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Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what percentage of residents support the tax increases necessary to provide such services.

The problem is that taxes are already fairly high. Throwing more money at the problem is not going to fix these issues. Bad administration is bad administration no matter how much money you burn.

Exactly this. The city's budget was $6.4B in 2010, and $12.6B for 2021-2022, which is down from $13.7B for 2020-2021 (only because of Corona). That's a _doubling_ in a decade, and speaking somewhat subjectively as someone who's been here the entire time, all public services and the state of the streets have continued getting worse. Even if you don't buy that, it's absolutely certain that nothing has gotten better.

It's not clear how SF can escape the situation, but there are a few things that are absolutely certain, and one of them is that more money is not going to fix the problem. We need a different approach.

Except the issue is that there is a tragedy of commons, as SF increases resources for homeless more and more homeless flock to the city thus requiring ever increasing amount of resources. I am honestly not sure what to do other than support more nationwide solutions.

The services should be nation-wide, and should be housing. Everything else is just a palliative.

Did this happen in Portland? I can’t put my finger on it but I seem to recall something about how Portland’s public assistance largess had become a beacon for people across the country to go to Portland to take it advantage of that. Thus increasing the number of people needing those services, and causing the friction.

There was a discussion today on NPR about Venice Beach and how they're providing housing to those living on/near the pier so people are migrating up from other neighborhoods to take advantage. It's only a couple hundred people total but it's still an interesting experiment.

this also happens in other major cities like NYC, Boston, etc… most of the local homeless are from small cities and towns and go to the city because they hear it’s better… and it is, because many small cities have next to no services for them

if you spread out the homeless proportionately to the population of the country it becomes a much more manageable problem

The small towns literally bus or have the police drop off homeless into big cities so they don't have to pay for it. In Santa Cruz, there are tonnes of homeless. 10 miles away in Scotts Valley there are no visible homeless, that's because Scotts valley PD picks up homeless and drops them off in Santa Cruz.

and of course conservatives ignore this entirely and blame these cities for creating homeless problems… quite a scheme

This is a tech city, start fingerprinting and ID'ing where their real residential address is and send them back after a nice shower and a good hearty meal. If the same people keep coming back, start filing lawsuits against the towns or send them a bill. As soon as this happens the Republican lawmakers will start to pass laws banning this. Assert states right and start pressuring local companies to stop doing business in those states or else face consequences. It would take a leftist with real guts to do stuff like this.

I also wonder if it is legal to put checkpoints in the entrance to states so that if a bus arrives, they need to be subject to inspections. This stuff sounds cruel but the cities are not fighting for their tax paying residents. Its unbelievable how much of a scam this country is in favor of typically rural white people.

1) Red states typically get out more than 1$ of every tax dollar they put back in.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/north-america-business-local-taxe...

2) Red states get an additional subsidy in the form of sending their homeless to the blue cities. This allows them to reduce their tax burden while increasing the tax burden of an already highly taxed blue electorate. The decreased tax burden directly translates into more renovations to the towns and better quality of life for their citizens(ie more services) while directly reducing the quality of life for the left leaning counties.

3) Red states are overrepresented due to gerrymandering, the electoral college, (and because the Dems never fight), now the supreme court so the mechanisms to change this system are all blocked for the left wing population.

We don't have a Democratic party that fights for us. I'm convinced that they are actually on the same side as the Right but only pretend to actually care about the people in the left states and stop all opposition using cancel culture.

They of course cater to their wealthy constituents but everyone else that makes up the Democratic party: minorities and the poor are in this hellish limbo where they have no real say in governance yet at the same time are paying and suffering the consequences. Its the modern day slavery.

We are starting to see minorities run for congress and challenge the status quo. We also see them get co-opted by the Democratic party and muted or aggressively fought against so that they have to work 10 times as hard to get a chance

(ie. AOC's initial opponent outspent her 10 to 1, endorsed by the entire party, baseless accusations of being associated with less that favorable figures)

(ex2. Ilhan Omar being blasted whenever she opens her mouth).

It sounds like it's going to take a whole generation of effort to finally break this cursed situation that so many people in this country are born into.

Sorry for the rant, its just that as a minority living in a left state, it grinds me endlessly that I am paying for these Red state jerks while my quality of life continues on a downward trajectory and at the same time no one will fight for me. Not AOC, not anyone in the Dems for sure. What is the way out?

Most places deal with this via border restrictions. One country with better welfare does not allow themselves to be flooded with people from other countries. This problem can not be solved by one city without the ability to restrict movement.

It's going to be interesting to see earnest social welfare advocates and earnest open borders advocates realize that their beliefs are totally incompatible. Of course, right now, most of the politicians successfully selling those policies don't really care about either at a deep level.

Or transfer payments like we do in Canada.

People from other countries do not get welfare in the USA. that is a myth. The problem with 'SF' is people flocking from conservative areas in the US that have solved their homeless problem by literally bussing people to SF. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

My point is that SF can not fix welfare on its own because it doesn't have the power to stop people from other states moving in. It either needs to be a nation wide fix or for the city/state to become its own country.

Maybe the rest of the country should stop people moving out of that city/state.

> People from other countries do not get welfare in the USA. that is a myth.

Why do you say it is a myth?

"63% of Non-Citizen Households Access Welfare Programs Compared to 35% of native households"

https://cis.org/Report/63-NonCitizen-Households-Access-Welfa...

From Wikipedia:

"The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an anti-immigration think tank. It favors far lower immigration numbers, and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton."

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studies

Do you have another source? I am not so convinced by this source.

There is a section on the methods used, along with naming the dataset, the SIPP.

There is a link to the SIPP in the endnotes of the page. The SIPP is from the Census Bureau.

Border restrictions are a recent phenomenon.

If you care about free markets or a smaller state, but not the free movement of labor at the same time, you are holding hypocritical beliefs.

Welfare can not work in an entirely free market system. Thankfully I do not believe in subscribing uncritically to one line of thought.

The “free market” is not a real thing and it never will be - it is a platonic ideal.

Every nation on Earth has border restrictions of some kind. Though recent in human history, such restrictions clearly have utility and value in the modern world.

It should be easy to move, live and work wherever one desires. Arbitrarily stringent border controls and immigration policies are a tax on us all.

What solutions would you propose nationwide?

> I wonder what percentage of residents support the tax increases necessary to provide such services.

Straw man fallacy. Why do you jump to the conclusion that the problem is financial. SF is among the top 5 richest cities in US.

You really have to prove that the problem is financing, before you make the argument you made.

I think they're saying the problem is political, not financial.

I'm just being cynical.

If you ask people whether or not they some ostensibly good policy should be implemented, the majority will agree. When you ask taxpayers to actually cough up and pay for the services, though, the majority will get extremely upset.

A more interesting survey question would be how much people are prepared to sacrifice to make these problems go away.

well it short of already has begun, it was voted on and I do pay for the CBD covering my area to clean up the streets and provide security services:

https://oewd.org/community-benefit-districts

> I wonder what percentage of residents support the tax increases necessary to provide such services

It depends on how the question is phrased.

Few people want to pay more taxes.

Most people want a better society, not just for themselves, for everyone, since we are all connected.

The art of good government is asking the question in a way that shines a light to where 51% of people will dare to go, that many of the remainder will tolerat.

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