San Francisco proposes “IPO tax” on eve of Uber offering
San Francisco legislators' complete inability to understand economics never fails to amaze me. There are twenty different taxes and bonds proposed every single year by the city to "build affordable housing." And every year, that money is squandered in regulation and red tape, while housing prices continue to rise.<p>The issue here is, first and foremost, supply and demand. San Francisco has made the process of building new housing so incredibly onerous that, once a developer finally succeeds in erecting a building, the only ones they can sell to are the wealthy. If it was easier to build in SF, with less regulation, less restrictive zoning, and less expense, then housing would be built for the middle class. Then, the city could apply affordable housing policies to reserve units in middle income buildings, and the housing crisis could be averted.<p>But instead, our legislature continually enacts nonsense like this, which accomplishes little beyond rabble rousing.