I heard they have water and electricity out there.
Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
151–160 of 325 posts
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
The traffic in Texas is significantly better than SF and LA. My parents live in a suburb that is 25 miles from the Houston and it takes 45 minutes to get to downtown during commute hours. My girlfriend has an equivalent commute in the Bay which takes around 75-90 minutes during commute hours. The public transit is terrible in Texas so I expect it will be worse than the Bay in a decade or two if they refuse to build u…
Texas is significantly worse than SF for anyone who doesn't have a car. There aren't good alternatives to driving to get around there. The traffic principally affects you if you drive, hence why Texas is often worse even now than SF.
In Texas, you are forced to drive because there isn't public transit. In California, you are forced to drive because you have to live far away from transit centers in order to find affordable housing.
Regardless if you look at commuter data, it's pretty obvious that the Bay Area & LA commuters are significantly higher than Texas metros. We have higher median, average, and extremes in commute times: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/22/bay-area-traffic-dela... https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/traffic-trains-or-...
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Friendly if you're the right political party and orientation, I hear.
Seriously, Texans in the cities may be redneck compared to the rest of the country, but holy fucking shit are they friendly as hell. If you suck in social situations, you will find plenty of extroverts that will gladly make you feel included in a group of strangers.
People here trend conservative. This cuts both ways, it means that they don't want to make a scene when they see something that offends their norms, but it also means that you have to try a little harder to open minds.
The other ruling ethos here seems to be 'good fences, make good neighbors'.
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
If high property taxes are liberal - why wouldn’t high taxes on other forms of wealth be beneficial?
When did I say high taxes on on other forms of wealth wouldn't be beneficial? I totally support taxes on wealth to build social programs.
Does that include taxing employee equity based on how it is valued based on each round of funding?
Would you also be okay with taxing someone based on how much they had in savings and mutual funds?
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#155As a San Franciscan, I am so happy to see this. SF needs negative feedback on the poor choices it makes, and so far the tech boom has somewhat obscured the consequences.
The negative feedback is all the people who moved from other states to SF over the years, voted for politicians that virtue signaled loudly enough to attract said transplants’ votes, and then moved to another (likely conservative) state after saving enough money to live comfortably with their new families. That’s ultimately one of the biggest issues in the Bay Area that no one ever talks about.
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t Prop 13 an enormous issue (with real estate owners not paying taxes on the true value of their property) in California?
Prop 13 basically just limits increases in taxes from purchase time. So it benefits existing land owners at the expense of future land owners. And it also benefits speculators - makes it cheaper to hold onto property for longer.
[deleted]
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#157Once upon a time, "Go West, young man" was advice for "growing with the country": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_West,_young_man
Now with California's anti-housing, anti-commerce policies & government deeply captured by incumbent interests, better advice may be:
"Go East, growing company."
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Novelty? Quite a lot of that has been driven out already.
If you are a broker you go to NYC, banking is London, commodities is Chicago, electronics is Shenzhen.... You come to the bay FOR tech, and for A-team tech at that. There simply isn't any other place on the planet for you to go if you want to be with, and work with the best.
Turns out a lot of businesses don't need A-team tech though.
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tax avoidance "scam". Moving to Texas to reduce taxes, especially SF taxes which are basically useless to the payer [1], [2] is a "scam"? What's the legal framework preventing moves out of SF? Is it indentured slavery to the city council if you ever open an office in SF? [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/san-francisco-district-attorney-pub... [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/04/15/map...
The problem is perception. If a company seems to only move their headquarters in name only (IOW most of the staff still stays in SF), then that seems sketchy. If they make a clean separation and shutdown their SF presence, that doesn't appear as dodgy. And these companies are not just moving to Texas. I live in Oakland, CA and many of these companies are relocating here. I don't care if they leave SF, but if they're…
How are they "cheating"? It appears like the city is the one cheating, refusing to enforce criminal law, which taxes are paying for. The city is cheating so much that they make some of the highest per capita tax revenue disappear without providing commensurate services
Maybe you can mention the statute relevant to HQs? I'm not aware of any
Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoa! Didn't even know about Prop 13 - that basically means no house can currently have a higher taxable value than basically double what it was worth in 1978. Insane!
Huh? I think you're mis-reading something. Your assertion is true only for houses that haven't changed hands since 1978. In most cases, the buyer of a house is assessed taxes on the market value of the house at the time of sale, and further increases are limited from there.
This is true but it’s insane that California allows children to inherit the lower tax basis:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-proper...