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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

#531

Post by bananabiscuit »

gumby wrote: post #430
sithlord wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest hit will be on tax revenue, new "sexy" businesses dont tend to make as much money as the zombie companies that seem to print money

California makes money on cap gains taxes as well as corporate income taxes. And likely the personal income taxes won't change. Complaining about dev teams moving to texas is like complaining about goods being manufactured in China. It's a net positive for the whole world, plus competition will improve the Vally and SF just as much as it improves individual companies and products.

Net positive only if your measure for success is “able to buy more widgets for less money”

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

#532

Post by Dracophoenix »

phil21 wrote: post #484
almost_usual wrote: post #339

The real state I wonder about is Illinois. Who the hell wants to live in Illinois? Both the state income tax and property tax is absurd and you can easily cross state lines to somewhere cheaper with pretty much the same scenery.

Illinois is pretty rough financially, I agree. But it's home to one of the three cities you can realistically live in and call a city in the US. As in no car ownership required, walkable neighborhoods that you never need to leave very often as all your needs are met, etc. This is exceedingly rare in the US, almost non-existent. So for now, I'll stick with Chicago. Should I move, I completely agree the IL suburbs are…

I'm assuming the other two are New York and Boston?

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

#533

Post by gopi »

BowBun wrote: post #322

> the cost of housing is one-third of Bay Area prices and the absence of a state personal income tax amounts to a 13.3% raise for top earners. This point always makes me laugh because anyone who lives in affluent TX neighborhoods knows your property tax is _enormous_ and usually makes up for a majority of state income tax you save. They still need to pay for roads and schools, right?

True, the property tax rates are higher in TX. But since house prices are much less, in absolute terms you pay less property tax than CA. Combine this with 0% income tax, your tax load is a lot less in TX than CA.

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

#534

Post by edmundsauto »

dragonwriter wrote: post #526
wahern wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's answer to everything is raise taxes. Really? It's almost the end of 2020 and California hasn't passed a single tax increase. Let's look at 2020 ballot measures: * Requires commercial and industrial properties to be taxed based on market value and dedicates revenue? REJECTED Source: https://ballotpedia.org/California_2020_ballot_propositions And legislation? * AB 2088 - Wealth Tax? REJECTED * AB 1253 -…

> It's almost the end of 2020 and California hasn't passed a single tax increase. Prop 19 involves both additional exemptions and limitations on existing exemptions from full-value assessment, but is projected on balance to be a net increase, and is definitely an increase for some taxpayers, and it passed. So, while I agree with your general point, this claim is technically overstated.

This leaves out key context: Prop 19 is designed to rollback some of Prop 13, which has been a financial disaster for CA since the voters passed it, many decades ago. You can trace a lot of California's "let's raise taxes" issues to the lack of revenue caused by Prop 13.

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

#535

Post by edmundsauto »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #485
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is, will those voting for taxes to be raised do the same when they relocate elsewhere? California is not a dictatorship. The people of the state have voted for this situation. I realize that not everyone in California votes and thinks the same. Those leaving the state might not be reflective of the voting patterns of the state as a whole but doubt this migration out of California is impactless on the places…

Yes, that is a big problem. People don't seem to learn their lesson. CA peoples leave CA and go to austin and we're already seeing some of the same things happening there as in CA, where housing supply is restricted and of course, at that point housing prices go up again. People just never learn the fundamentals of economics and how those decisions lead to economic hardship for so many, that's the real problem.

By people, do you mean policymakers that disincentivize building more housing in order to prop up property values?

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

#536

Post by SuoDuanDao »

gonehome wrote: post #487
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're held up in some idyllic form because while they're worse for customers, they're on average much better for employees. 'Small business' isn't just meant to be heartwarming when talked about as important - small businesses also spend a much larger percentage of their money on wages.

This feels like a false dichotomy to me (if it’s true which I’m not certain of). It’s not very good for employees if your small business customers don’t like you and as a result you have to close. A local car dealership may be great for its employees by ripping off customers and generally being a terrible experience, but I won’t have much sympathy when direct to consumer sales come and wipe them out. Small businesses…

It's not that simple. Small businesses, like small anything, are less efficient than larger versions. The inefficiencies inevitably bother customers.

It just so happens that in business, much of that inefficiency is the number of employees required per unit of economic activity. Ultimately all employees are an unwanted cost to the consumer. Small businesses have fewer options to avoid that cost, so they account for more employment.

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

#537

Post by fortran77 »

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…

Exactly right. And one reason the "prices are so high" is the possibly illegal monopoly action that Google, Facebook, etc took. Once the Government splits these companies, will the people who inflated the price of housing by paying too much be made to compensate other people who had to pay too much for housing?

House prices are high in SV because they're not building enough housing. Blame zoning laws and racism (Palo Alto only builds low-income housing for people with college degrees and no criminal records. They call it "teacher housing.") Don't blame the generation that came before you.

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

#538

Post by edmundsauto »

chrshawkes wrote: post #458
xienze wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tech company, leaving the Bay Area? Don’t make me laugh! Tesla’s leaving? Good riddance to Musk. HP and Oracle are leaving? Good riddance to zombie tech companies! Uber is leaving? Well they’re slave drivers anyway, good riddance. ...

Don't forget Charles Schwab leaving to Texas from CA as well. Lefty's will try to justify this all day long. California is bad for business. Period.

If "California is bad for business. Period", then how come it has the 7th largest economy in the world? Seems like business has been thriving there for decades.

(Reducing a complex ecosystem to a pithy statement usually reveals more of your own personal projection, rather than positively contribute to conversations.)

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

#539

Post by erichocean »

erichocean wrote: post #127
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #24

This general topic seems to come back into focus on a regular basis on HN (last time, 1 week ago). People have been leaving SV in numbers for the 30 years I've been here, always citing traffic & cost of housing as the primary reasons. Though this time, you could add decriminalization of petty crime. Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive. The fundamental design of the Internet was to be robust agains…

> Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive. In 2019, California had negative population growth.

"Population Shrinks in California, Still Most Populous State" — NBC Los Angeles, May 2, 2020 [0]

> California had a population of 39.78 million as of January [2020], the state Department of Finance said, down from its previous report of 39.96 million residents in July [2019].

That's the most recent 6 month period we have reported numbers for, and occurred in the 2nd half of 2019. For the full year in 2019, population was still slightly up overall.

[0] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-cal....

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

#540

Post by erichocean »

chrisbolt wrote: post #193
erichocean wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive. In 2019, California had negative population growth.

Citation?

I cited it in a reply to my own comment, but here's the link: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-cal...
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