Current Events > Almost all stores in downtown San Francisco being boarded up.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yes! Those poor, poor people. They smash and grab luxury items because they are hungry! Nevermind that they get $200 in food stamps per person who qualifies ( which is anyone with low or 0 income).
yes, let me shed tears for criminals.

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DemonBuffet posted...

Yes! Those poor, poor people. They smash and grab luxury items because they are hungry!

I'm not quite sure what strawman you're responding to

DemonBuffet posted...

Nevermind that they get $200 in food stamps

You do know what city you're talking about right

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Ysmir posted...

I'm not quite sure what strawman you're responding to

You do know what city you're talking about right

Oh yeah my bad, they get 234 per person.

While most working class or college students dont even get to allocate $100 for food in their budgets.


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Fuck piece of shit criminals.

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I'm not sure what it will take, but maybe eventually people will start voting differently. Seems like people aren't catching on or just don't care, though.

I'd be kinda peeved if I was a well off, upper middle class or rich liberal living in SF and have to walk through feces, needles, homeless and now shuttered stores, too. But I guess some people have trouble connecting the dots sometimes, or truly believe that "it's just part of city life".

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Houston posted...

I'd be kinda peeved if I was a well off, upper middle class or rich liberal living and SF have to walk through feces, needles, homeless and now shuttered stores, too.

Wealth is always more mobile than poverty, which is what's going to happen next, soon.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Wealth is always more mobile than poverty, which is what's going to happen next, soon.

I mean I get a lot of them can afford to hop on a plane and take a vacation and get out of the city. But I'd be frustrated knowing what I have to come home to and deal with every day, even If I could retreat to my $5,000/mo secured luxury apartment at the end of the day.

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Houston posted...

I mean I get a lot of them can afford to hop on a plane and take a vacation and get out of the city.

More than likely, the gentrification cycle will flip back to wealth abandoning the urban core again.

Questionmarktarius posted...

More than likely, the gentrification cycle will flip back to wealth abandoning the urban core again.

Yeah, which is already happening. CA had their first ever population decline last year. I can only hope those leaving either vote differently or never voted that way in the first place and are just tired of it. But I'm sure some leaving still have their heads in the cloud and think it simply must just be the state or city itself.

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Gamerguymass posted...

"Stealing is ok as long as I don't like the people being stolen from."

Strawman fallacy. Never said or even implied stealing is ok.

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Gamerguymass posted...

"Stealing is ok as long as I don't like the people being stolen from."

maybe take a reading comprehension course or something.

Or just keep saying stupid shit, thats fun to laugh at too.

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All else aside, there is something amusingly dystopian about luxury stores painting their plywood barricades to match their storefronts.

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I honestly don't care. The people of San Francisco and California voted for the lunacy policies and politicians that encourage this mass looting and crime spree. Let the people reap what they voted for.


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All that crap is insured anyways fuck em

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DD Divine posted...

All that crap is insured anyways fuck em

...which jacks up the insurance rate for next time, which encourages relocating to the suburbs or some exurb even harder.

is this not from last year

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Hell yeah, you pro looter clowns done fucked up. Look at what this thieving mongrels are doing to communities. They need to be brought to heel by any means necessary.

I was in San Francisco a couple years ago briefly and to me the real problem was the literal people begging and living on the street right next to high end restaurants and stores. The massive disparity is incredibly sad to behold. It felt very dystopian. I never thought oh man convenience stores have products behind glass cases, how awful!

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ssjevot posted...

I was in San Francisco a couple years ago briefly and to me the real problem was the literal people begging and living on the street right next to high end restaurants and stores.

Poverty follows wealth, and then the wealth goes somewhere else.
Repeat forever.

RamboCell29 posted...

I honestly don't care. The people of San Francisco and California voted for the lunacy policies and politicians that encourage this mass looting and crime spree. Let the people reap what they voted for.

