. If that were true, a hedge fund manager would be worth thousands of schoolteachers, police, cooks, construction workers, architects, etc.
The people who truly produce nothing are a small minority and have almost no political influence. Again, the majority of welfare recipients are already working. The French Revolution didn't begin because people were asking for more and more. It began because people were starving at the same time the aristocracy was living the most lavish lifestyle available with a plethora of resources. So, yes, if a significant portion of the populace is starving, the rich are at risk due to mismanagement of our how our system is being run. I doubt lowering taxes would remedy that.
We also had slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans and widescale theft of their land, multiple wars, an agrarian society for much of that time, and the ramp up to the largest resource extraction in the history of the world. I'd say it's very naive to just chalk that up to belief in success and productivity. You're right though, if you want to break laws, dominate and kill others in a methodical fashion, and engage in conquest in general, the sky's the limit for what you can accomplish.
But fine, if you want to go with logical reasoning, what's your answer to a situation where there are more people who need work than there are jobs available, and there's not enough charity to make up the difference? With automation, this is likely to become a reality. What we're seeing here are just pre tremors.
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Quit with the stupid sympathy card and your bleeding heart.
I didn't make it sound like they're sitting at home, I said they are contributing nothing to the pool of tax dollars that run our country. That is a fact. Quit trying to misconstrue it as if I said anything otherwise.
I color-coded it to show you the matching statements. You say misconstrue, I say your wording was pretty broad, especially when there are plenty in this thread who DO believe that percentage of the country contributes nothing. I mean who would ever think you're talking about people sitting at home when you call people lazy and ignorant? Excuse me all to hell.Cyraxx said:
However, you did say they pay literally nothing in taxes though, which is incorrect, they just don't pay federal income tax. Even To say they contribute nothing in federal taxes is misleading, since if they're employed, their employer stays in business due to them and they DO pay federal taxes, so they still contribute, just indirectly. Bottom line is if you're working, you're contributing.
theBrownLlama
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well, your idea is just to ignore them and guilt-trip them . Great answer for a solution
how does properly funding "drug rehab + job training + job placement + welfare institution" not help?
sure it cost hell lot more for the rich in taxes than them just staying and walling themselves off from the general population and saying out-of-sight equals not-my-problem ( like exactly what they do now. Some even as egregious as buying houses around them for ahem, privacy ) . America is damn messed up because of this mentality.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you are saying.
I think you are saying on the one hand that our government should be empathetic, yet on the other hand, that because the government is looking out for this woman who has done pretty much nothing to look out for herself, we face an unnamed crisis which could be a homelessness crisis.
More importantly, our government does not need to take care of people who won't help take care of themselves. They have to be doing something concrete in order to reach a point where they are self sufficient again. Yes, there should be exceptions. At some point it might be too much to ask an eighty year old woman to go get her GED. I think realistically it's not going to happen, her ignorance has been sustained so long, that she is functionally handicapped.
But in short, my little story about this woman was meant to highlight how just social security and low income housing alone are enough to allow this woman to have a roof, food, and money to gamble. This is how effective Social Security and other government assistance can be. She's been living like this at least 20 years now. So to me, this means that people living on the streets either do not qualify for assistance, don't want assistance and are on the streets by choice, or are otherwise incapable of taking care of themselves and have been turned out to fend for themselves, perhaps qualifying for assistance and no one is helping them get it.
And by the way, I absolutely believe that when you say " government which cares for the population" that this can't just be part of the population. And I think the way the government needs to do this is not through the assistance programs as they have been implemented in the past.
In fact, I think that you greatly misunderstand how I feel on this issue and the role the Federal Government should be taking. Instead of throwing money at these people the government should be supporting and promoting the "social institutions" of Churches, Community organizations the support the needy, etc. The government should promote family. That woman has a daughter, the daughter helps some, not much. So I doubt we agree on this issue, but you haven't had a chance to say much so I'll leave it there. We don't have to agree so.
Are we going to accept the idea that we got here where we are today, from decades of bad thinking regarding this issue?
We are here where we are today because our people have abandoned long standing social principles in the pursuit of what they think is freedom. We are here because we have beaten our social organizations, the ones that both promote living a "good life" and offer assistance to those who need it, into a corner where they have little impact on our world. We've done this because we want to live our lives any way we want and we want the rest of the world to accept whatever it is we do, and when it fucks us up and we are so messed up we can't keep it together anymore, then we want everyone else to help care for us.
