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Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

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Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#131

Post by karmajunkie »

goldmouth wrote: post #110
karmajunkie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer in Austin, I mostly concur.

As a native austinite and engineer I completely disagree. The eastSide was a terrible place before. Going into pan am park was a no go at any time of the day. Comunities and infrastructure were dying in eat Austin. Also, It had extremely low home ownership rates so the lower class didn’t even own homes in these areas but made money for westside landlords. South congress was full of crackheads and prostitutes as early…

See parent. I was here intermittently in the late 90s and have an aunt with a midcentury house off SoCo bought in the early 90s. You may not have seen those communities as having intrinsic value but the people that live there did. And now most of them can't afford to live there anymore because "the market" has decided to make room for gentrification.

Those communities had economic problems, sure. But you're kidding yourself if you don't think the replacements for them have a different sort of economic problem. And just because they're whiter and richer now doesn't make them a better set of problems.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#132

Post by milleramp »

donretag wrote: post #106
synaesthesisx wrote: post #13

Didn't know about the Culver City expansion, neat! There's a tremendous amount of tech talent in LA, I'm surprised they don't already have a major presence here

I live in LA and I think the level of tech talent is abysmal. At the Java meetup this week, eight people showed up. EIGHT. In the Bay/SF/NYC, there would be over a hundred. I have been to tech gatherings, where I would be the only techie.

It’s because we are all over at the python meetup where the real party is!

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#133

Post by moorhosj »

goldmouth wrote: post #110
karmajunkie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer in Austin, I mostly concur.

As a native austinite and engineer I completely disagree. The eastSide was a terrible place before. Going into pan am park was a no go at any time of the day. Comunities and infrastructure were dying in eat Austin. Also, It had extremely low home ownership rates so the lower class didn’t even own homes in these areas but made money for westside landlords. South congress was full of crackheads and prostitutes as early…

>Also, It had extremely low home ownership rates so the lower class didn’t even own homes in these areas but made money for westside landlords.

How will increasing rents (and property values) across the city help solve this lack of ownership? Is it possible the problem gets worse by adding more "rich" workers?

>South congress was full of crackheads and prostitutes as early as the 90’s.

Isn't it likely that there were also working class people struggling to get by who appreciated low rents?

>any immigrant can get a construction job and make a great living for themselves.

And what will they do when construction slows due to recession or other factors?

You might want to re-asses this comment from the perspective of the people who actually lived in these "terrible places" that were a "no go at any time of the day". They might have a different view than you.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#134

Post by RedPill007 »

jacek wrote: post #8

Big corps love to brag about "adding jobs", but don't like to brag about the "tax incentives" they are getting. There are usually huge costs for the whole community. Austin tax incentives for Apple seem to be relatively small [1], but Foxconn factory in Wisconsin is an extreme case. I highly recommend the Replay All podcast episode on this [2][3] [1] https://www.statesman.com/news/20120901/austin-council-oks-8... [2]…

This is not about "Big Corps" but more about the voter mentality. For some unknown reason people across the political spectrum totally buy into the claims of "creating jobs" and "protecting jobs".

None of the average voter bothers to actually do the math to see the cost of the job. Trump's tariffs for example might have protected 500 jobs at the cost of $500M to American consumers. But this math is beyond most people.

Corps will surely love low tax regions and I think that is a good thing. Big Taxes only lead to bigger government than invariably leads to disasters for small people like us.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#135

Post by jboggan »

donretag wrote: post #106
synaesthesisx wrote: post #13

Didn't know about the Culver City expansion, neat! There's a tremendous amount of tech talent in LA, I'm surprised they don't already have a major presence here

I live in LA and I think the level of tech talent is abysmal. At the Java meetup this week, eight people showed up. EIGHT. In the Bay/SF/NYC, there would be over a hundred. I have been to tech gatherings, where I would be the only techie.

I live in Santa Monica and I think the level of tech talent is pretty great. There's simply much more to do here on a weeknight than go to a tech meetup!

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#136

Post by briandear »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #125
jpadkins wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's weird to frame net new revenue as a "huge cost the whole community" Taking less money from someone who is building a business in your area is not a cost. They have a choice on where to build, and tax burden is one of many factors in that choice.

It's a huge cost to the whole community, if by the "whole community" you mean the entire US. Let's say that Apple pays municipal tax of $X-$Y to Austin because of incentive $Y instead of $X to Denver (for example) Then Denver loses $X while Austin gains $X-$Y and Apple gains $Y. Sure, the Denver loss is only theoretical but Apple has to build somewhere so American municipal taxpayers lose as a group. A "race to the b…

Actually Denver doesn’t lose anything. The loss isn’t even theoretical. It’s like saying I lost billions on Apple stock I didn’t buy. That just makes no sense. You could also, using your theoretical logic, say that Berlin lost money too. Or Marseille. Or Dubai.

Apple could have built new facilities literally anywhere they wanted. So should the international government pass a law against the US having lower taxes than France? The only people that should have a say in the tax rate of a place are the people paying the tax rate of a place.

Denver never had it in the first place. Money not earned isn’t the same as an actual cost. The people of Denver are in exactly the same shoes they were yesterday; they aren’t worse off.

And why should the federal government tell individual cities how they should tax? I’m afraid you don’t understand what federalism is, nor freedom for that matter. If a hypothetical Austin wants to give Bezos the key to the city what business is it to the people of Boise? Boise didn’t lose anything.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#137

Post by zelon88 »

For every $1m an EDC gives to a fortune 500 company for relocation, $1m should be allocated to a fund for low interest small business lending.

Mom and pop shops have to pay taxes but frauds like Curt Schilling and slave drivers like Amazon get hundreds of millions of dollars (that they don't need) to create mediocre jobs with high turnaround.

Leveling the field isn't enough. Conglomerates are too big and too many. We need to lower the barriers for entry into markets where fortune 500 companies have made competition impossible.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#138

Post by dmode »

So blue cities and states continue to become richer and income inequality will continue to grow. Austin, Seattle, San Diego, LA, NYC.. unbelievable

Also, kind of disappointing how low the job numbers are. 5000 in Austin over the next several years and hundreds for other areas. In contrast, Amazon announced 20K in VA and NYC. This tells me that Cupertino will continue to grow

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#139

Post by gok »

rayiner wrote: post #44
minikites wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the choice either. How about no tax breaks for companies, we enforce existing corporate taxes on those companies, and we raise the marginal income tax rate on very high earning individuals?

At the state and local level, that just means companies will leave your state and go somewhere else. In a globalized world, the same thing is true for countries. There is a reason France has an effective 11% corporate tax rate: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the... (Chart 2). If you want to pay for the safety net, do what Europe does and tax middle class people who can't just move to a lower…

…and much higher social insurance taxes.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#140

Post by AnthonBerg »

dmode wrote: post #138

So blue cities and states continue to become richer and income inequality will continue to grow. Austin, Seattle, San Diego, LA, NYC.. unbelievable Also, kind of disappointing how low the job numbers are. 5000 in Austin over the next several years and hundreds for other areas. In contrast, Amazon announced 20K in VA and NYC. This tells me that Cupertino will continue to grow

Could it possibly it have more to do with other correlated demographic attributes of those states, such as education level or age or quality of life, rather than the "blueness" or "redness" itself?
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