Imagine your city has a 33% office vacancy rate. What’s the most absurd thing you could do in response?

Photo above - San Francisco politicians plan to transform their beleaguered city into something like Stockholm, with $300 million new taxes to fight mental illness. Wait til you see what they plan to tax . . .

Word up to socialists: taxes on stuff is how governments get money to pay for free things. This may not be apparent to officials who seldom pay taxes and only dream up new ones.

Today’s city in the spotlight: San Franciso. SF has an office vacancy rate of 33%. Employers are fleeing due to high costs, high crime, and homeless encampments on the sidewalks blocking front doors. What to do? How about a new tax on people who work at the surviving companies?

Executives and tech wizards in California have already been told that 4.X% of their savings and investments will be confiscated by the state government if they dare to remain. The tax will be retroactive to past years. And they will pay an exit tax if they try to leave.

Undeterred by the current exodus, the City of San Francisco is upping the ante: A new city income tax (5%) on high earning executives. What if that executive moves away but leaves his corporation behind? The new tax applies to EVERY corporate executive, no matter where they live - from Texas to Timbuctoo. Forever. (see links below)

A half dozen of San Franciscos elected officials have co-sponsored this bill. Bernie Sanders has championed it even though he lives 3,000 miles away. The bill’s backers fantasize that an additional $300 million in tax revenue will rain down from the sky annually.

So what would the new tax money be spent on? “Mental Health services, hospitals, and unnamed city services”. Stop laughing, they really said that. Who can argue against better mental health treatment? Especially in San Francisco, where the downtown area is now a festival of open-air drug sales and tents, as if this was 1969 Woodstock. But with Fentanyl instead of pot.. More hospitals are a good thing too – like mom and apple pie.

Is this stuff likely to survive a constitutional challenge? Uncertain. San Francisco's “Measure D” is in uncharted territory – tax the paychecks of people who don't live in, work in, or travel to your city. Just because your employer owns a building there. The mind reels. The US Constitution’s Interstate Commerce Clause is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3. It explicitly outlaws this sort of chicanery, unless a majority vote in congress approves, and is signed into law by the president. Does anybody even read the constitution anymore, before they dream this tax stuff up?

Obama and Biden would probably veto a scheme like this. Even 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom has dodged taking a position. But it’s early in the campaign, and he will undoubtedly get asked before long.

Let’s recap what’s under discussion: a retroactive 5% confiscation of your wealth from a year or 2 earlier. Even if you moved out. An exit fee if you try to move out. An additional 4-5% city income tax forever into the future, if you moved elsewhere, but your company still an office in San Francisco. Why would any company remain? That 33% office vacancy rate could be headed to the moon.

I don’t think even Sweden would sign up for a tax scheme like this. But then Stockholm probably has better educated politicians.

I’m just sayin’ . . .



San Francisco, California, Measure D, Changes to Top Executive Pay Tax Initiative (June 2026) - Ballotpedia

https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,_California,_Measure_D,_Changes_to_Top_Executive_Pay_Tax_Initiative_%28June_2026%29


San Francisco’s CEO tax fight intensifies as new report sounds alarm

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/san-francisco-s-ceo-tax-fight-intensifies-as-new-report-sounds-alarm/ar-AA22yurD?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=69fc5cf19f3f4643b973368661202f07&ei=30