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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

Is it really crime? San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston all have higher burglary rates than Oakland, CA and San Francisco. New York City has the lowest burglary rate on the entire top 100 list.

Dallas and Houston have higher total violent crime rates than Los Angeles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Speaking of regulation, could it be that businesses prefer Texas due to poor workers' rights? https://www.keranews.org/news/2022-09-13/texas-is-one-of-the...

I'm also unsure what California business climate is stifling businesses there, considering it is the #1 GDP economy in the country, 5th highest state in GDP per capita, and only 5 or 6 entire countries in the world have larger economies. Is there a specific regulation that is stopping your business idea from working in California?

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As per the source you linked, San Francisco has the 4th highest property crime rate in the US, with about 1 in every 16 people being victimized per year. There was also a joke headline a while back: 'San Francisco becomes first city to eliminate crime, after legalizing all crime.' Like in all good jokes there's a shade of truth - when crimes are not reported, not prosecuted, or reclassified then they do not show up in crime stats. DAs that choose not to pursue/prosecute crimes, and people choosing not to report them (perhaps because of no expectation in justice), will bring down crime rate stats, without bringing down crime rates.

I picked out burglary rates because that’s the type of property crime that impacts businesses.

Speculating on effectiveness of the DA and how much crime goes unreported would have to benchmark other cities to be meaningful. We can’t just assume that crime is more frequently reported and prosecuted elsewhere based on a joke headline.

Ironically, SF’s property crime problem is likely heavily impacted by the high demand to live there in the first place and the resulting high cost of housing. SF can alleviate crime by building housing, but I’m not sure how Peoria, IL, Steubenville, OH, or Bridgeport, CT solve their crime and drug issues long term. At least SF has a clear path out.

Doesn’t matter if you have a path if you realistically won’t follow it.

Burglary is breaking and entering. Theft is the main issue affecting businesses in San Francisco, for which it has the second highest rate in the country. People come in, take whatever they want, and leave. If it's under $950, it's a misdemeanor. And that's if the perp is caught and charged.

The law only works as a deterrence for crime when there is a reasonably high chance of being caught, and the consequences work as a significant deterrent. To their credit the San Francisco Police Department have a pretty nice page on this exact issue here. [1] Not so much to their credit, the clearance rate (cases solved) for theft is at 3.4%. Then those get sent over to the DA who may or may not even choose to prosecute it. There's also things like community courts [2] that can help ensure you get the most gentle slap on the wrist if caught.

Pair these systems alongside the surplus of high value targets, and it just seems like you're creating an extremely enticing area for thieves. I also imagine this all has to be extremely demoralizing for police, which one could expect would lead to something of a downward spiral. It's just generally not a great situation.

[1] - https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clea...

[2] - https://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/restorative-justic...

The larceny-theft clearance rate for Texas municipalities over 100,000 population is only 7%: https://www.dps.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/crim...

So I think it’s pretty common for property crime to have a low clearance rate especially in larger municipalities.

I think you’re also downplaying the fairness of misdemeanors for property crime under $950. Why should stealing a candy bar or a DVD be a felony? Do you realize how life-ending a felony conviction can be? You basically can’t get a decent quality job ever again, which isn’t going to lower the property crime rate by making desperate people more desperate.

And also, misdemeanors can be upgraded to felonies via repeat offenses and surrounding circumstances (e.g., armed robbery is always felony).

Here’s an example of the San Francisco DA seeking life sentences for violent robberies: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/sf-mission-distric...

I think San Francisco has a perception of being a liberal haven for criminals with lax enforcement, but the more likely reality is that it operates similarly to most other large cities. The DA isn’t twiddling their thumbs and allowing violent robbers to get off with misdemeanors. That perception of San Francisco law enforcement is pushed by political opponents.

The problem with bias is that it generally feels normal, and so without some substantial degree of introspection, you might see everybody else as being biased, while assuming your own views are the truly correct ones. Try to read what you're writing as if somebody else wrote it, and you don't really have any opinion on this issue.

You're talking about a city with the 2nd highest theft rate, the overall 4th highest property crime rate, and comparing it against cities that not only have much lower crime rates, but ones where the clearance rate is at least twice as high for the crimes that are committed. Then there are other probable issues, but ones seemingly neither of us has been able to dig up data on, like prosecution rates vs dismissal/reclassification. To claim these differences amount to nothing, or only exist due to bias in others, is just not really reasonable.

You can accept San Francisco having a high crime rate, but think that the other niceties you enjoy about the city more than compensate for it. Every city, every state, every country has its own set of pros and cons. It's only balance that the 'big picture' really comes out, and that's also going to be extremely subjective.

