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Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

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Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#301

Post by dang »

rsmckinney wrote: post #261
pascalxus wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that. Those people with the very most equity gains, are paying the least taxes relative to their house value. Those with the least equity gain (like recent buyers), are paying the very highest taxes relative to their house. It's basically like saying the person who earned over 1 million dollars in equity gain pays far less taxes than the one who earned 10k in equity gain. It's extremely regressive. An…

Shhh. Don’t wake the two elephants in the room from India and China. They represent the primary cause for real estate inflation in the Bay Area.

Would you please stop posting flamebait here? We've asked you more than once already.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#302

Post by rsj_hn »

comex wrote: post #299
rsj_hn wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a canard. The purpose of a corporation is going to be specified in the corporate charter, and while some corporations are non-profits or have explicit charitable requirements, most have a charter that focuses on maximizing shareholder earnings. Almost no company has a charter that focuses on maximizing taxes paid. That charter is a binding contract that governs the behavior of the officers of the company an…

You moved the goalposts. Corporate officers may indeed be motivated to maximize profits by the threat of being thrown out by shareholders. But they are not legally required to do so, or at least they have no meaningful risk of losing a lawsuit over it; the business judgment rule creates a presumption that they are acting in the corporation’s best interests, a presumption which is hard to overcome. The main exception…

As I pointed out, if they violate the charter, which explicitly says that shareholder returns is the purpose of the corporation, then they are liable to be sued by either shareholders or state’s attorneys. That charter is a legally binding obligation. The requirement to disburse profits, have shareholders approve executive pay, etc which is also in the charter also becomes a legal obligation. It’s not a question of preferences but rather contracts that are heavily regulated.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/consequences-violating-corpo...

“ State laws require the board of directors to act in the best interest of the corporation and its shareholders. Part of that responsibility is managing the affairs of the business according to certain legal standards. Once a director takes a seat on the board, he has various duties as the representative of the shareholders that the law places upon him, such as the duty of care and loyalty, that determine if he's doing his job properly. Even if your small corporation has few shareholders and all of them also sit on the board of directors, the shareholders in their capacity as directors must take action and make decisions that comply with the law and the corporation's governing documents, including the bylaws.”

Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#303

Post by trepanne »

rsj_hn wrote: post #302
comex wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You moved the goalposts. Corporate officers may indeed be motivated to maximize profits by the threat of being thrown out by shareholders. But they are not legally required to do so, or at least they have no meaningful risk of losing a lawsuit over it; the business judgment rule creates a presumption that they are acting in the corporation’s best interests, a presumption which is hard to overcome. The main exception…

As I pointed out, if they violate the charter, which explicitly says that shareholder returns is the purpose of the corporation, then they are liable to be sued by either shareholders or state’s attorneys. That charter is a legally binding obligation. The requirement to disburse profits, have shareholders approve executive pay, etc which is also in the charter also becomes a legal obligation. It’s not a question of p…

Corporate charters don't generally include clauses requiring that profits be maximized, profits be disbursed, and executive pay be approved by shareholders.

Rather they tend to include maximally expansive language such as "all business activities legal in the state of XXX". It's a placeholder, delegating responsibility to the directors to the greatest extent permitted by law. This is the standard, for good reason.

Are the charitable donations of the Fortune 500 evidence of widespread violation of fiduciary duties?

Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#305

Post by fountainofage »

nitrogen wrote: post #245
_9vpl wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, commercial property makes no sense either, especially if you consider the original intent of the law, but it bothers me less than residences as at least those properties, in theory, are doing something productive for society.

Long-term residents are also doing something productive for society -- they are providing stable communities around which longer-term plans can be made, in which cultural memory of e.g. local climatological risks can be preserved, etc. Housing is definitely way too expensive in the bay area, but calling existing residents "unproductive" is pretty astonishingly, callously, selfishly offensive.

Eh, I'd say I've met quite a lot of long-term residents of San Francisco. Pretty much no correlation between ownership and how worthless that person is to the community. I know renters with their 30-year lease that don't even live here anymore. I know homeowners with their 30-year old property tax assessment that also don't even live here anymore.

Both just pop in every now and then to enjoy the Bay Area for cheap and then let the home sit vacant the other 300+ days of the year.

I also know renters and owners that have been very active in their local communities.

If the metric you care about is "societal productivity" there are better ways to measure and reward that than based on "how long have you owned here."

Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#306

Post by scurvy »

selimthegrim wrote: post #166
scurvy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been in the Bay since 2000. I grew up in NOLA through the worst years. Can't unsee what I've seen there. NOLA is bad because crime is everywhere. There are no good areas and bad areas -- it's everywhere. Even people in old Metairie need to deal with home invasions. Uptown? Oooooo-lawd! Who was the rich uptown couple that had a home invasion where they tied up the husband and repeatedly raped the wife over several day…

Yes, it was Uptown. (I don’t live Uptown) I don’t recall the details of the incident you state. Things have certainly changed since 2000.

Yeah, the murder rate has gone down only because first responders are getting better at treating gunshot wounds. The actual violence rate is up.

And now, 11 people shot on Canal Street. This seems to happen every few years in NOLA. It almost never happens in the Bay Area at normal locations.

https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/article_883833a4-142b...

Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#307

Post by scurvy »

kodablah wrote: post #283
scurvy wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dallas is terribad. At least it was in 1999 when I lived there. I can't believe that there are fewer people on the road and less traffic now than then. Fun trivia tip: the opening scene of "Office Space" with the old person and walker going faster than traffic was filmed in Las Colinas (where I worked at the time).

It has gotten better in 20 years (that's way too long to retain judgement on transportation). Not a ton better, but since most of these companies aren't moving to Dallas proper, it's moot anyways.

How did they remove the cars from the road?

I'd imagine traffic at the mixmaster and various loops are still terrible.

I had a reverse commute (Lower McKinney to Las Colinas), and I'd see gridlock the entire way there (other direction).

Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#308

Post by wutbrodo »

rsj_hn wrote: post #297
wutbrodo wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and even legally required to do so if they are to meet their obligations to maximize shareholder value. This is a solid comment overall, but I really wish this particular widespread canard would die already. It's flatly untrue, the kind of myth that lives on because there are so many people who aren't capable of processing the benefits and costs of corporations and treat them as one-dimensional boogeymen out of a c…

It is not a canard. The purpose of a corporation is going to be specified in the corporate charter, and while some corporations are non-profits or have explicit charitable requirements, most have a charter that focuses on maximizing shareholder earnings. Almost no company has a charter that focuses on maximizing taxes paid. That charter is a binding contract that governs the behavior of the officers of the company an…

You're changing the subject to substantially narrower claims, none of which I disagree with. The claim wasn't that corporations aren't free to explicitly optimize for goals other than or contrary to shareholder value (this seems trivially true AFAIK). It was that corporations are forced by law to take specific steps like "doing everything they can to optimize tax avoidance", and are legally prohibited from leaving any optimization opportunity on the table (as long as it's legal). Corporations are afforded far more discretion in this area, legally speaking, than your OP comment states.

Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#309

Post by jdavis703 »

garmaine wrote: post #162
jdavis703 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is perception. If a company seems to only move their headquarters in name only (IOW most of the staff still stays in SF), then that seems sketchy. If they make a clean separation and shutdown their SF presence, that doesn't appear as dodgy. And these companies are not just moving to Texas. I live in Oakland, CA and many of these companies are relocating here. I don't care if they leave SF, but if they're…

No one cares. Have you ever made a decision as a customer based on the company’s tax resident status?

It's not the only decision point, but I try to avoid companies that exhibit a pattern of scummy behavior such as Wal-Mart, Nestle or Uber. Further I'm not only a consumer. I'm also a potential (small time) investor and employee of these companies. The bar for acceptable behavior is even higher if I'm going to work or invest with them.

Re: Schwab Leaves San Francisco for Texas

#310

Post by pandaman »

scurvy wrote: post #80
FireBeyond wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You go from saying "people who live in actual high crime areas would like a word with you" to acknowledging that SF has the highest property crime rates in the country. And then wave it all away as, I guess, it's only really non-violent crime. Odd logic.

I also said, that SF isn't the entire Bay Area. If you gave weightings to crime categories (we all do this internally), property crime would probably be the lowest weighted next to white collar crime. Violent crime would get exponentially higher weightings. It's one thing to have $200 worth of stuff stolen in a car break-in. It's another to be violently mugged for $200 in cash on your person. I've lived in bad areas…

It is not a zero sum situation - you don't get high violent crime due to low property crime and vice versa. It's entirely possible to live in an area with low property and low violent crime. Besides, doing a quick search shows [e.g. 1] that the NYC has both violent and property crimes rates much lower than SF, this could explain why people are not saying it's a hell hole.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

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