The worry about the doom loop is not that rich people lose money but that the current budget is tied to high tax receipts and when assessments go down tax revenue will plunge. Services will have to be cut to balance the budget.
No. The US could also go and fix their tax code for once - start taxing the uber rich. Warren f..ing Buffet complained years ago he has to pay less tax than his secretary. A lot of the issues that cripple many Western countries relate to stupid tax breaks for the rich and mega corporations who have bought out politics.
SF is the most liberal city in the most liberal state. They don't have any issues taxing rich people (or any other person, that's for sure).
We're talking about a municipality, not the US. Plus your whole point is fine in theory, but it's not going to happen any time in the near future. The question of whether SF is going to get stuck in a doom loop is a real one, and it should be examined through a lens of the social and political environment we're in, not a theoretical and unrealistic one.
My larger point is that Americans are largely under the delusion that heavily taxing the 1% would be enough, which is just not the case.
728 people in the US own more assets than half the US population together [1].
Let that fact sink in, and then ask yourself why the fuck no one in the US has taken to the pitchforks yet. At least here in Europe, the lower classes are on serious strike runs the last months - the UK, France and Germany are just examples.
You know what, you could leave each of these 728 uber rich people a billion dollar each. Enough money that neither they nor their children and their children have to work a day in their lifes ever. Basically, aristocracy, "landed gentry" or however you want to call it, just legally recognized. The rest of the wealth gets distributed among the population. Easy, isn't it?
[1] https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/04/13/728-billionaires-hold...
I'm not defending the massive inequity which clearly exists, but wealth tax that targets a theoretical (eg) land value will lead to silliness as this 0.00017% aggressively devalue their holdings to avoid this tax.
In theory the US could go very far taxing a much smaller base because it has allowed so much money to be redistributed to this tiny base.
But even ignoring that your comment is unnecessary. Even if a Sweden like social democracy is the goal (which it doesn’t need to be…there’s many stopping points in between), the US doesn’t need to do it overnight. Raising taxes on the richest and then increasing the tax rates on lower brackets gradually over the decades as needed is an absolutely fine way to head in that direction as well.