San Francisco's so-called "Overpaid CEO" tax — officially Proposition L from 2020 — levies an extra surcharge on companies where executive compensation vastly outpaces median worker pay. It's the kind of policy that sounds great on a protest sign but deserves a harder look when you're trying to understand why businesses keep leaving the city.

We went through the exercise of asking every SF politician where they stand on it. The results were about as predictable as a Muni delay: lots of enthusiasm for taxing other people's money, very little curiosity about whether it actually works.

Let's be clear about what this tax does. It doesn't cap CEO pay. It doesn't raise worker wages. It doesn't fix homelessness or fill potholes. What it does is add another line item to the already towering stack of reasons a company might choose Austin, Miami, or literally anywhere else over San Francisco. The tax applies a sliding surcharge — up to 2.4% on top of existing business taxes — based on the ratio between top executive and median worker compensation.

The core problem with San Francisco's fiscal philosophy isn't that we don't collect enough revenue. The city's budget has ballooned past $14 billion — for a city of roughly 800,000 people. That's over $17,000 per resident. The problem is that we spend poorly, audit rarely, and then go hunting for new revenue streams when the math doesn't add up.

If City Hall wants to address income inequality, great — start by asking why the city's own permitting process makes it nearly impossible for small businesses to compete with the corporations this tax supposedly targets. Ask why housing costs, driven in large part by government-created scarcity, eat up any wage gains workers might see.

Taxing your way to equity is a fantasy. Building an environment where more people can actually build wealth? That's a policy worth debating. But it requires harder thinking than slapping a surcharge on a payroll spreadsheet and calling it justice.