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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

#461
post #288
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this and the general borderline unenforceability of "we own all your work, even during off hours" clauses in employment contracts as a major reason that the center of innovation shifted from Boston and the East Coast to Silicon Valley and California. Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the education and a much deeper history of innovation. It also could have been down in New Jersey where Bel…

The first thing that any state should do to make itself a new tech hub is create strong protections for workers so they can freely move to different companies or found their own. Pro-labor is not anti business, quite the opposite here. But it's never understood that way.

Problem is: most governments think of "pro-labor" laws as paid sick or maternity leave, labor unions privileges, or protections from being fired, e.g. mandating longer notice periods. This mostly benefit low wage workers, who lack bargaining power, but the needs of highly paid tech workers (such as no non-competes) go unnoticed.

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

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you give property tax breaks to retirees, or to people temporarily out of work?

Seniors do get a slight property tax discount here in Texas. Still I suppose it does encourage people to downsize when they are empty nesters and no longer need to house a big family. In California you get the opposite problem where people can't afford to move as their needs change since their property tax would no longer be kept low.

There is an exception in CA (it's complicated and only good in some counties) where an older person can transfer their tax basis, once, to a new house for precisely this situation.

Once again young people get the shaft in CA though.

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

#463
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…

Texas doesn't have a full time legislature so unlike California the amount of damage they can do is limited.

But when they are in session, they focus on important issues like playing revisionist history with your children's school textbooks...

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

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IL tax rates will have to go to pay for all of the debt for their defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare. CA also has that problem, but not to the degree IL has. IL has fewer high income earners to spread the pain around, and higher debt amounts overall. It’s part of the reason why land is so much cheaper in IL.

Illinois voters defeated an initiative to implement graduated income tax in the November 2020 election: https://ballotpedia.org/Illinois_Allow_for_Graduated_Income_... Agreed the state has financial issues, but it remains unclear if the upper middle class will bear the responsibility.

Because they are tired of tax increases. It's time to cut pensions.

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

#465
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is great. A high property tax keeps the price of housing down (what people will pay for a house is cost per month, basically mortgage plus property tax), makes people want to have new housing built so that housing prices don't go up, and promotes a general attitude of anti-NIMBYism. Just the opposite of California with its low property tax and very aristocratic prop 13 problem.

I totally agree and I think property taxes are way more fair and equitable for a society than income taxes. Usually we tax behaviors we want to curb. Income taxes disincentivize people from earning more, whereas property taxes are a consumption tax. In my mind this makes way more sense, and there's good data to suggest property taxes are the best/most efficient way to gain needed revenue for a city but do the least "…

Property taxes are absolutely not more "equitable". Property taxes are like sales taxes, a single person can only consume so much. Similarly large wealthy corporations, or individuals can only buy so much land. And so this kind of tax structure fundamentally burdens the bottom earners of society disproportionately.

A progressive tax system will always be far more equitable.

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

#466
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree and I think property taxes are way more fair and equitable for a society than income taxes. Usually we tax behaviors we want to curb. Income taxes disincentivize people from earning more, whereas property taxes are a consumption tax. In my mind this makes way more sense, and there's good data to suggest property taxes are the best/most efficient way to gain needed revenue for a city but do the least "…

"I totally agree and I think property taxes are way more fair and equitable for a society than income taxes." Until you retire and no longer can pay the tax and are kicked out of your home. Logically, it makes more sense to tax people who are actually making money (income and capital gains) since that means they actually have money. Taxing people on a fundamental need (shelter) could potentially increase homelessness…

>> I don't see how flat or even marginal income taxes disincentivize people from making more money

When you hit higher tax brackets it gets more difficult to negotiate a raise with your employer, because to get X more money for yourself you need your employer to spend 1.4X more on your salary. Flat tax rates have no such effect.

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

#467
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 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? They are leaving because of high prices caused by factors that are just as present in cities in Texas. They're bringing their money and jobs with them, so they'll brin…

California has its own slew of historical policies which have dramatically decreased housing supply. A guy in san francisco was denied a permit to convert his laundromat into apartments because the city planners determined it would cast a partial shadow on a nearby playground for god's sake. That was after he had to shell out $$$ to determine that his laundromat was not a historical site.

In Palo Alto, not a single new house was built in the 1970s.

>It's supply and demand, not liberal or conservative policies.

Do you not understand policies influence supply and demand? What do you think happens to supply after zoning laws and rent control are passed?

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

#468
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 childre…

You're analyzing the effects of Prop 13 at face value, while ignoring its many unintended effects of commercial property undertaxation and rentiering, reduced workforce mobility, concordant increased incentives for NIMBY behavior, effective increase in regressive taxes, etc. Prop 13 (along with California's constitutional amendment referendum system) has a network of pernicuous effects that promote cynical behavior a…

Unintended consequences don’t matter. The intended purpose was to keep seniors and retirees in their homes without the danger of them being made homeless due to the speculative nature of California housing market whose instability is largely contributed to the said feted ‘new comers’.

What you type are talking points that make no sense. Ask anyone who had lived and paid taxes and mortgages in California before 1980, they will tell you why prop 13 is the third rail and the disastrous consequences it had on Californians when they tried to touch it.

These talking points when examined are literally..and I mean literally..meaningless. They are repeated and never analysed. Young people don’t research, look at CA budgets or the insane nutcase formulas Gov. Jerry Brown instituted that has made CA budgetary maze a house of mirrors.

Here is an easy one to remember: when someone is being blamed and loudly and often, pause. Examine. More likely than not they are an easy scapegoat. Consider who is screeching and yelling at them. They are the problem.

California politicians have successfully turned its people against each other. Older Californians feel like the state has become unaffordable and are being strangled to pay the taxes of the new comers who walked into a ready infrastructure ready state. The schools, roads, cities were already planned and ready to be taken over by the tech horde.

On the other hand, there is the tech crowd. Young and having had 18 years of their schooling subsidized by the very people they are trying to unhouse with demands for punitive taxes that offer them no benefits in their old age where they only look forward to a fixed income. They see the young people in their late 20s and 30s trying to grab their homes and can’t understand why these so called millionaires and educated class earning 5 figures need them to die or fuck off to be able to afford a home.

Meanwhile in the background, unions and our ELECTED leaders are pulling the puppet strings to create conflict so that in the chaos of calling each other names, the public will ignore their machinations. The only goal: extract as much taxes as possible to pad public sector jobs/salaries and unfunded pension liabilities. Unions, homeless activists, diversity and inclusionary departments, prison rehab, housing activist are ALL union backed. Everyone else is a puppet too. Look.it.up. Look up CA budget. The unholy alliance to create vote banks for public funding.

The people who are shelling out the money as taxes should stop fighting and take a breath. Look at the REAL enemy. Look how smart he is to keep two cash cows to fighting each other. Wake up.

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

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 childre…

> People with children older than 18 or with no kids have no use for public schools. It is unbelievable to see this actually written down, and in an argument asserting that people from generations ago built an ecosystem for what is currently an exploding knowledge based economy, no less.

Would you like me to clarify something?

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

#470
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the work culture in Europe is also a factor. Europeans are much less willing to work the way a lot of the startups expect.

Good for them. American work culture is...well, retarded (I couldn't think of a less offensive term that also describes it well).

Have you visited Asia?
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