I live in Austin and lived in San Antonio and the same complaints about the DA and underreported crime are rampant, especially if you believe the subreddit or my uncle who lives 6hrs away in small town and hasn’t visited in 4 years. How true is that really?

NextDoor can give you a pulse but it’s dirty data. People will think they’re a crime victim but they may not be and then you have others who try to downplay the crime —oh it’s not really a crime, it’s a city, these things happen.

Point is NextDoor can provide some insight into crime as often what is mentioned in that medium is unreported to authorities though often you will have members recommend the victim report the crime to police.

This often gets overlooked, but if California were it's own country it would rank as the 5th largest GDP in the world. $3.6 trillion GDP in 2022.

Business climate.

I misread you, fixed my comment. But I'm still confused, what is not good about the business climate? It is the #1 GDP in the country, #5 GDP per capita, larger than all but 5 or 6 countries in the entire world. Home to a huge number of companies in the S&P 500 like Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Chevron, Intel, Walt Disney, HP, Cisco, Oracle, and the list goes on. Why haven't they moved to other states?

What, specifically, is bad about the business climate in California? And I'm talking about things that can't be easily refuted with basic facts.

The sentiment is as old as the gold rush and it’s nonsense. I’ve heard people proclaim the end of business in California since the day I moved here and the only notable example I can think of in 30 years is Tesla moving their HQ… and they just announced this year that they’re building a new “engineering HQ” in California anyway.

A lot of the downsides that people like to complain about California like regulatory burden, bureaucracy, and high taxes are mostly true, but until housing cost skyrocketed in the last decade none of that mattered to most people. The vast majority of California’s problems stem from unbalanced supply and demand across a number of goods and services.

Ever since the budgetary woes of the 2000s, the state government has really turned it around and with all the laws tackling the housing problem passed in the last few years, California is going to keep on trucking just like haters gonna keep on hating (which they should, we’re overpopulated enough as it is).

The bureaucracy is exaggerated, too. Every large municipality and state has it. California isn’t unique and the idea that they are an extremely high tax state is also bunk (nobody seems to make a stink on the national stage about the high taxation status of Minnesota, Rhode Island, or New Jersey, 3 of the 9 states with higher overall tax rates than California).

California is just a political target by a certain party that fumbled their previous dominance of elections in the state and remains butthurt about it, and they can make the entire state into a scapegoat because they know they’ll never control the state again anyway. https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/02/the-decline-and-fall-o...

The taxes also vary widely depending on your circumstances. Rich people complain loudly for obvious reasons but everyone I know who’s done that found the difference to be far less significant, or even negative since they needed to pay more for private alternatives to state services. There is a difference but it’s not what popular mythology would have you believe.

Yep, CA's state taxes are very progressive and are less burdensome on people with ordinary incomes than in many states.

There’s also a huge life stage variation: subsidized pre-k of aftercare, for instance, are either worth nothing or a hefty amount depending on whether you have small children. A big one I’m hearing about from extended family is elder care - once someone can’t safely drive everywhere, living in a minimal service area is not saving money, and I think we’ll hear more about that as the boomers who retired somewhere scenic get a bit older.

> they know they’ll never control the state again anyway.

California is the state of Schwarzenegger, Regan, and proposition 8. Like every other state, it's an archipelago of blue cities in a sea of red. Democrats are in power today; do not mistake that for forever. I don't think Republican party's current strategy of badmouthing California at every turn is going to earn them votes needed to flip the state; but their strategy in the US House of Representatives is an even more spectacular failure. Rather, the party's lack of coherent strategy seems to be the source of its manifold failures today. I do wonder what a post-Trump Republican party will look like, but it will come, and I wouldn't presume to predict its future.

Democrats (and Republicans) need to understand that the majority of immigrants lean conservative but the Dems have successfully captured them. If Repubs would position themselves differently they would be a natural option for those fist gen families.

> Democrats (and Republicans) need to understand that the majority of immigrants lean conservative but the Dems have successfully captured them

Trump improved among Hispanic voters by roughly 10 points between 2016 and 2020 [0] - and in some areas his improvement was a lot bigger than that - e.g. some heavily Hispanic border regions of Texas saw Trump improve his vote by over 20 points

(Of course, much of the increase of support among Texan Hispanics is strictly speaking not immigrants, rather people who have lived in the area since back when it was still part of Mexico-but I’m not sure if that’s a significant factor or just a quibble.)

Similarly, there is evidence that the GOP may have significantly improved their share of the Muslim vote over the last few years [2]

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/30/new-trump-poll-wome...

[1] https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/democrats-losing-...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/2023/10/20/culture-wars-are-giving-...

> and the only notable example I can think of in 30 years is Tesla moving their HQ…

Other notable examples: Oracle moved their HQ to Austin; HPE moved theirs to the Houston metro area

Burglary is famously underreported in some of those cities.

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