Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk moves to Texas

ktvu.com

521–530 of 1001 posts

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas is huge. It’s hard to make any sort of generalization. But there are homeless camps in particular places in cities if you go looking; with the weather, it’d be surprising if there weren’t. But from what I understand it’s still not as bad as some places in SF/LA. All I come in contact with, living in middle income suburbs, is panhandlers at intersections.

> All I come in contact with, living in middle income suburbs, is panhandlers at intersections. Not sure what you mean by "panhandlers" - please clarify?

In my region(southern MO), a panhandler is someone who stands on the side of a street or sidewalk and begs for money. They often hold a sign.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#522
This move is about lowering his tax bill and nothing more.

"With a net worth of $134.7B, Musk recently surpassed Bill Gates as the second-richest person in the world, and he's on track to earn more than $50 billion in stock options. If he remained in California, he’d be facing income taxes on the profits when he exercises them. In Texas, there is no income tax."

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#523
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It likely posed an appreciable risk to his business ventures that CA at some point will try to tax unrecognized capital gains, People like Musk leverage their paper wealth into real (risky) loans and the like to support their business ventures (and personal lives)--part of the "socialize risk, privatize profits" model of pseudo-capitalism they practice. A thoughtless approach to taxing unrecognized gains is not a goo…

Socializing what risk? What are you even talking about? Musk put his entire fortune from PayPal on the line for Tesla knowing that in all probability it would fail. It turned out well for him but it was still a huge risk he took. I would argue that the opposite is true. California wants a larger cut of profits from business activity within their borders without any risk on their part, or even having to provide better…

I'm curious how many people educated by the University of California work for Elon Musk.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Texas here, but You might have to adjust your statistics regionally for income. Middle class in California is upper middle class everywhere else, even adjusting for salary reduction. Leaving California put us in the 90th percentile for family income in our new region even accounting for change in salary, vs 75th back in the South Bay. That opens up a lot more opportunity for leisure and better schools - we don't…

Sounds like Texas, except you got a basement (and snow)! I really wish more homes in Texas had basements, but they add a lot of unnecessary costs to the building that aren't required for code reasons. Plus, then you can spend that money above ground increasing your living area. Unfortunately, most people don't factor in the extra expense of cooling more above ground space, whereas a basement would hold the temperatur…

In many places in Texas it's just not economically viable to build a basement. Two examples, Houston has a very high water table, Austin has very hard limestone

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering if Prop 13 is the cause of Cal-flight. Is it driving home prices up? Or is it robbing the state coffers of a tax revenue that has to be made up elsewhere? I don't know.

Yes, it both drives home prices up and robs the state of taxes. It would also devastate many people already invested if it went away overnight; there's not really an easy solution to fixing it.

Repeal it ASAP for commercial properties and rental properties (even if SFH).

For single-family, owner-occupied housing, remove Prop 13 provisions for new sales, but grandfather in all current owners until their death or 20 years, whichever is sooner. After which their assessed values are gradually (say over 5 years) allowed to rise to the fair market value.

Force a reassessment upon the property being inherited, and remove Prop 13 protections from it. Right now, there's no reassessment if a child or grandchild inherits the property.

Eventually all grandfathered owners will die off, sell and leave, or start paying taxes based on the fair market value of their property.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California still has every viewpoint that is imaginable though there does seem to be less space for far right. What's making everyone salty about Elon leaving is there was considerable amount of people who helped him build up in the state (i.e. state benefits, staff who worked incredibly hard for many years, consumers who bought his cars [drive in the bay area]) and he's peacing out, with a slap in the face to everyo…

How do you describe "far-right"? Edit: the reason I ask the question is that I've noticed a trend among people from very left-leaning areas to define anyone slightly right of center as being "far-right". I've been called "far-right" because of beliefs that were typical of moderate Democrats in the 1990s. What label that leaves for people like actual Nazis, fascists, neo-Confederates, etc, I'm not sure. Far-far-far ri…

How about the nuts between San Antonio and Austin that tried to run the Biden/Harris bus off the road. There are plenty like them in Texas. I live here I know.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please consider the policies that made your location expensive and of poor quality for families when voting in your new home.

I know everyone likes to scape goat some policies for that, but as Occam razors would have it, I think it's just the population growth that was the main cause of price increase, and a population decrease would probably result in a price decrease.

Calling this a simple supply and demand problem is not the whole picture. How come you can't just build new housing to accommodate for the population growth? What's the tax burden in CA relative to other states? Where do those tax revenues go that don't benefit the taxpayers quality of life? What other factors negatively influence quality of life for families which are encouraged by policy?

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No you get additional benefits for being in-state manufacturers. (I think its 10% vs 30% in state off capital costs). Can you link me to a source that explains the additional benefits that in-state EV manufacturers accrue? Thanks!

I'm talking solar and storage in this case. See CPUC's SGIP program ( https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/sgip/ ).

Got it. After looking into the details, it seems like Tesla received around ~$111M of additional benefit from SGIP due to being in-state. $111M isn't nothing, but I'm doubtful this is a big factor in Tesla's success.

In-state incentive explanation: https://energycenter.org/sites/default/files/docs/nav/buildi...

SGIP program budget here: https://www.selfgenca.com/budget_public/program_level_summar...

In total, SGIP has issued $841M of incentives. SolarCity's market share is ~20%. The in-state incentive grants an additional 20%. $841M * .2 *.66 = 111M

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#530
post #158

Pretty interesting to see this move makes people so salty. There does seem to be a trend of people fleeing California, I dont know enough about the situation out there to comment on whether or not its valid. I suspect something must be going on for several high profile folks moving out. And before you bash Texas, its not perfect. But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexi…

I think the strategy is to get rich in California then leave when your are financially secure. Very few software jobs in Texas have salaries in the 300-500k region.
Post reply on HN