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Elon Musk moves to Texas

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Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#961

Post by windexh8er »

CydeWeys wrote: post #884
windexh8er wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minneapolis has had it's waves of pricing over the years. The hay day of build happened starting in 2005 and ran for the last 15 years leading up to where it is now. I lived in the Northloop on the front of the trendiness (pre-Target Stadium) and Uptown was still the land of said "hipsters" (such an unfortunate moniker). I can tell you that in 2010 I was paying more than $2000/month for a 2 bedroom there because supp…

The gain is that a lot more people get to live there now, which benefits all of those people. It no longer being for you is more than made up for by the fact that it is now for so many more other people.

In my opinion it's a stretch to say that an oversubscription on housing "benefits all of those people". I enjoy Minneapolis, but it's in a very odd state right now.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#962

Post by psychometry »

NewUserWhoDis wrote: post #923
psychometry wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They'd be attracted to municipalities that they know will not prosecute them. Sounds like you have a really solid understanding of the sociological nature of crime! /s

Property crime skyrocketed in San Francisco under Gascon. I'm curious to know: Was there an influx of criminals from outside San Francisco? Or did law-abiding citizens turn to crime? Or did the crimes per criminal go up? In any case, it was a disaster. Los Angeles deserves what it gets for voting him in.

Have you considered the possibility that changing crime rates can be attributed to wider socioeconomic phenomena and not whoever happens to be in charge of the city/state/country? Or are you just using this opportunity to display your prejudices?

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#963

Post by rayiner »

Retric wrote: post #954
rayiner wrote: post #914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just had a massive natural experiment in loosening voting laws that showed that “voter suppression” is less extensive than many people assume. Take Georgia for example. Turnout was up 20% compared to 2016. But the Black share of the electorate went down again, to the lowest levels since 2006: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/17/upshot/georgi... . What flipped Georgia was white voters in the Atlanta coll…

Voter suppression isn’t specifically targeted at minorities. That’s a common misconception, it’s tailored to individual states voting patterns. Overall turnout consistently favors Democrats which doesn’t win every state, but control doesn’t require every state. As to the extra voting in Texas. 2020 had an additional + 1205300 Republican votes and + 1381258 Democratic votes in a solid red state which just hit 1/2 of v…

> As to the extra voting in Texas. 2020 had an additional + 1205300 Republican votes and + 1381258 Democratic votes in a solid red state which just hit 1/2 of voting age population. That’s 46.6% Republican and 53.4% Democrat and means those extra votes very much favored Democrats.

You can’t conclude that because it overlooks third parties (who performed very well in 2016) and people who changed their votes from 2016 to 2020. That happened in suburbs all over the country. My traditionally red county (where voting was always super easy) went for Clinton by less than a point, but for Biden by 14 points. Voter turnout was up only 4 points, so Biden’s gain came mainly from flipping votes.

In Texas, Trump won basically the same share of the much larger turnout compared to 2016 (dropping just 0.1 points). Biden’s gain came almost entirely at the expense of third party candidates.

Indeed, nationwide, turnout went up 11 points. But Trump’s vote share also went up, from 46.1% to 46.8%. Again, Biden’s increased margin came entirely at the expense of third parties.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#964

Post by cestith »

herodoturtle wrote: post #260
cestith wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing, Texas has no personal income tax.

Does it have visible inequality? I've never been there.

Does anywhere not? It was visible when I lived in Missouri. It was in Illinois. It was visiting Baltimore, Atlanta, LA, the Bay, Buffalo, Cincinatti, Flint, Indianapolis, Topeka, OKC, Denver, Little Rock, Arlington, Milwaukee, Nashville, Memphis, Toledo, Sioux City, Davenport, and Louisville.

Here in Houston there are $500 per month apartments and $25,000,000 estates within the same city limits, yeah. There are some homeless folks, but not like Sacramento or San Francisco. Some people who work make less than $8 per hour right now. Other people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in just insurance premiums.

I fail to see the devastating difference in Texas when cities in California are adding to their own homeless populations by refusing to allow more housing to be built. Austin is a little more strict than here, but in Houston there are practically no zoning laws.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#965

Post by P_I_Staker »

Reedx wrote: post #140
P_I_Staker wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand why people look up to him. I have friends that are totally extreme communists, who hate everything capitalist and they idolize him. He's still a billionaire and a shitty person, just because he has interests in helping the planet (with his great business ventures) doesn't make him a swell fellow. He's still trash, like most billionaires.

I'll never understand why people embrace crab mentality. He's playing a positive sum game - his ventures are growing the pie and moving us toward a better future (e.g., sustainable energy). Focus on the rent seekers, not the pie growers.

