San Francisco officials weigh in on departure of X headquarters: 'Good riddance'

The SF problems exist in a lot of American places.

Hard not to think that American governance plus American culture are both a bit broken. Without a social safety net, the troubled and in-trouble layers of our society can’t find a hold for recovery.

I’m in SF right now. It’s a lovely place across many dimensions. But when the bus dropped me off near Civic Center and City Hall, I had to walk through and around a crowd that is in need of help.

My office used to be at 8th and Howard. I had to walk around the troubles. My employees would sob after wading in. The hardened part of me thinks “the addicts on the street have done this to themselves”, and the supportive part of me says “other places have figured out the minimum viable social safety net” to avoid the worst of it.

Hard to believe that a Whole Foods went into a giant residential development center and no one could figure out how not to lose it.

EDIT: Amending with the following thoughts:

Cities and states will struggle to solve problems that need to be built at the federal level. Social support infrastructure for medical, unemployment, housing. Lose your job? Here and now you’ll be losing health insurance immediately and eventually housing. Other places have paid up to mitigate that and have lower levels of our acute issues.

Going into the future, with climate change, California will someday carry greater recognition that among the biggest and greatest cities on the planet, SF and LA arguably have the best weather and by quite a huge margin. I love NYC and Berlin and Singapore, but their weather sucks compared to the west coast’s. We’re beyond lucky and we act/vote selfishly and NIH/NIMBYish.

My company HQ is in SF still, not sure how much longer. I get to visit downtown fairly frequently. SF is so bad today that people just leave their car windows open lest some thief accidently believe they had the audacity to lock their cars. Many major retailers that I was used to seeing downtown have left. The criminals and homeless run the show in SF. Really sad to see how far it has gone in such a short period of time. I'm not sure why X is leaving, but X is just another company in a long list of companies. Often they'll take with them the people who worked there, then there's just that many fewer functional citizens as a percentage in the city. When does it become a vicious cycle?

San Francisco needs to get its act together. Richest, smartest city in the US, perhaps the planet, and its downtown is barely habitable, and development/improvement is relegated to very exclusive rich areas.

I wonder if this move is also a "hidden layoff", that is where he will say "Move to TX or quit, your choice".

Also if an employee moves to TX, will they get moving expenses ?

The residual damage from large companies moving out of downtown cores seem to be lost on the local politicians. They will say everything is fine as the service industry meant to sustain companies evaporate.

San Francisco has been saying good riddance to a lot of good companies for a while now. Maybe not out loud, but certainly through their policies have they driven away a lot of business. Downtown is a ghost town now.

This is like Saudi Arabia pretending to say 'good riddance' to oil. What are you going to do when it's all gone?

That's not the definition of "gross receipts". Perhaps Elon thinks he's too smart to ask an actual accountant, or perhaps he's mad about the "Overpaid Executive" surcharge on the gross receipts tax. [0]

[0] https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/overpaid-executi...

That's the spirit! Keep doubling down! Never admit that you've made a mistake!

Why insist on making enemies? Even if it is Elon Musk. How hard is it to just ignore the question?