Sam Farr: “It is very interesting. Before coming here I was in the State legislature and before that in local government, and…”

“It is very interesting. Before coming here I was in the State legislature and before that in local government, and before that in the Peace Corps. And what I learned in local government, and we are dealing with economic development all of the time, trying to encourage business development. But, you know, in that process, you extract a lot from business. Because it is essentially sort of that corporate responsibility to be a citizen of your community. In California, we tax them a lot. If you are going to build hotels, we tax the hotels for tourism occupancy tax. That stays with the city. We tax sales tax, high sales tax. And communities can raise it higher. We tax on gasoline. We have a huge tax. And people will say, yeah, California is a big high-tax State. But guess what? It is also the biggest economic engine, the fifth largest economy in the world. The most start-up businesses, the most everything. California is not suffering by the fact that it is proud to have businesses that share in their prosperity through the taxation process and through being good corporate neighborhoods. Silicon Valley is out raising their own money to support local transit, their own money, private money, to build housing for people on the street, for the homeless and for people who cannot afford the rental rates, to have subsidized housing, and leverage that with public money. That is the kind of agreement you ought to be making. It ought to be this quid pro quo. It is not just about trade.…”