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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

#551

Post by easde »

xxxtentachyon wrote: post #81
synaesthesisx wrote: post #14

I know multiple people considering abandoning California due to the homelessness crisis, as the unhoused population (and the problems associated) are expected to increase 10x in the near future as a consequence of the pandemic, with no hope in sight.

That strikes me as a bit of a ridiculous reason to move. The homeless in California are concentrated in a handful of cities, and within those cities, in a handful of neighborhoods. It’s not a problem that you’d be exposed to in a way that truly inconveniences you unless you live or work in very specific locales, and even then, what are the homeless doing that is pushing people to move all the way out of the state rat…

Many of the tech companies are in the "bad" neighborhoods. Most notably Uber, Twitter and Square are all headquartered right next to one of the worst parts in the city (Civic Center / Tenderloin).

I remember walking to one of those companies for a job interview and seeing someone pooping in broad daylight on the 8th and Market intersection. Not a great first impression.

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

#552

Post by gumby »

bananabiscuit wrote: post #531
gumby wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

Plenty of other criteria on which it is a positive. Raising millions out of poverty. More people working on hard problems.

As to the latter criterion: consider the symbolism of Aricebo collapsing in an uncontrolled fashion on the same day a Chinese spacecraft departed te moon (and a Japanese one prepared to deliver its second sample of an extraterrestrial sample). When the Bush administration restricted stem cell research, China and Singapore picked up the slack. Etc.

In this case exporting technical work to states like Texas not only may open up opportunities for more people to do technical work but can help them as oil related revenues decline.

The world is not zero sum and to me exporting a job to China, India, Romania or Texas as are equivalently positive.

He’ll do you object to Apple building a chip development team in San Diego?

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

#553

Post by lern_too_spel »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #525
lern_too_spel wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what exactly is 'economically illiterate'. i cant take anything you wrote seriously until you explain this made up word Have you heard of financial literacy or scientific literacy? Economic literacy is similar. I am using the English language in a very straightforward manner. > the notion that high taxes will somehow benefit the state is a very ill thought out plan. Who said anything about increasing total state re…

>I am using the English language in a very straightforward manner. english is not my first language. economic literacy wrt this topic seems irrelevant. >After Prop 13 passed, a big chunk of the state revenue was tied up in propping up local governments. wrong. property taxes are diverted to the state's public education program through a complicated set of formulas called LCFF.[1] it collects all the property taxes. d…

> economic literacy wrt this topic seems irrelevant.

It is supremely relevant. You are advocating a regressive policy that hampers growth, and it's easy to figure this out with economic thinking.

> wrong. property taxes are diverted to the state's public education program through a complicated set of formulas called LCFF.[1]

That doesn't say I'm wrong. It just shows the formula by which the state props up each local government.

> how? how will increasing taxes on older properties that are still housing original buyers and havent been resold.. 'encourage development' without UNHOUSING existing people with fixed incomes who are already living there.

You're making at least three mistakes. The first is that you assume all property is residential. The second is that you assume that all property is developed. Due to Prop 13, there are several undeveloped lots with keep out signs in my neighborhood of million dollar houses. The third is that you assume that apartments can't be redeveloped to house more people. Prop 13 increases the cost of doing so to not only the fixed cost of redeveloping the property but the ongoing cost of significantly higher taxes.

> you are asking that prop 13 punish older houseowners so they will be forced to give up their residences to fund the younger citizenry.

You're falling for a marketing trick the proponents of the initiative intended for rubes. The correct way to keep the few old people in their homes is via tax exemptions, as I've already explained. It is not to give incumbent landowners a huge competitive advantage over new landowners, leading to de facto serfdom.

> you want to increase the burden of taxation on NON EARNERS with non income producing fixed assets.

Who said that? These landlords are producing massive unearned profits. The rents go up with demand, but their costs stay low. Removing prop 13 would bring their profits in line with newer landlords.

> those who have children should be taxed because the children consume resources and need to be educated. the peers of parents should share the burden. not the generation that has already done it's part and is getting ready to retire.

This is economically nonsensical. Who is going to pay the taxes to take care of the elderly if not the children? The state has every incentive to make these children as productive as possible, which means educating them.

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

#554

Post by Domenic_S »

giantg2 wrote: post #497
Domenic_S wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems like a convoluted system to tax people based on property while still making it means based. What was the reasoning they gave for not just using an income based system, which should more implicitly align with one's means?

