[leot]

SF is rich and unequal. So are dozens of places. Yet I don't know of any other major urban area in a developed country that has the kind of crime we see here.

Yes, let's create great safety nets. As a city with a $9 billion budget (for just 800,000 people; that's $11k for every person living here) they can afford better safety nets than anywhere.

So if it's not the inequality, and it's not lack of funding, what's the cause of all the crime and homelessness?

Here are a few examples of how dysfunctional SF politics is: [1] Chris Sacca tried to give SF free wifi 15 years ago, and they wouldn't accept it. https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/mf1x52/chris_...

[2] During covid, the SF school board decided one of their highest priorities would be to spend 10s of millions to rename their schools https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984919925/san-francisco-schoo...

[3] Because they claimed the law disproportionately impacted people of color, SF made all shoplifting of goods valued less than $950 a misdemeanor. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...

So maybe — just maybe — it's not the insane inequality. It's utterly horrible governance.

[CrackerNews]

Why not both? The governance could be horrible because its serving the political philosophy of the resident unequally rich to assuage their guilt over their unequal position in society while keeping their unequal position.

[short_sells_poo]

That to me still sounds like inequality. Sure, it can arise because of horrible governance, which just means that money is not spent where it should be.

[vuln]

Money spent by the government is NEVER really spent “where it should be” it’s all mostly a grift and everyone has their hands in the cash drawer. Not much actually makes it to the cause. It goes to the administration, research and pontification that does nothing to help the people in need.

One side is adamantly agains _trickle down economics_ but if you look at their social safety net or programs it’s all trickle down with barely anything hitting the people in need.

[madsbuch]

> SF is rich and unequal. So are dozens of places.

Out of curiosity: Can you provide some cities with similar equivalence and violence?

[mind-blight]

Unfortunately, Portland is one. Been living here for the past 6 years and I've watched the city rapidly fall apart in the last couple of years. We've had the most violent years on record. Homelessness has skyrocketed.

I can't say that this is directly caused by reduced police budget (there are a ton of factors), but I can confidently say the city is horribly managed.

The most recent example is the city government's proposal to force homeless folks into designated camps that would cost a minimum of $4k per tent (this number comes from the city's own report). That's more than what many Portlanders live on, and they'd still be living in tents.

[ibejoeb]

Seattle also has a similar profile.

But to the point, no, I can't cite a dozen cities that have is quite as bad as SF.

[AbrahamParangi]

Boston is also a rich city, has similar inequality, and has 1/3 the crime rate of SF.

[komali2]

> Yet I don't know of any other major urban area in a developed country that has the kind of crime we see here.

Every other major city in America has similar levels of violent crime https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Crime in the USA is high compared to most developed nations, that is true, however, this helps your OP's argument, as many attribute this to the USA's stark income disparity, which correlates strongly with crime.

https://journalofeconomicstructures.springeropen.com/article...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80897-8

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/06/07/the-star...

> As a city with a $9 billion budget (for just 800,000 people; that's $11k for every person living here) they can afford better safety nets than anywhere.

Just because the money is there, doesn't mean it's being spent correctly. This seems true for the entire nation: the richest country on earth for some reason still has homeless people. In my opinion this is because the most progressive politician that can managed to be elected in the USA at any level of government would be considered a conservative in most other countries. Therefore the kinds of "safety net" an American politician might try to introduce aren't actual, evidence-based effective solutions. For example, as linked prior, healthcare access likely causes reduced crime. The USA clearly has enough money to provide free healthcare for all citizens, since Americans pay more than anyone on earth for healthcare: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193322/ . So, it's a good idea for many reasons to simply provide free healthcare for all citizens. Yet we need not discuss here the myriad of reasons such propositions in ANY form are dead on arrival at any level of government in the USA.

This issue seems mirrored in SF. The SF government seems more interested in engaging in performative politics than actual progressivism.

> Chris Sacca tried to give SF free wifi 15 years ago, and they wouldn't accept it.

This seems too out of date to matter. Anyway, the reason for rejection seems sound to me: https://web.archive.org/web/20091009152536/http://www.sfgov.... TLDR google wanted user data and control of utility poles.

> During covid, the SF school board decided one of their highest priorities would be to spend 10s of millions to rename their schools

The first sentence of this article is: "The San Francisco Board of Education will ultimately keep the names of dozens of public schools in a case of high-stakes second thoughts."

They didn't end up changing the names so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

> SF made all shoplifting of goods valued less than $950 a misdemeanor.

Which means it's up to the cops whether they want to investigate, and the DA whether they want to prosecute. Not sure who you're trying to blame here, in my experience SF cops are notoriously lazy. Are you suggesting that if we dangle the "carrot" of nuking some kid's life with a felony charge for stealing an expensive bag, the cops will work harder at their job? Misdemeanor charges aren't a good enough motivator for cops? Anyway, not sure how this is dysfunctional, I don't want resources spent on protecting the interests of Balenciaga or whatever, I'd much rather cops focus on, you know, solving murders.

Also, apparently the governor and the mayor both kicked off concerted efforts to target crime rings involved in this kind of shoplifting?

This article has a lot of good fact checking: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-crime-Che...

So far every reply making blind jabs at a spectre of "progressive politics" has been like this. It saddens me that so many on this forum are thirsty for simple Hammurabi code style punitive justice systems despite the reams of evidence that it's ineffective.