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Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

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Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#521

Post by smabie »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #126
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…

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...

What about Puerto Rico? I moved here 6mo to take advantage of the lowest taxes an American can get and it's pretty livable. Of course English is spoken as a second language, but all in all it's pretty livable

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#523

Post by kelnos »

nabaraz wrote: post #184
adeelk93 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by average vs median salary here?

Poor wording on my part. I meant to say the average salary is much higher in California than in Texas. For example, here is Tech: https://i.imgur.com/rHBVWRt.png

22% isn't nothing, certainly, but I wouldn't say it's "much" higher. And it looks like Austin's tech salaries are going up YoY at 4x the rate SV's are.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#524

Post by UnpossibleJim »

scoofy wrote: post #466
t-writescode wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/worst-traffic-cities-americ... According to this, Austin Texas is #10 on this chart. #1, LA #2, NYC #3, San Fran #4, San Jose (near San Fran) #5, Seattle #6, Miami #7, DC #8, Chicago #9, Honolulu #10, Austin *two* of the top 5 worst traffic areas in the US are in the Greater San Francisco area.

Again... LA has a surprisingly extensive subway system. NYC, SF, Miami, DC, and Chicago all have robust public transit. Even San Jose and Seattle have non-negligible transit alternatives. Austin has essentially nothing, the train they built is legitimately the dumbest, cheapest option that was offered at the time, though they are building dense housing along it now. People often choose which side of the river to live…

Seattle's public transportation is poorly connected and confused at best. Mismanaged and terrible at worst. It seems like a ponzi scheme masquerading as a public transportation system, at times. There's a demand for it, which is the sad truth of the situation.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#525

Post by darawk »

skissane wrote: post #274
darawk wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But he never has to sell any Tesla shares, he can just buy hedges against them and take out loans So he takes out a $1 billion loan, and he offers $1 billion in stock as a security, and then also buys a futures contract (or a put option) on his $1 billion of stock to lock in the current price, so if the stock goes down in value over the life of the loan, the lender doesn't lose their security? And then when the loa…

Yep, you've got it. The most beautiful part of the whole thing is the step up in basis for the estate. When you pass on your estate, the cost basis of all your assets get "stepped up" to the current market value. This means that if he passes on his estate to his children, they can then sell the shares to repay the loan with zero tax.

All this adds up to zero capital gains taxes being paid ever on the entire amount.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#526

Post by pb7 »

bradknowles wrote: post #475
minhazm wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps says downtown Austin to Giga Texas is 17 miles, 24 minutes. I don't know what traffic is like in Austin but I imagine it's not nearly as bad as the bay area. I think a 25-30 min commute is pretty reasonable and most people would happily take that for much cheaper housing. The big difference is that in Austin you have the option to commute a bit for much cheaper housing. But in the bay area you could be co…

I lived and worked for six months in the Cupertino area for a contract job at Apple. My wife and I moved to Austin in 2006. Traffic in Austin is weird. There are some places where it’s literally the worst in the nation — I-35 is the most congested interstate in the nation, and the most congested part of I-35 starts just above Austin and ends just south of Austin. I-35 is more or less congested pretty much around the…

Nice of you to come to California to get some big paychecks before taking them back to Austin to outbid your neighbors then complain about others doing the same.

You seem like a real principled guy. Don’t come back.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#527

Post by vineyardmike »

t-writescode wrote: post #442
scoofy wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic in Austin is insane. Legit insane. Definitely comparable to the Bay Area if not worse. And there is absolutely no transit alternative comparable to BART. There is a morning and evening train, but it's really only effective if you live and work exactly on the stops.

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/worst-traffic-cities-americ... According to this, Austin Texas is #10 on this chart. #1, LA #2, NYC #3, San Fran #4, San Jose (near San Fran) #5, Seattle #6, Miami #7, DC #8, Chicago #9, Honolulu #10, Austin *two* of the top 5 worst traffic areas in the US are in the Greater San Francisco area.

I've always heard boston was terrible traffic. Didn't make top 10?

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#528

Post by exdsq »

pvarangot wrote: post #279
handmodel wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be as NIMBY in some ways but the effects haven't kicked in yet (and probably won't given size, competition, and property tax laws). Look at the options available for a family making 80k in these two cities. They aren't even the same magnitude. https://www.trulia.com/TX/Austin/ https://www.trulia.com/CA/Palo_Alto/ Texas also doesnt have prop 13 so it is unlikely to ever reach the levels of a California city

That comparison is ridiculous, have you been to Palo Alto? It's a mansion neighborhood like Atherton. A better comparison would be with San Jose or San Mateo that are like, normal cities. Still way more expensive than Austin but it's nowhere near the price of Palo Alto or Atherton.

I live in Palo Alto and love zillowing random houses on my walk to Starbucks. Record for most expensive town house on a normal residential street is $19m. It’s insane.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#529

Post by vineyardmike »

bradknowles wrote: post #479
boringg wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the example used and the list from that website its tough to tell which companies were satellite offices vs which were corporate/research HQ. Not trying to belittle Austin - I know they have a tech scene - and I know every city is trying to capitalize on marketing their city as the next silicon valley (which is such a ridiculous thing to do for an incredibly long list of reasons).

I think Apple’s campus here is already bigger than anything they’ve got anywhere else, short of the giant UFO in Cupertino, and they’re still planning on expanding. Amazon is here, and again they have a number of buildings in the Domain area. I think it might be their second or third largest site, behind HQ and possibly HQ2. Of course Dell is here. Google doesn’t have much of a presence, yet. There are lots of other…

>it might be their second or third largest site, behind HQ and possibly HQ2.

Amazon largeset office presence outside of seattle (and bellevue which come consider seperate) is SouthBay cali, followed then by HQ2

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#530

Post by seanmcdirmid »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #524
scoofy wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again... LA has a surprisingly extensive subway system. NYC, SF, Miami, DC, and Chicago all have robust public transit. Even San Jose and Seattle have non-negligible transit alternatives. Austin has essentially nothing, the train they built is legitimately the dumbest, cheapest option that was offered at the time, though they are building dense housing along it now. People often choose which side of the river to live…

Seattle's public transportation is poorly connected and confused at best. Mismanaged and terrible at worst. It seems like a ponzi scheme masquerading as a public transportation system, at times. There's a demand for it, which is the sad truth of the situation.

Seattle could be better connected, but it isn’t that bad. If you are going downtown, you can get something, even something lateral Ballard to Bellevue requires just one connection.
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