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I agree that that's the major problem; the poverty is inexcusable. But that's not caused by the $300B (or whatever) of equity. It's caused because the homeowners of the Bay Area decided that once they got a house, nobody else should, and that they should get to exclude others from the opportunities they had.

This same thing was observed during the Gold Rush in California in the 1800s; extreme wealth also resulted in extreme poverty. And there's a great way to solve this: tax the land and redistribute it equally to everyone. Land can't be moved, it's something that belongs to all of us, and you can't make more of it.

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You sort of can make more land -- by building tall buildings. Unfortunately the Bay Area has mostly outlawed that, too. And we can't blame that just on homeowners. SF "tenant advocates" are just as violently allergic to developers building new structures as homeowners are. But the worst offenders are definitely Peninsula and South Bay homeowners.
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That distinction between tall buildings and shorter buildings on the same plot of land is exactly why the land should be taxed.

Economic land is any capital that has a fixed amount, that you can't make more of. When the local governments in the Bay Area started capping the amount of buildable square feet, they greatly accelerated inequality by converting regular living space and working space into economic land, just like the real land it sits upon.

This is why economic inequality skyrocketed so much. Rentierism resulted in so much being stolen from anybody who doesn't own the land, and blocks out so many people from even having access to the economic system.

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This is almost completely traceable to Californians' failure to allow sufficiently dense housing to be built on their doorsteps. The only thing Larry did was bring prosperity to the region.

(I'm in agreement with the thesis of the article)

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More taxes should solve that.

Read somewhere that SF spends roughly 50k$-80k$ per homeless person per year.

Taxing more doesn't solve a massively inefficient system at it's core. Just like US education, we spend more than any country on earth, why is it still bad?

Answering that question with a "if only we had more money" is a really poor argument. The CA tax fundamentals are bad, pooring more cash onto the fire will not fix that.

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Sure. A lot of that money doesn't even make it to intended recipients because of corporate welfare and inefficiencies in government.

https://youtu.be/YKAD7l1a9hc

In addition, there should probably be changes to laws/regulations to address companies that exploit the poorest.

https://youtu.be/U9Rls-_7LdQ

And, many people who are poor have persistent mental/physical disabilities, so part of that spending is because many of these people have it the hardest.

With that said, we could likely fix all of these things and significantly unequal wealth distribution would still result in a lot of poverty.

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I think it's hitting 96k per homeless person a year now. But yes, it's the tax system's fault.
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96k$?! Those are rookie numbers. I propose a mclaren for every homeless person. We will weath tax all stocks in the fortune 500 to pay for it, crash the stocks and solve inequality.
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If money isn't solving the problem, you're just not using enough.
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You can't solve a shortage with demand subsidies. You need to expand supply. SF has too little housing relative to its population, and has perennially tried throwing money at the nonprofit industrial complex which has (obviously) perennially failed to solve the problem because it doesn't generate new housing units, it just bids up and reshuffles the existing ones (and steals a lot of money in the process).
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OK, use money to expand supply. Using more money can make more supply.
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Technically, cratering every fortune 500 does solve inequality so at it's purest their argument is right.

I think it's more socialist/communist motivation to seize production I don't think they care about the rich as much as control.

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This has basically nothing to do with with market cap of Google or Larry Page's percentage ownership of it; and the state government taxing it more will not make this situation any better.
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that has ZERO to do with the tax system... You can't be serious? Have you looked at the data at all? have you seen how much money is spent "combatting" homelessness in San Francisco?
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just not his problem. not a single motherfucker on this website lives their life as if wealth disparities are a genuine problem anyways. you are motivated by resentment
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