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Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

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Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#211

Post by CountSessine »

type_enthusiast wrote: post #204
pb7 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that the people moving are responsible for the bad policies? Something tells me the NIMBYs that bought their homes decades ago and pay $3.50 in annual property taxes aren't going anywhere.

I guess you're implying that old people are the reason for high housing prices in SV. Respectfully, what are the bad policies my parents are responsible for, besides pioneering the technology that makes you want to live in SV? And buying a house for 85k in a nice neighborhood in order to do so, without forseeing that Facebook and friends were going to move in and make their house unaffordable were it not for the prot…

Championing restrictive zoning policies. They got theirs, and screw everyone else.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#212

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

dkobran wrote: post #122
djohnston wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk if that's fair to Walmart, they are definitely trying to compete with Amazon via new efforts.

I don’t disagree that Walmart is making strides on the online shopping front but I also think they are only fighting for survival/relevance and would not produce anything new or interesting without this pressure. In contrast, companies like Amazon relentlessly develop new products and new technologies (see AWS). It’s not a response to external pressure — they don’t need to innovate to stay alive. They really embody t…

Walmart had the largest corporate database in the world at one point in time (about a decade and a half ago), and used it to build a brutally efficient supply chain.

Innovation in process engineering and operations isn't really discussed much here, but it's almost assuredly had a much greater impact on keeping inflation at bay (helping the median American's salary stretch a little farther) than anything Amazon has ever done.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#213

Post by jelliclesfarm »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #172
NDizzle wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me a very frustrating thing was trying to figure out where my tax money went in California. Roads suck. Public education sucks. Tent cities everywhere. Then COVID-19 hit and you could tell, early on, that it was going to be mismanaged, similar to our tax money. So glad I bailed back in May. No Texas for me. Arkansas instead! I think the last new tax I voted for was in 2004. Back when I was 25 and didn’t fully und…

The California budget is public information. Proposition 13 means you as a new arrival were subsidizing property owners who were there before you, and the broken initiative process means that there's billions from the general fund tied up to pay bonds for pet projects of swindlers who are clever enough to put their projects on the ballot instead of trying to get them past the legislature.

You make it sound like newcomers came and built a viable city for existing Californians. It’s not like California was a wasteland before ‘new comers’ arrived. ‘New comers’ have always been entering California.

The new comers came because California already had an ecosystem and infrastructure in place built ready made for them to thrive.

New comers are not subsidizing existing property owners. They ..and their children use the infrastructure already in place that is subsidized for them.

People with children older than 18 or with no kids have no use for public schools. Since property taxes are being used to fund public education, it’s essentially everyone subsidizing public education. For all. And this includes renters, undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, those who pay taxes and those who don’t. Everyone. That’s what’s free public education means. For everyone in CA as public school fund budget is redistributed to all counties in California and not just the zip code it’s collected from...

Tweaking Prop 13 won’t miraculously get us better roads or infrastructure. Or affordable housing. It will only go to fix the gap of the unfunded pension liabilities of unionized teachers[1]. Wages account for 60-80% of school budgets. Public education accounts for 44% of state budget. Almost all of property taxes goes towards public education.

[1] https://www.city-journal.org/html/worst-union-america-13470.... The Worst Union in America How the California Teachers Association betrayed the schools and crippled the state

Further:

+ https://reason.com/2018/11/09/california-teachers-unions-opp... California Teachers Unions Oppose Paying Teachers More Because It Would Introduce Too Much Competition Into Public Schools

+ https://fee.org/articles/teachers-unions-are-the-schools-run... Teachers Unions: Are the Schools Run for Them?

+ http://laschoolreport.com/antonucci-california-teachers-asso... Antonucci: California Teachers Association pledges support for Prop. 13 overhaul

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#214

Post by CountSessine »

atomi wrote: post #202
pb7 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBYs oppose new construction because it keeps their property values high. They don't care about property values ballooning because they pay property taxes on the assessed values from when they bought, which is often decades ago, due to Prop 13. Prop 13 in general keeps things stagnant. For another example, there is no incentive to renovate/tear down/rebuild bigger because now you will pay significantly higher prope…

A lot of people complain about California policies, but I don't ever see anyone stop to think that maybe those policies aren't there to serve them. That is, perhaps they aren't the constituency those policies were implemented for. And maybe America and certainly California don't need half the country moving to just one state.

