The proposed tax was very popular. In San Francisco. It polled at nearly 75 percent in favor.
But it possessed a fatal flaw.
And worse.
The fatal flaw? The numbers didn’t add up.
Organizers spent nearly half a million bucks developing and promoting and getting the petition signatures to place Proposition K on this November’s ballot.
The notion? Tax Amazon sales within city limits to fund a guaranteed income scheme in the Golden City.
But then they learned — after it qualified for the ballot — that it was an incoherent tax-and-spend mess. Its chief pusher, John Elberling, admitted, reports The San Francisco Standard, that “he made mistakes in calculating how Amazon earns its revenue in the city.” And, The Standard continues, “the City Controller’s office found that the tax measure would actually harm hundreds of small businesses in San Francisco and cut revenue to the city’s general fund by about $10 million a year.”
So Elberling ate crow, admitting to error (and also, apparently, to misleading petition signers), and a judge removed Prop K from the ballot.
Whew. Disaster averted.
Alas, Elberling promises to “perfect” his scheme, and advance it again.
Which is ominous, for the core idea itself — adding on more taxes to fund a trendy-but-disastrous “guaranteed income” — is not the way out of California’s progressive-induced nightmare. It’s just a vastly bigger version of what’s gone on before.
If Californians don’t develop more common sense about the limitations of salvation-by-government, they are doomed to repeat such folly.
That goes double for San Franciscans.
Who this time have a reprieve, thankfully.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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