Public Comment

People living in cities around the Bay Area desperately need money to pay for all of the increasingly expensive aspects of living which they encounter, but thank goodness there is a potential source of funding right here in front of us. Huge cash windfalls from initial stock offerings, billions in obscene venture capitalist profits, and the humongous bonuses paid to all the high-tech individuals who are turning our cozy communities into gentrified ghettos, are all large pools of money begging for taxation. This is a lot of money, which can be tapped to help the rest of us ordinary people - we waiters, waitresses, hamburger-flippers, teachers, nurses, gardeners, bums, handicapped, doctors, elderly, lawyers, and accountants - to get off the treadmill. With this Mother Lode we can build or buy a society owned or run by non-profits, trusts, limitless-equity cooperatives, or better still, the government itself. This California Gold Rush need not repeat the errors of 1849. 

INCREASE THE BUSINESS TAX (EVIL TAX) ON ANY ENTITY MAKING LOTS OF MONEY 

It can be done in any city in the Bay Area. Instead of making business taxes a percentage of gross receipts, link the Evil Tax instead to a percentage of the billions in unearned, undeserved, inequitable and entirely unacceptable dollars that these businesses generate for their speculating shareholders; link Evil Taxes as well to a percentage of the excessive salaries these rapacious entities pay their rotten spoiled dotcom employees. Only a simple majority plus one vote is needed for such measures, and certainly we ordinary working folk still outnumber those highfalutin’ brats with their self-driving Tesla cars and their hi-tech America’s Cup boats that don’t even stay in the water. Such ballot measures could involve the creation of a committee of best-qualified experts, such as social welfare counselors, bank tellers, and Robert Reich, to determine how the enormous amounts of confiscated funds could be best distributed amongst the rest of us, in order to ensure we would all become just as wealthy as those other stinkin’ nouveau riche. If required, corresponding ballot measures could be passed, allocating similar dollar amounts from the General Fund, to be distributed directly to “We the People” and "Occupy" thus guaranteeing the treasure chest wasn’t raided by bureaucrats with their pet projects. This is not just a pipe-dream. I personally lived in a country recently where such a program was put in place about 15 years ago, and the results have been impressive. It’s called Venezuela. 

The 58 billion dollar plus current assessed value of just the 2015 Tech IPO Pipeline should give voters a real idea of how much wealth the Bay Area prospectors are planning to grab for themselves just this year! In comparison, the $4 billion yearly rent pittance that Stephen Barton is targeting in his May 22nd piece is hardly worth wasting time on, when the real gold in them thar hills is just one more ballot measure away. If we grab this wealth now and spread it around equitably, then the Bay Area’s lack of “affordable housing” will be solved in one fell swoop. We’ll all be rich enough for Craftsman houses, stately Victorians in chic districts, or 360 degree panoramic view pads above the madding crowd.  

THE TAX WILL BE PAID BY THE FILTHY RICH, NOT BY ANYONE ELSE 

When the Federal income tax was first established, it amounted to 2% and only applied to the richest 10% of the nation’s income earners. We can do better than that now, by imposing 90% tax rates on the excessive income/capital gains of the filthiest top 1% of the Bay Area’s income earners. Of course they will remain disgustingly rich, but at least the rest of us will also be able to dine out occasionally. And as long as we’re not so stupid as to invest our portion of their ill-gotten goods, and make a killing ourselves, we’ll be completely free from the tax burden. 

RECAPTURE THE VALUE WE CREATE AS A COMMUNITY 

Adam Smith himself pointed out, in "The Wealth of Nations" that private individuals should not be able to profit from an internet which was not created by them, but rather by Vice-President Al Gore. Smith wrote: "Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.” All the residents of the Bay Area, not just capitalist pigs, Steve Jobs, and nerdy engineers, have made the tech world what it is today. Geography, happenstance, weather, and Stanford University, had nothing to do with it whatsoever. We created a diverse, open internet, leveraging it with our jealousies and rivalries in order to bring into existence a high-tech society of unsurpassed inequality. Nothing could be fairer than to eradicate the very environment which made possible such violations of distributive justice which epitomize social inequity. To the barricades and urns we should go, to finally put the Zuckerberg’s of the Bay Area in their place. Let us take most, if not everything, from the rich and distribute it amongst ourselves, since we deserve it far more