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Vice President Kamala Harris announced her economic plan in a speech on August 16. The plan included a push for bigger government by banning unfair price gouging on groceries and food, wiping out medical debt (is credit card debt next?), a child tax credit that would give families $6,000 per child for the first year of a child's life, and $25,000 subsidies for first-time homebuyers.
The only problem for home buyers is that if they live in Harris' San Francisco, the median home sale price has risen to an exorbitant $1.3 million, and they probably won't be able to afford the 2% down payment needed to buy the house. Good luck. If you're going to hand out free perks, why not also add free school lunches, unlimited recess, and Friday holidays?
The challenge with these populist ideas is how to fund them. If Americans look at policies instead of voting on popularity, we can see what's already happening in San Francisco, which may be a harbinger of the policies we'll see over the next four years.
Harris proposes reversing Trump-era tax cuts and dramatically raising corporate taxes
1. Forget about Democrats wanting to raise corporate taxes. Big corporations fund homeless services in San Francisco.
Approved by voters in 2019, the tax imposes an additional tax on large corporations to fund homeless services. The tax rate varies by industry, but ranges from 0.175% to 0.69% of gross receipts over $50 million. Companies or conglomerates that pay the executive office tax also pay a 1.5% surcharge on payroll expenses in San Francisco.
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden appeared together hours after reports emerged that VP Harris was seeking to “distance herself” from President Biden's policies. (Getty Images)
2. Forget the new commission rules for real estate agents: San Francisco imposes additional real estate transfer taxes.
This tax is in addition to any commission paid to real estate agents. San Francisco imposes a real estate transfer tax on the sale of real estate. The tax rate is graduated based on the sale price, ranging from 0.5% for properties under $250,000 to 6% for properties over $25 million. This is another clear example of wealth redistribution, costing even a middle-class San Francisco resident (whose average home value is $1,300,000) $10,500.
3. If you thought federal income and capital gains taxes couldn't go up, California has the highest state tax rates in the country.
If you live in California, there's one thing you know: you pay a lot in state taxes, especially state income taxes, which can reach 13.3% at the top end. But this January, as California's budget deficit worsened, the tax rate rose to a staggering 14.4%. This is the result of an uncapped California employee payroll tax of 1.1% on disability insurance.
Follow the policy. Under a Kamala administration, Americans will pay 6.2% of all income through Social Security, and the only way to solve all our problems may be to raise taxes.
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4. If you don't think Kamala supports big government with her price gouging comments, San Francisco has a sugary beverage tax.
The city imposes a sales tax of 1 cent per fluid ounce on all sugary drinks, syrups and powders distributed within the city of San Francisco for the first time. People who believe in big government only tax things to try to change behavior.
5. If you can't tax high-income earners, San Francisco has one of the highest sales taxes in the country.
California's sales tax rate of 7.25% is the highest in the nation, but middle-class residents of San Francisco are even better off, with a whopping 8.63% sales tax.
Does this mean the United States could impose a federal sales tax on every American, in addition to the income and payroll taxes they currently pay? No wonder San Francisco has completely lost its middle class while pretending to benefit the super-rich and the very poor.
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It is said that past performance is no guarantee of future results, but it can give people a great deal of insight into how leaders will make decisions in the future. The question is, will voters cast their ballots in November on popularity or policy?
If the policies enacted in San Francisco over the past six years are any indication of the future, having Kamala Harris in power will mean we will all steadily experience one thing: being taxed to the point of being paper-cut to death a thousand times.
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