@RamboCell29 The people of California were hoodwinked by the politicians on Prop 47, the "Safe Schools and Streets Act". It has nothing to do with making things safer and adopted that name to guilt people into voting for it.

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DD Divine posted...

All that crap is insured anyways fuck em

I think you may be missing the point. Boarded up stores (or permanently closed stores) means less places for residents to shop. It also means less tourists will come to shop and spend their money not just at the stores, but spend money on hotels and other resources while they're there.

And most obviously, it means less places for people to work.

The main takeaway is not necessarily to feel bad for the larger companies, because they will survive anyways and move somewhere else (unless they're a mom and pop shop, in which case you should feel bad and those have also been affected).

The takeaway should be that this is bad. This is unsustainable. Imagine if this was going on in every city in the country. It'd be terrible.

This really should be a wake up call and foreshadowing for a lot of people. But I suspect it will fall on deaf ears, since this seems to have been a "work in progress" for many years in some of these cities. This didn't just happen overnight.

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Questionmarktarius posted...

Poverty follows wealth, and then the wealth goes somewhere else.
Repeat forever.

There are very few homeless people in Japan (depending on what stats you look at it has one of or the lowest homeless population of any major country) and less wealth inequality than the US. I have never seen anything remotely like what I saw in San Francisco here. The idea that this is just how things need to be is wrong.

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ssjevot posted...

The idea that this is just how things need to be is wrong.

Cynical observation doesn't consider how things "need to be".

Questionmarktarius posted...

Cynical observation doesn't consider how things "need to be".

Okay so, why is it we don't have that here in Japan? Give me your cynical observation.

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You get what you vote for. These soft on crime DAs ran on allowing their cities to fall into lawlessness. It would be one thing if they ran on doing their jobs and then did a 180 on the people that elected them, but they made it clear how they would run the DA offices when they were running. Democracy is grand.

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Any particular reason why? Is there a storm coming in or something?

ssjevot posted...

Okay so, why is it we don't have that here in Japan? Give me your cynical observation.

Same as Scandinavia, more or less.
Those redistributed from, are pretty cool with it.

Sucks to be them. Ironically the only stores in my down town are hardware and lumber

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Lol what a chit hole and I Iive here

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It's never been a big secret that most of the "oh no, shoplifting!" Walgreens were already planned for closure.

Houston posted...

I'm not sure what it will take, but maybe eventually people will start voting differently. Seems like people aren't catching on or just don't care, though.

I'd be kinda peeved if I was a well off, upper middle class or rich liberal living in SF and have to walk through feces, needles, homeless and now shuttered stores, too. But I guess some people have trouble connecting the dots sometimes, or truly believe that "it's just part of city life".

Sounds like we need to enact large social programs and raise wages and lift people out of poverty. Raised taxes are a must.

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Stalolin posted...

What point are you trying to make or what are you trying to convey? The 2nd twitter post is a particularly bad interpretation of whatever he was interpreting from the highlight.

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Houston posted...

I'm not sure what it will take, but maybe eventually people will start voting differently. Seems like people aren't catching on or just don't care, though.

The problem is the only thing that conservatives will offer as a solution is bus tickets or killing the poor.

"Crime rates are out of control" is almost always sensationalist propaganda that is either downright wrong or over-exaggerating short-term increases. All so anyone who suggests anything other than getting tough on crime can be accused of being a criminal supporter and part of the problem.

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ButteryMales posted...

The problem is the only thing that conservatives will offer as a solution is bus tickets or killing the poor.

They offer increasing the prison population because they only believe in reacting in a draconian way to effects and hoping that stops the causes. And they'll accuse you of siding with the violent animal criminals for doubting their plan.

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hockeybub89 posted...

"Crime rates are out of control" is almost always sensationalist propaganda that is either downright wrong or over-exaggerating short-term increases. All so anyone who suggests anything other than getting tough on crime can be accused of being a criminal supporter and part of the problem.