I think if someone really owns this credo - “I’m using the government to improve my life at the expense of someone else’s property rights” - I could maybe respect that? At least it’s consistent.

None of the people I’ve encountered who oppose housing construction seem to see things this way. Most of them seem to be economic conservatives who see themselves as having won a “fair game” and the fact that they’re using the government to strip others of their property rights - rights to build, rights to house - is lost to them. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance and post-hoc rationalization in this group.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#215

Post by KorematsuFred »

readams wrote: post #7

I wonder if the people fleeing California will end up voting for the same bad policies that are the reason they had to leave in the first place. That is, do they connect the bad policies to the bad outcomes, or will they still favor the bad policies? There is one major area for tech people where Texas may prove a nasty surprise to employees: non-compete agreements. For large employers this may be a bonus though as th…

I am a libertarian and I have felt pretty miserable living in California. Some other people telling what I can or can not do for greater good and then forcing those things down my throat is what made my life miserable.

The last straw off camels back was San Jose banning gas powered stoves. WTF really ? Lucky for me I was under contract for a new house before that. Now I have the house and its prices have gone up suddenly. I feel sorry for sods who will end up buying my house for 5% premium for the pleasure of owning a gas stove, the sort of thing that is kind of free almost everywhere else. Good luck saving the planet with these antics.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#216

Post by smsm42 »

DylanDmitri wrote: post #91
alexmingoia wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do low property taxes have to do with high rent and lack of housing? Higher property taxes would result in higher rent and property prices...

If my understanding is right, if you purchase a house and you (or your kids) have been living in it continuously you pay taxes on the original purchase price, rather than current value. These tax savings pass to homeowner families who stay in one location for multiple decades, especially as land values rise. Homeowners are very opposed to being displaced, since moving means their taxes would reset to a higher level.…

> you pay taxes on the original purchase price

Not exactly. It is more complex than that. The tax base is supposed to be the market value but if the market value raises, the tax base is allowed to follow only up to a certain margin. With CA and especially Bay Area prices skyrocketing for a while, the effect has been than the tax base lags very far from the actual market value, and for people who bought in the 80s the tax base may be a fraction of their current market value.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#217

Post by jbay808 »

type_enthusiast wrote: post #204
pb7 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that the people moving are responsible for the bad policies? Something tells me the NIMBYs that bought their homes decades ago and pay $3.50 in annual property taxes aren't going anywhere.

I guess you're implying that old people are the reason for high housing prices in SV. Respectfully, what are the bad policies my parents are responsible for, besides pioneering the technology that makes you want to live in SV? And buying a house for 85k in a nice neighborhood in order to do so, without forseeing that Facebook and friends were going to move in and make their house unaffordable were it not for the prot…

Proposition 13, mentioned by a sibling comment.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#218

Post by octoberfranklin »

bcheung wrote: post #110
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah having a house 3x the size is not great for you or the environment, given that people don’t use most of their houses ;-)

It's people telling me what is good for me that is another reason I left.

Then why haven't you left HN? ;)

I wish people here would stop telling me what's good for me too.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#219

Post by paconbork »

dannyincolor wrote: post #103
tayo42 wrote: post #52

People really want to see California and silicon valley fail. Crab mentality I think, people love these articles

Why do you think this is? I find it really bizarre. My own family in the Midwest kind of passive aggressively implies that they hope I “feel the effect” of these “oppressive laws” and I’m out here shooting guns, enjoying the desert on HOVs, and visiting Yosemite to bask in the beauty. Oppression seems like the last thing I’ve found here, honestly. Like what grinds people’s gears so hard about CA? Really would love a…

My perspective is probably a bit different than most, but for me it's that SV just seems like wasted potential. Like here's this place where the high-paying jobs are attracting the most talented people from around the world and you get there it's like... you have 3+ working adults sharing a house built in the 1950's. With all it's money and resources, the area could be on it's way to becoming the next NYC or Tokyo, but instead we get an increasingly boring area that nobody outside of the tech monoculture has any reason to move to.

Basically, Seattle deserves it more.

Re: Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

#220

Post by denimnerd42 »

caseyf7 wrote: post #22

Many companies that assumed employees are working from home are discovering large numbers of employees are working from other areas and states.

yup don't tell your employer that though and setup a vpn at a friends house..
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