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San Francisco Passes a First-of-its-Kind Tax on Big Businesses To Help the Homeless (recode.net)

San Francisco voters passed a measure that has divided the tech community and sparked a national debate about the industry's responsibility to fix the city's homelessness crisis. From a report: The San Francisco Chronicle called the race at 60 percent in favor with 99 percent of the vote counted. Proposition C will raise the city's gross receipts tax by an average of .5 percent on annual gross receipts over $50 million that companies like Square, Lyft and Salesforce generate. The new funds will bring in an estimated $250 million to $300 million a year -- twice what the city currently spends on an annual basis to help the homeless in tech's de facto capital. The thousands of people living on San Francisco's streets serve as a daily reminder of economic inequality in a city that has one of the highest concentrations of billionaires in the nation. Earlier this year, a United Nations expert on housing called the living conditions of the homeless in the Bay Area "cruel" and "unacceptable." The decision to increase funding for the city's most needy is a victory for the local nonprofits behind the measure and their tech fairy godfather, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who, along with his company, has poured more than $7 million into the campaign in the month leading up to the election.

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  1. Re: Migration by reanjr · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Yes, in fact, I have. And your understanding of this is myopic at best. Sure, it's warmer in FL and there are better services in CA, but you can squat in your own house in MI. And the reality is homeless people aren't any different than the rest of the nation: they refuse to move to a new area for better opportunity. This is why Trump promises to bring back coal: his conetituents are too chicken shit to pick up and move to where there are jobs.