Makes gaming the system harder. Once you're rich enough you could only take compensation every other (3rd/5th/etc) year and pay property tax only then. Unlike compensation once the property tax year's gone it's gone, there's no deferring situation (eg, vis a vis deferring comp where the big chunk in later years would still be taxed)

It's not an unusual situation in urban CA for an elderly person to have bought a house currently worth many millions back in the day for <$100k. Downsizing for them means still spending many hundreds of thousands of dollars, far beyond the tax basis of their current home. I think the current system encourages (or at least doesn't disincentivize) older folks with expensive homes to sell and downsize, meaning the tax basis for that same home will increase a whole bunch for the new buyer (since tax basis is recast as the purchase price when sold), ultimately driving more tax revenue.

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

#555

Post by type_enthusiast »

pb7 wrote: post #306
type_enthusiast wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What gives your parents more right to live there than anyone else? Just because they were born first? What about the people that will pioneer the next generation of technology? You’re not entitled to live where you want just because you set up shop there first. This is one of the fundamental reasons property taxes exist. Otherwise, most of the land in the US would be squatted on by powerful families of centuries past…

> What gives your parents more right to live there than anyone else?

I mean they own the home, so presumably that gives them a right to live there. They went there and bought a home for market value, even if it was a struggle to do so. They didn't complain about the existing residents or suggest that everything had to change to accommodate them. So I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

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

#556

Post by daveslash »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #546
gumby wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to note here, the dev teams aren't moving to Texas, management is moving to Texas. The dev teams are more likely to be moving to India where costs are lower (especially if we are talking about Oracle and HPE).

Especially in this "everyone works from home" world that COVID's delivered us. Even after COVID's over, a lot of employers are going to be much more open to permanent work-from-home.

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

#557

Post by telotortium »

Domenic_S wrote: post #462
gangstead wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The exceptions are easier to get now with the passage of Prop 19 this year. The summary on Ballotpedia (https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_19,_Property_...) is pretty good:

- allow eligible homeowners to transfer their tax assessments anywhere within the state and allow tax assessments to be transferred to a more expensive home with an upward adjustment;

- increase the number of times that persons over 55 years old or with severe disabilities can transfer their tax assessments from one to three;

- require that inherited homes that are not used as principal residences, such as second homes or rentals, be reassessed at market value when transferred; and

- allocate additional revenue or net savings resulting from the ballot measure to wildfire agencies and counties.

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

#558

Post by gedy »

kec wrote: post #333
gedy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 is one of the few reasons many could consider staying in California, vs having to pay property taxes on the bubble prices here. Property taxes do go up at what amounts to reasonable inflation numbers.

prop13 growth is capped below inflation. It also has the effect of causing funding shortfalls which have had the direct result of things like California's public schools being ranked 37/50, deteriorating public works, etc. The single best thing California could do for Californians would be to sunset prop13 protections.

Serrano vs Priest had a huge impact on school funding, as much to blame as Prop 13: https://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/separate-and-unequ...

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

#559

Post by mavelikara »

kelp wrote: post #329
gedy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 is one of the few reasons many could consider staying in California, vs having to pay property taxes on the bubble prices here. Property taxes do go up at what amounts to reasonable inflation numbers.

The most compelling argument I’ve heard in favor of continuing prop 13, from a good policy perspective is that it lets people stay in their homes. But couldn’t we achieve the same thing by means testing property taxes? As it is now, the tax rate is set basically based on how long you’ve owned your property. I could be making $$$ and pay very very little. While my neighbor who bought more recently but earns less pays…

Prop 13 allows the tax rate to be inherited. Fixing this loophole will be a simple first step for fairness.

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

#560

Post by dragonwriter »

mavelikara wrote: post #559
kelp wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most compelling argument I’ve heard in favor of continuing prop 13, from a good policy perspective is that it lets people stay in their homes. But couldn’t we achieve the same thing by means testing property taxes? As it is now, the tax rate is set basically based on how long you’ve owned your property. I could be making $$$ and pay very very little. While my neighbor who bought more recently but earns less pays…

Prop 13 allows the tax rate to be inherited. Fixing this loophole will be a simple first step for fairness.

> Prop 13 allows the tax rate to be inherited.

No, it allows transfer of property to certain relatives without full-value reassessment. Rates aren't any different than anyone else in the same jurisdiction pays, it's the assessment that is the issue.

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