San Francisco Moderates Launch $10 Million War Chest to Stop Socialist Tax Scheme That Would Devastate City’s Economy

A devastating 800% tax increase looms over San Francisco businesses — and one powerful advocacy group is mobilizing $10 million to stop the economic catastrophe before it destroys what’s left of the city’s struggling recovery.

Neighbors for a Better San Francisco is mounting an aggressive campaign to defeat a wave of radical leftist ballot measures that threaten to complete the economic destruction progressive policies have already inflicted on the once-great city.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

The Socialist Trojan Horse

The primary target: a deceptively-named “CEO tax” that progressive activists and labor unions are pushing for the June ballot. Don’t be fooled by the Robin Hood rhetoric — this isn’t about punishing wealthy executives.

This is about punishing every family already struggling to afford groceries.

“It’s going to destroy our economy overnight, there’s no question,” warns Jay Cheng, who leads Neighbors for a Better San Francisco. He’s not exaggerating.

Your Grocery Bill Is About to Explode

The tax doesn’t actually target individual CEOs. Instead, it hammers companies with a large pay gap between top executives and median workers — which means virtually every major employer and retailer operating in San Francisco.

Starbucks. Target. Chipotle. CVS. Grocery Outlet. Nordstrom. The Gap. Ross Dress for Less.

Every single one faces massive tax increases under this scheme. And where do you think those costs go? Directly onto consumers already crushed by California’s cost-of-living crisis — or the businesses simply abandon the city entirely.

“If the CEO tax passes in June, the message to business is you can’t reliably predict what your tax bill will be year over year,” Cheng explains. “Your tax bill will suddenly be 800% higher — no business can plan around that.”

He’s absolutely right. What business can survive an 800% tax increase? What company will continue investing in a city that views success as something to be punished?

The Socialist Agenda Expands

San Francisco already has an “overpaid CEO” tax adding surcharges based on executive-to-worker pay ratios. This new measure, championed by the SEIU and Democratic Socialist Supervisor Jackie Fielder and her progressive ally Connie Chan, would dramatically expand that surcharge.

The radicals claim it will raise $200 million annually for “essential city services.”

Translation: $200 million more for the bloated bureaucracy that’s already failed San Francisco spectacularly.

Fielder isn’t stopping there. She’s simultaneously pushing another tax on financial institutions to fund a San Francisco “public bank” — because apparently, the government does such a stellar job managing everything else in the city.

California’s War on Success

This isn’t an isolated attack. It’s part of a coordinated statewide assault on achievement and prosperity.

Los Angeles is pursuing its own “overpaid CEO” tax. Progressive activists are pushing a billionaire tax that could drive $1 trillion in wealth out of California — wealth that funds jobs, innovation, and the tax base itself.

These people won’t stop until California returns to economic feudalism, with elites controlling a dependent underclass.

Neighbors for a Better San Francisco understands the battlefield extends beyond city limits. They’re campaigning against the statewide billionaire tax proposal.

“If we can get the wealth tax to 50/50 in San Francisco, it’s dead statewide,” Cheng said.

Smart strategy. San Francisco represents the progressive movement’s crown jewel. If even San Francisco voters reject this socialist nonsense, the message reverberates across California.

The Moderate Resistance Grows

Steven Buss Bacio, co-founder of another moderate political group called GrowSF, recognizes the fundamental dishonesty of the CEO tax proposal.

“It does not tax CEOs, it taxes consumers,” he states plainly. “It is effectively a tariff on goods in San Francisco.”

Exactly. This is Economics 101, which apparently wasn’t taught at whatever schools produced these progressive supervisors.

Neighbors for a Better San Francisco isn’t just playing defense. The group is backing San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan’s gubernatorial campaign and supporting moderate candidates for Board of Supervisors and school board positions.

They’ve proven effective before. The organization played a crucial role in the successful 2022 recalls of far-left District Attorney Chesa Boudin and three progressive school board members who prioritized renaming schools over actually educating children.

Follow the Money

Primary funding comes from Republican billionaire donor Bill Oberndorf, though Cheng notes the group increasingly attracts smaller individual donors — evidence that ordinary San Franciscans are fed up with progressive governance.

That’s the real story here. Even in ultraliberal San Francisco, residents are waking up to the reality that progressive policies don’t create prosperity — they destroy it.

The Bottom Line

The “CEO tax” represents everything wrong with progressive economic thinking. It sounds good in a campaign slogan. It feels righteous to activists who’ve never created a job or met a payroll.

But it’s economically illiterate and practically disastrous.

Businesses don’t absorb 800% tax increases — they pass them on or leave. Consumers don’t benefit from punitive taxation of employers — they pay higher prices and lose access to goods and services.

San Francisco already suffers from one of America’s highest costs of living, rampant homelessness, open-air drug markets, and an exodus of businesses and residents. The city needs policies that encourage economic recovery, not ideological crusades that complete its destruction.

Neighbors for a Better San Francisco deserves support for standing against this madness. Their $10 million investment in economic sanity could save the city billions in lost economic activity.

The choice for San Francisco voters is crystal clear: reject progressive pipe dreams and embrace policies that might actually work, or continue the death spiral that’s already devastated one of America’s greatest cities.

The June ballot will tell us whether San Franciscans have finally had enough.