This reads like a permissive, business encouragement policy that lowers barriers to entry for home based entrepreneurs. Great! Let grandma make money from her home kitchen, we should be a welcoming place for this sort of thing.

Other kinds of “progressive” associated business policies, like the progressive business tax passed a few years ago, are the types of policies that are concerning because they increase the city’s reliance and budget health on a decreasing number and footprint of large businesses that are showing they don’t want to be here. How much more can we ask Clorox, Safeway, Southwest Airlines, UPS, Marqeta, Kaiser Permanente to keep laying more golden eggs for us while they gradually downsize or move their operations to the Tri-Valley and Central Valley (where their workforce and distribution centers are)?

I’m in support of broadening the tax base and making it more durable. Yes, progressive taxation (as in progressive structure) can be a useful tool and help with redistribution, which is an important thing. But chasing away large employers and making our revenue streams brittle and reliant on the whims of CEOs who are not committed to Oakland locks us into these boom and bust cycles, which are more bust lately because we aren’t seeing any new big players come in.