San Francisco needs more billionaires, men and women of wealth who will work for everyone else.
I know this proposal goes against the usual leftist call for more democracy, an end to wealth inequality and no rule by plutocrats.
But I am reluctant to admit that our city, like most of the country, is now run by and for billionaires.
Consider the evidence: The latest report from that questionable source, The New York Times, tells us Donald Trump decided not to send the National Guard into San Francisco after he talked to three wealthy men: Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, and Daniel Lurie, mayor of our city.
“The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday, but friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress,” Trump said, according to the Times.
The same source made no mention of the 50,000 protesters who peacefully marched through our city a few days earlier to call for “No Kings” and object to Trump’s disregard for democracy and the Constitution. The fact the 50,000 opposed National Guard troops being sent here, as they have been sent into other urban centers, seems irrelevant if you read only the Times. From that report you would have to conclude that billionaires in conversation with one another determine national and local policies, the public at large has little say about such decisions. What are the voices of 50,000 or 7 million marchers, compared to the talk that goes on among three or four billionaires?
Given such imbalance, where three people may be heeded more than 50,000, it may be time for San Francisco to reconsider its spending priorities. Much of the city’s current annual budget of $16 billion is spent on the general public’s needs: safety, healthcare, transportation, education. But not one billionaire is fully funded by the budget, as far as I know.
If the city paid out about $8 billion a year to create eight new billionaires (maybe just raise the salary of eight supervisors to $1 billion each), it would have a lot of new plutocrats who could stay in contact with the White House and influence its policies.
Help us save local journalism!
Every tax-deductible donation helps us grow to cover the issues that mean the most to our community. Become a 48 Hills Hero and support the only daily progressive news source in the Bay Area.
Not only would they be able to keep the National Guard out of the region; they could also pick up their phones, dial a friend at the White House and tell him that our city needs all its immigrants, its teachers, its crossing guards, its other civil servants and essential workers to keep San Francisco’s valuable A.I. industry alive and growing. The A.I. industry’s health, not that of city residents, would be a major reason for Washington to agree with our wealthy representatives, of course.
Already a few wealthy men, such as Benioff (who lives in Hawaii) and Huang, have the president’s ear, and it seems they told the Trump that our city’s tourism and growing A.I. industry would not benefit from an occupation by the National Guard. But imagine how much more influence the city could have if eight new billionaires told the White House how much San Francisco has advanced their wealth, and how their city will benefit from withdrawal of all ICE agents and an infusion of grants for public schools, mass transit and affordable housing. (The White House probably doesn’t hear this from many billionaires at present; my proposal would correct that oversight.)
As part of their annual work assignment, the new San Francisco billionaires would also agree to pay a 5 percent wealth tax to the city, and redistribute another 70 percent of their annual wealth through tax-deductible donations to social services and affordable housing funds. This would still leave them with an annual income of $250,000, which is probably enough to rent living quarters in San Francisco and enjoy some of its culture (and maybe to get a direct line to the White House).
At the “No Kings” march last week, I saw a group of mock-billionaires, marchers wearing theatrical top hats and gold threads and carrying signs that said: “Billionaires for Trump.” I would like to see a new group of billionaires on parade in the next protest. These marchers wouldn’t be billionaire impersonators, they would be newly funded city employees, paid a billion a year, and their signs would say: “Share the Wealth.”
Joel Schechter is author of several books on satire.
