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Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

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Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#221

Post by mdoms »

etchalon wrote: post #141
Apocryphon wrote: post #56

The official reason is because of housing: "To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California," Musk said. "Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it's jammed." But, he added, "It's tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away....There's a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area." https://ww…

As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.

As someone who lives somewhere with an actual housing crisis, I just did a Zillow search for homes in Austin and I don't think you quite understand what a housing crisis looks like. Your homes look dirt cheap by Kiwi standards.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#222

Post by jasondigitized »

op00to wrote: post #200
m0zg wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've looked at properties in Austin area a few months back. It's more affordable than CA, but it's still way out of reach of most non-HQ staff that Tesla employs. I've read the stat that property values have gone up 43% due to exodus from locked down blue states over the course of just the past year. Couple this with Texas' higher than average property tax rate (_especially_ in Austin area) and you've got some pretty…

> property values have gone up 43% due to exodus from locked down blue states Citation needed for this property value claim, also for the existence of “locked down” blue states. I haven’t seen a lockdown yet like many other places.

Can confirm. My rental property in Austin is up 50% in value.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#223

Post by jdhn »

thebradbain wrote: post #179
asdff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are higher than California, right? I can't find the source handy at the moment, but I've heard that a house in Austin that looks like a couple hundred grand cheaper than an equivalent house in California for the listing isn't actually any cheaper when you factor in the increased taxes and potentially other costs I'm not aware of.

Property taxes are _much_ higher in Texas than California, in fact Texas has one of the highest property taxes in the nation (because there's no income tax, and TX still needs to fund itself somehow; TX also has one of the highest sales taxes for this reason, too). You pay the same on property taxes for a $400k house in Texas as a $1M house in California. Not only that, CA has Prop 13: for better or worse, your prope…

If California somehow repealed Prop 13, you would see their property tax rate zoom up to the point where Texas property taxes wouldn't seem that outrageous by comparison.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#224

Post by asdff »

darawk wrote: post #189
asdff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem for musk in this case being his tax burden, since he is otherwise entirely insulated from every other issue affecting most californians.

His tax situation really has nothing to do with it. If he sells his Tesla shares, he's still going to owe CA tax. But he never has to sell any Tesla shares, he can just buy hedges against them and take out loans. If you have sufficient capital assets, you never have to actual earn any "income" or generate any "capital gains" if you don't want to.

He has options he will be selling soon and they are taxed where they will be sold, in this case texas.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#225

Post by Apocryphon »

cletus wrote: post #27

Good. This will both alleviate pressure on the Bay Area as well as accelerating the political shift to the left in Texas. It's a win all around. I actually think that living in the Bay Area as a tech employee is increasingly unjustifiable from an ethical point-of-view. It was once the case where that was necessary for many career paths but that's increasingly not the case and the pandemic has hastened that shift. Why…

Tech being concentrated in the Bay Area certainly exacerbates inequality and cost of living increases, though the fault is less individual workers and more corporate leadership and VC firms insisting on concentrating there even when it might not be geographically necessary.

The sad thing though is that it seems even when you disperse highly paid workers who can work from home, inequality will continue even in other markets, see Austin, Miami [0], Nashville [1].

Then again, those markets were booming even before tech workers moved to there.

[0] https://therealdeal.com/la/2021/09/28/miami-nips-at-ny-for-t...

[1] https://fox17.com/news/local/real-estate-market-so-hot-this-...

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#226

Post by CryptoPunk »

somethoughts wrote: post #164
danhak wrote: post #34

California's tax regime is really backward. I suspect Tesla's departure is just the tip of the iceberg and that the repeal of the SALT deduction in 2017 really hastened this trend. High earners pay an effective tax rate of > 50%. They are partially picking up the slack from Prop 13, which artificially distorts the housing market by allowing longtime homeowners to pay property taxes based on decades-old assessed value…

Resource driven economies like Texas can maintain a low income tax by deriving most of their tax revenue from property taxes and taxing oil and gas revenues. IMHO the high income tax regime found in California is actually a function of high density, high income, knowledge based earners moving in. If enough of them arrive, demands for services (schools, fire, police) and infrastructure (i.e. light rail, etc.) will inc…

>>If enough of them arrive, demands for services (schools, fire, police) and infrastructure (i.e. light rail, etc.) will increase.

The high taxes of CA are due to the state sector having taken over the political system, via control over the dominant narrative/ideology.

To give just one example, emergency workers can retire at 55 with 90% of their pension, that averages $108,000 per year.

California now has $1 trillion in pension obligations for its unionized public sector workers.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#227

Post by asdff »

panopticon wrote: post #89
CheezeIt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public schools aren’t pitiful at all. California has great schools.

There are some really great public schools if you can afford to live near them, but that's certainly not true on net. Otherwise California wouldn't consistently rank among the bottom half of US states for public schooling.

It's really not the school that determines outcomes but the home life. You have a lot of kids in LAUSD who have no real role models at all in their lives and come home to terrible situations every day, which makes the school district look bad but its not really something the school district has any power to solve short of offering boarding school for at risk kids.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#228

Post by jdhn »

xvector wrote: post #195
SavantIdiot wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exodus has been soundly proven to be a myth. [1] But assuming it isn't, there aren't many better places to go. Texas is a joke. Traffic is worse than LA in the major cities and it is run by Christian zealots. Yeah maybe you pay fewer taxes but the other quality-of-life tradeoffs aren't worth it. [1] https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/California-exodus-is-ju...

It's such a terrible state. Infested with ultrawide roads and zero walkability. Women don't have bodily autonomy - imagine trying to raise a daughter in such an environment. I'd hope that alone would deter engineers with families from the state. Not to mention the a worthless human being of a governor. Backwards politics and ideals. It's a joke of a state, everything wrong with America hyper-concentrated on steroids.…

>Not to mention the a worthless human being of a governor. Backwards politics and ideals. It's a joke of a state, everything wrong with America hyper-concentrated on steroids.

There are millions of people who think this exact same thing about California.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#229

Post by ur-whale »

m4rtink wrote: post #154

With these moves I understand the companies might have good reasons for that (costs, nu-favourable laws, etc.) but it always bothers me what happens to the employees ? Do they just "raise the anchor" and move with the company (if they do actually physically relocate, which does not seem to be really the case in this instance) ? Maybe that's normal in the US but the though of having to leave your friends, parts of fam…

> Of maybe that's just my central-European perspective.

This kind of sedentary thinking is one of the many reasons why there aren't any Tesla-like companies in Europe.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#230

Post by CalChris »

gfitz wrote: post #110
Apocryphon wrote: post #56

The official reason is because of housing: "To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California," Musk said. "Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it's jammed." But, he added, "It's tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away....There's a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area." https://ww…

I don’t think housing would be the “official” reason as Elon is keenly aware of how hard it is to buy a house in central Texas right now. Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-austin-texas-housi...

Compared to the Peninsula, Austin is basically free. Median home price in Austin is $575,000. Median home price in Palo Alto, where the current Tesla HQ is, is $3,488,610.
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