We have substance abuse problems, STDs, mental problems, employment problems, and none of this is because we insist that we are just living our lives the way we want, we aren't hurting anyone else, and it's not our fault, and now the Federal Government needs to take care of us.
Parents can't be parents, Churches are all bad, the list goes on. Don't let anyone tell you how to live your life, doesn't matter if they can all see the train wreck coming, stay out of it, let them go on the way they want. And don't cry when the tax man comes to take your money in order to help them out, you'll never need that extra savings to help out a Sister or a Mother who doesn't speak English and was never seriously encouraged to by a Country who accepted her without insisting that she at least reach a level of basic literacy in the native language. We'll just print everything in thirty different languages instead, never mind that the same person can't read their native language either.
jnemesh
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Ursula K. Leguin said it best..
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
Yup. Great idea. Let's get rid of the number one reason that hundreds of millions across the globe have been lifted out of abject poverty because.....uh....REASONS!
https://www.forbes.com/2009/11/03/c...ion-forbes-opinions-markets.html#23a49d897f32
I'm not sure I understand this point of view … "you made bad choices so too bad live with it". Isn't this defeatist? Why not at least try to help people instead of kicking them while they are down. We can only stand to benefit by helping others help themselves. If we do nothing … nothing changes, in fact things will likely just continue to become worse.
Abraham Lincoln said it best...
"WE NEED TO HAVE LESS PEOPLE SHITTING ON THE STREETS OF SAN FRANSISCO, THIS CAN BE ACHIEVED THROUGH COMMUNISM. IF THEY DON'T EAT, THEY CANT SHIT."
jnemesh
[H]ard|Gawd
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Yeah, no. Try quoting a real source.
jnemesh
[H]ard|Gawd
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Worst use of facepalm meme ever.
Albert Einstein said it best in the book he wrote: the Bible..
"Socialism is no more or no less than Communism. And when thou mentions Socialism thou shall not mention Capitalism unless excepting that it is far better and not no more or no less than Communism; Amen."
tempertantrum
Limp Gawd
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117K - about 28K @24% federal - about 9060 state @10.23% & 2.6K - 8950 FICA @7.65% = 70990/year, or 5916/month. That's not that much in SF, frankly, for a family of four. Think about rent/mortgage, insurance, vehicle costs, utilities, clothing, medical, day care, and (god forbid) maybe having some fun or investing for the future... Anywhere else... sure. Live like a king.
I didn't say that. I didn't say "live with it".
I said, "stop making excuses for them ..." That's what I meant and it's very much what I said.
The Federal government can best help the people that need help by helping our social institutions who already want to help. Help the churches, help the YMCA's, Boy's Clubs, Girl Scouts, etc. Leave the tax dollars in people's pockets so they can help the niece who is having a hard time. Empower communities to take care of their own, don't federalize huge programs that have to be managed by an entire government department of waste and mismanagement. How many tens of years of this thinking do we have to experience to see that it fails, always.
Deathroned
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well considering white Americans are Illegal immigrants, why are you complaining?
No one is chained to light posts. They can move if it's completely unrealistic to stay in SF. Those people made their own beds. If they can't afford it than what can you say? If the city starts loosing it's professional base because costs of living are too high then what's to be done? Is that $117K single or joint income? Most professionals would draw that much, give or take, as individual income, many would make more. The rest, well, they need to figure something out.
Krenum
Fully [H]
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Hows that? My ancestors came here on the Mayflower & through a port of entry where they were processed through the legal system & given citizenship. Your comment has no merit.
Deathroned
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only Native Americans belong in America, return to whatever dump you came from.
tempertantrum
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People have to go where jobs and money are. You can't expect to move in rural Nebraska and find a tech job - or two, if both parents want/need to work. Where do you suggest they go?
Krenum
Fully [H]
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Obviously you don't know history or geography. Native Americans came from Asia across what is now known as Alaska into Canada and down to North America. So again, you comment has no merit.
tempertantrum
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I'm opposed to forcing people to rely on (and therefore beholden to) religious institutions. Those institutions also have shown that even if they "work" they are manipulative and don't change things long-term, and still suffer from waste and fraud and mismanagement. At least with the government, we can have much easier oversite, are subject to FOIA, etc. If you believe that private industry (especially for-profit sectors) has your best interests at the forefront of their minds more than the government does, you're being willfully ignorant.
I don't think people not getting paid enough to live is them making up excuses. That's indentured servitude, and it's patently absurd.