I'm not trying to get the working classes to revolt, I'm trying to get them to abandon that place and go work somewhere else. If SF is so expensive that working classes simply can't live there or live close enough to commute, then what happens to the city? How does the city manage when it can't find anyone willing to clean the streets, take out the trash, etc.? Or what if they have to pay people outrageous wages to do that to entice them to work there? If a local convenience store needs to pay people $60/hour to work there, that's going to result in some high prices. If a local restaurant needs to pay the cooks and waiters $60/hour, a meal there is going to be quite pricey. If the police and teachers need to be paid $200k, taxes are going to have to go way up to pay for that, and those taxes are all paid by the residents. Many people might not want to move there when they find out the property tax has now been set at 300% (because all the existing property owners are grandfathered to a much lower rate). What'll that do to the realty prices and rents?
The problem is that people who make less than dis figures live there too and probably wouldn't like that very much. The people who do make six or seven figures and live there also wouldn't like that too much. Plenty of tech people are involved in the rent control activism stuff.
Yes, it'd cause a lot of short-term pain for the poorer people who are currently benefiting from rent control. However, the way I see it, the rent control is enabling this bad behavior, and eliminating it would force things to change for the better. The 6-7-figure earners living there voting for NIMBYism are the ones causing this problem, and the only way it's going to change is to either convince them to stop voting that way (because they get tired of never eating out because there's no restaurants nearby or having to spend $500 on a meal to eat at a local eatery), or to collapse the real estate market there (because no one wants to live there any more with such lousy services).