I'm not sure exactly how crime rates are calculated or how individual jurisdictions calculate them. What I do know is that cities 20-30 years ago didn't generally have miles of tents, open drug use, open defecation, and if it did occur, people certainly weren't saying that it was normal or just part of living in a big city. Stores certainly wouldn't have boarded up or shut down due to rampant crime (apart from big events such as the 90s LA riot).

You can dance around it all you want, but I see with my own two eyes the difference. Things are getting pretty bad in some places and it wasn't like that before. Maybe you don't notice a difference, but I certainly do.

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ButteryMales posted...

The problem is the only thing that conservatives will offer as a solution is bus tickets or killing the poor.

I'm not sure where you get that from, to be quite honest. These specific looting examples, in my opinion, have much less to do with poverty and much more to do with laxed laws they are taking advantage of, coupled with the decreased police presence and general lack of enforcement.

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Isn't it funny how every conservative on CE magically lives in LA or SF and totally hates CA.

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Ysmir posted...

Isn't it funny how every conservative on CE magically lives in LA or SF and totally hates CA.

whut

Questionmarktarius posted...

whut

Talking about Houston. I'm implying many of the conservatives here who claim to live in CA (or at least in SF or LA) are lying.

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Houston posted...

I do know is that cities 20-30 years ago didn't generally have miles of tents, open drug use, open defecation, and if it did occur, people certainly weren't saying that it was normal or just part of living in a big city.

What rock have you been living under? Just watch a non-sitcom from the 90s or 2000s.

Houston posted...

I'm not sure where you get that from, to be quite honest. These specific looting examples, in my opinion, have much less to do with poverty and much more to do with laxed laws they are taking advantage of, coupled with the decreased police presence and general lack of enforcement.

So you also think this is well paid people just having fun?

Ysmir posted...

Talking about Houston. I'm implying many of the conservatives here who claim to live in CA (or at least in SF or LA) are lying.

Okay, I clearly haven't been paying too much attention. Sorry about that.

Just an Ayn Rand loon in Kansas City.

Ysmir posted...

Isn't it funny how every conservative on CE magically lives in LA or SF and totally hates CA.

Never said I lived there. I know people who have lived there, though. What do you think about the situation? You seem to just be making comments against certain users without providing any sustenance to the topic.

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ButteryMales posted...

So you also think this is well paid people just having fun?

No, of course not. Your question is kind of alluding that they want to be well paid and just can't catch a break, so they go out and loot designer stores. Do you think that's the case? They don't have a high enough paying job so they want organize together and meet up to burglarize designer stores?

Certainly not how I was raised, or how my parents were raised. And one of my parents grew up with very little.

My guess is that the people involved probably don't have much of an interest in working in the first place, much less working hard enough to gain a respectable salary.

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Houston posted...

They don't have a high enough paying job so they want organize together and meet up to burglarize designer stores?

When grocery stores get flash-robbed, we're truly fucked.

Ysmir posted...

Isn't it funny how every conservative on CE magically lives in LA or SF and totally hates CA.

Isn't it funny how many people on CE from California slurp the koolaid and can't admit any there's anything wrong with it?

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Ysmir posted...

https://twitter.com/leximcmenamin/status/1465740106531233797?s=21

She's patting herself on the back so hard, I can feel a hand on my shoulder blades.

<___<

Houston posted...

What point are you trying to make or what are you trying to convey? The 2nd twitter post is a particularly bad interpretation of whatever he was interpreting from the highlight.

@Houston

the second example does seem to exaggerate - the first post however appears true. Here it is with sources.

https://theappeal.org/retail-theft-ben-dugan-cvs-walgreens-shoplifting/

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB331

490.4. (a) A person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of organized retail theft, and shall be punished pursuant to subdivision (b):

(2) Acts in concert with two or more persons to receive, purchase, or possess merchandise described in paragraph (1), knowing or believing it to have been stolen.


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