There is a generation of Oakland that does not believe in that compact. They do not want to work, but will exist on entitlement programs and crime to receive societies values.

Your point was somewhat vague, and I would be curious to hear exactly what you mean. Should we support those in society that choose not to work? Should we except criminal behavior because they want out of the rat race?

Good cameras aren’t too expensive and the restaurants should all put them up. Perhaps instead of funneling city money to pet not for profits, some of those funds could go to the smaller restaurants for cameras. Furthermore, since these cameras come with IP addresses, maybe a not for profit could fund an internet based archive for the camera feeds.

Several Oakland neighborhood associations have put in private neighborhood camera systems recently. The trick is to get the angles on the cameras so they just cover the streets and only the property of the folks who opt in. In a previous post, I was not too happy with the OPD’s response to private cameras. However, I’m fairly sure quality video of the next take over robbery would get a different response.

John: That plan was an extreme meant to illustrate a point, but it’s is no less harsh than telling me that the value of my willing to do that means that I have to subsidize others who don’t do that. I won’t call other people 2nd tier for working less if you don’t call me 2nd tier for willing to be “on all the time”.

If my plan is elitist, then it’s driven by self-defense: My wallet is patently being attacked. because of my burning desire to get ahead, and the resultant benefit in terms of annual income. Your plan is truly the opposite – dragging down those among us who *are* willing to do that to move the ball ahead by any means necessary.

Please John: Explain to me why my marginal tax bracket needs to be higher, and why I need to subsidize those not willing to work as much as I? Why are their lives more important than mine? Why are you engaging in class warfare on me?

My block has done quite well in the last two years because we’re doing just this. If somebody is drunk in front of my building at noon, at the very least, I tell them to go away. You can even do the condemnation gently: “please don’t come on my block drunk in the middle of the day and sit in front of my house”. I think this often embarrasses even the farthest gone wino.

Back to cameras: My brother and I came home from Mama Buzz around Christmastime and as we walked down my block we saw a man sitting in a minivan. Then we say a local addict’s head pop out of his lap. She saw me and got up and out fast. I got out my cameraphone and took pictures. Of him. Of the John and his car. I did it so he could see that I was doing it. I didn’t know mini-vans could peel out like that.

You ideas are quite elitist. If someone is not “on” all the time, if they are not pushing and pushing for that new project or insight, etc., then there is no equal place for them in the world. If a person isn’t like this (like you), then they are second tier and deserve only what the fist-tier folks say that they deserve. Pathetic.

One day you may see how elitist and biased this view is. Could it be possible that a majority of people in the world simply want to live their lives and not a rat race? The problem is that there are a lot of people who believe as you do. You criticize those who have a sense of entitlement when, in fact, it is people with views such as yours who have a much stronger sense of entitlement. I am speaking here, of course, of the corporate elites and the knowledge and entrepreneur classes of earners.

It is so often the case that these groups have worked and socialized with their own kind for so long that they simply can’t fathom a lifestyle that is not based on the perpetual pursuit of more, whether it is money, power, fame or whatever. They become oblivious to others who are not like them; or worse, they become scornful of others who are not like them or their friends. And their scorn is re-enforced because these classes believe their own successes to be self-evident examples of how the world should be, of how a person should be.

Well, this is simply not true, of course, and my comments could naturally drift in the direction of discussing how and why there is such a huge and growing income gap in the world – I think it is because the first tier people (my definition) feel so completely entitled to all that money and have structured the exchange of money for services to their own advantage in this regard.

Maybe one day you will be lucky enough to see that what you espouse is nothing more than this generation’s version of the Rat Race. Please don’t wreck the world for the rest of us while you are “doing your thing.”

some interesting snippets from it, and hopefully i’m not taking anything out of context.
—————————————————–
“With regard to the escalating problems of crime and/or nuisance street behavior in Oakland and San Francisco, there is one historically proven-effective approach to these and related social problems which city leaders seem unwilling to consider. This is the approach of public moral condemnation of immoral behavior.
…
We maintain the delusion that persons whose characters are seriously compromised by immorality and depravity only need “opportunities” and various goodies handed out to them.
…
we have fostered the moral collapse of these elements of society precisely by giving them lots of free stuff without asking for anything in return: such as work or moral behavior.
…
it is not more opportunities and free stuff which are needed by the depraved and the immoral: it is a a greater collective moral condemnation of their immoral behavior and attitudes”
—————————————————–

Others don’t make as much as me? Boo freakin hoo, try working your ass off for a change, fly all over the country, don’t see your friends & families for weeks at a time, and see how suddenly mobility comes.

You wanna talk economic mobililty? Let’s incentivize behavior that really gets to the heart of motivating what drives that – hard work. As said in a prior post, index this to hours worked. Every hour under 50 you work per week results in an additional 1% marginal income tax rate, or a loss of $1000 of your tax exemption.

You want a sense of entitlement and not want to work hard, you suffer the consequences. There’s no free handouts to anyone in this world, least of all some poor guy who could be working morre but doesn’t want to and feels I should support him because i’m afraid of guillotines and being robbed.

The scary thing is that I was the most liberal guy I knew when I lived in DC & NY. It’s moving out here, without changing my fundamental principles, where the same positions are suddenly ultra-right-wing.

Better yet, streaming webcams from every storefront on the restaurant rows. It has to be feasible. If every storefront had one, you’d be more able to track the perps on the way in and on the way out. Somebody oughta get businesses organized and do a group buy. I believe its perfectly legal for citizens to record the public right away in front of their property. It should therefore be totally legal if a bunch of them do it at the same time.

If I was a restaurantuer in this town, I’d consider hollowing out something that looks very expensive, and putting a transmitter in it. Can’t be too tricky. Maybe Instructibles.com will help you figure it out.

Most small retail businesses operate on very thin margins; hence, rather small drops in top line receipts, due to high profile crime, can mean financial disaster. I’m not convinced of the broken windows policing theory but I am convinced that another eight high profile take-over robberies between now and Christmas will mean disaster for many Oakland restaurants.

Even if you believe that utopian social mobility and 95% marginal tax rates will eliminate crime neither will happen between now and Christmas.

I must admit, I did get a little exicted about the poverty in China thing, but calling it ‘apples to oranges’ is as much an understatement as mine was an overstatement. Poverty in the US means housing subsidies, free (if slow and uneven) healthcare, income transfers, free education and access to very cheap (by historical standards) consumer goods. Poverty in China (and again, this is all literal) means washing clothes in a polluted stream, drinking from water fed by that stream, no indoor plumbing, no hospitals for miles of impassable roads, on and on. Tell the multiple families living in caves (literally) who give upthat to move to a coastal city to work 16 hours a day in construction or a sweat shop and then live in unbuilt buildings along with 20 others using Sterno to cook their meals and receive absolutely no health care and no education for their children that fewer of them are poor than in the US.