Doing a few things that better society while growing your wealth and influence doesn't make you a good person. I don't like most billionaires because they invariably have huge egos and think they're gods great gift to capitalism. When you're using your power to promote business practices that hurt people who aren't receiving lavish compensation, it isn't a benign thing.

I was just musing about how strange it is that people love him despite his sketchy business practices. The OP was about him forcing a plant open and having a bad record on workers rights. That's what I objected to, not all the money he's making.

I do understand my comment didn't really explain that, so I understand the downvotes. I guess I thought it was clear from the context, why I had a problem with him.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#966

Post by P_I_Staker »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #145
Reedx wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand why people embrace crab mentality. He's playing a positive sum game - his ventures are growing the pie and moving us toward a better future (e.g., sustainable energy). Focus on the rent seekers, not the pie growers.

Deep down a lot of people know they're not a crab that will be leaving the bucket so they'd prefer nobody left the bucket so that they don't have to be reminded it's possible.

Of course, most of us are. This isn't crab mentality though, I just dislike the man's politics and personality. I have no problem with him being a good person, making billions, and creating cool cars/rockets; it's the workers rights stuff I'm upset about.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#967

Post by giarc »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #240
giarc wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pay 0 state income tax Do you see this as a good thing? How does your state fund itself?

Florida funds itself mostly through tourism taxes, however we also spend much less than CA overall. Just like different people spend different amounts of money, different states do too and need to tax less because of it. CA mostly spends money by paying cops, bart workers, toll booth collectors, etc 100-400k per year whereas Florida pays its government employees market wages.

Relying on tourism tax is an "eggs all in one basket" problem, as I'm sure will be seen this year. Income tax is collecting income from a wide variety of sources (people with different jobs, even if the tourism industry is affected, others might not be).

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#968

Post by ttmb »

013a wrote: post #179
goshx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"These laws make it illegal to buy a car from Tesla in person, at a Tesla Gallery. Thus, all Texas orders are taken via the internet or over the phone. Texas residents can still easily buy a car from Tesla, but the purchase is handled as an out-of-state transaction and must be completed before the vehicle ships to Texas." Tesla is not your regular dealership. Car purchases are made online anyways.

Yeah its weird that Texas is "different" in this regard? The process is the same even in other states; I've never seen a Tesla store with a stock of cars just there on-site ready to buy that day, you always order online (or, I suppose, the salesperson orders online for you, and maybe that's illegal in Texas? I dont know). And, frankly, this is how most new car purchases work. Every one I've purchased or been a part o…

Most new car purchases do come from dealer stock.

Around 15% are factory-ordered - typically luxury brands. An additional 20-25% are sourced from other dealer inventory, or an upcoming shipment that is already specced and on the way. The rest are on the lot and ready to go with the buyer. Dealer lots are huge in most of the country. Endless seas of near identical cars with minor variations in options and colors.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#969

Post by cryptica »

elindbe2 wrote: post #639
cryptica wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. For sure Elon Musk is a very smart guy and he works really hard and he knows how to deliver amazing products and his PR skills are amazing... That said, we can't deny that he got a lot of support from the US government. Without US government h…

> For sure Elon Musk is a very smart guy and he works really hard and he knows how to deliver amazing products and his PR skills are amazing... And again, don't ignore the part where he used his entire PayPal fortune to build a company that he thought had a high probability of failure. That's key to this conversation about risk. The government chose to take on the risk of providing subsidies in order to get the benef…

>> The government chose to take on the risk

Government officials didn't risk anything, they risked other people's money (tax payers). That's literally the meaning of "socializing the risk."

It was certainly his choice to apply for government aid and to use his exposure in the media to give himself leverage over politicians.

It's fine to think well of Musk but to suggest that it's all perfect and fair game is extremely misleading.

Him and the rest of the Paypal mafia have been hoarding attention in the media for decades... Hoarding opportunities.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#970

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jariel wrote: post #941
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #930

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty of physical space in Cali, if anything, the opportunity might be in Sacramento and in-between. It’s the places that everyone want to live in that are crowded, and there are good reasons apartment blocks aren’t going up in farmland (this isn’t China where people are told to live outside the fifth or sixth ring road just because).

"It’s the places that everyone want to live in that are crowded" So if SF goes 'Hong Kong' style i.e. tears down all those homes and puts full on sky-scrapers everywhere, will the 'current' residents be happy, and will future residents want to be there as much? 'Everyone wants to live there' - which is why it's so expensive - this is an inevitability of a good culture whereupon the physicality is usually critical. If…

Even if SF went Hong Kong style, Hong Kong is even more expensive than SF. Popularity attracts more popularity.
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