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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

#591

Post by njarboe »

fokinsean wrote: post #357
njarboe wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is great. A high property tax keeps the price of housing down (what people will pay for a house is cost per month, basically mortgage plus property tax), makes people want to have new housing built so that housing prices don't go up, and promotes a general attitude of anti-NIMBYism. Just the opposite of California with its low property tax and very aristocratic prop 13 problem.

> A high property tax keeps the price of housing down Have you seen Austin prices recently, it's getting pretty hectic in "core" Austin. > promotes a general attitude of anti-NIMBYism This isn't entirely true. In the recent election there was a public transit bill in Austin which would raise prop taxes by 4% I think. Even though it passed there was a hefty amount of opposition to supporting it, and generally anything…

Well, Austin is has been known for decades as the one city in Texas where people with "California" like values can feel at home. They have immigrated en-mass and continue to change the native culture at a rapid rate, I would imagine.

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

#592

Post by dsq »

SmokeyHamster wrote: post #286
dkobran wrote: post #16

HP and Oracle don’t exactly represent the heart of Silicon Valley today and what makes it special/unique. I actually think zombie corporations like Oracle, companies that haven’t innovated in decades and instead rely on an army of sales people to sell legacy software, are somewhat the antithesis of Silicon Valley which is really about real technological innovation and disruption at it’s core. I know there are lots of…

I partially agree. However, Elon Musk has personally moved to Texas, and he's begun moving some operations of his companies there as well, like SpaceX and Tesla. And those are certainly disruptors. You're underestimating just how toxic California's political climate has become towards business. Democrats see them as bottomless pits of money to be abused and extorted, while giving them nothing back in return. Some com…

SpaceX moving specifically to Brownsville, which is the point closest to the equator in the USA other than Florida. The spaceport will be closer to the equator than Kennedy Space Center.

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

#593

Post by lern_too_spel »

NoRagrets wrote: post #570
lern_too_spel wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You are advocating a regressive policy that hampers growth, and it's easy to figure this out with economic thinking. How? How is it a regressive policy? It is not like you are taxing real wealth or real income. The value of a property that is a domicile is taxed Ad Valorem. You are taxing a non income. It is not regressive but is in fact, a punitive tax. A regressive tax policy only applies to that which has entere…

You've made so many mistakes in one post that it would be useless to respond to them. Take an introductory course in economics and come back to this issue when you understand how supply and demand set rental prices.

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

#594

Post by [deleted] »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #593
NoRagrets wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are advocating a regressive policy that hampers growth, and it's easy to figure this out with economic thinking. How? How is it a regressive policy? It is not like you are taxing real wealth or real income. The value of a property that is a domicile is taxed Ad Valorem. You are taxing a non income. It is not regressive but is in fact, a punitive tax. A regressive tax policy only applies to that which has entere…

You've made so many mistakes in one post that it would be useless to respond to them. Take an introductory course in economics and come back to this issue when you understand how supply and demand set rental prices.

[deleted]

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

#595

Post by jelliclesfarm »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #593
NoRagrets wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are advocating a regressive policy that hampers growth, and it's easy to figure this out with economic thinking. How? How is it a regressive policy? It is not like you are taxing real wealth or real income. The value of a property that is a domicile is taxed Ad Valorem. You are taxing a non income. It is not regressive but is in fact, a punitive tax. A regressive tax policy only applies to that which has entere…

You've made so many mistakes in one post that it would be useless to respond to them. Take an introductory course in economics and come back to this issue when you understand how supply and demand set rental prices.

I have a degree in economics.

Have a nice day.

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

#596

Post by rkuykendall-com »

chrshawkes wrote: post #448
cheriot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP moving to Texas is the corporate version of my grandparents retiring to Florida.

What about Tesla and Palantir?

Palantir has always been creepy and isolated, and Tesla is led by a super-villain who is moving to a state where he can legally force people into offices during a pandemic.

Plus his rockets are there, so that's a perk.

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

#597

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

edmundsauto wrote: post #535
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

both the policy makers, and the masses of voters that support them.

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

#598

Post by jonathanyc »

bordercases wrote: post #499
jonathanyc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before I answer, could you please give concrete examples of what you mean by intolerance? I’m genuinely curious and trying to be open minded, I hope I’m not coming across as confrontational. At my last job I was open about my Christianity. I haven’t really had a chance to do that at my current job because of COVID. At my current job though I do talk about the fact that I own a gun in the context of recreation, and at…

The reason why I'm surprised is because a lot of what counts for political commentary within Silicon Valley circles has emphasized stances in cultural issues which seem opposed to either the Christian attitude or second amendment rights or other views that get broadly tagged as "conservative" or "unkind". It's definitely possible to be tasteful and silent when sitting on a Zoom call as people voice strong views in su…

Thanks for engaging in a civil way!

Yeah, at my last job people definitely were more vocal about political issues. That’s actually how my religion came up. Now everything is work from home and over video, and people at my new job are also more heads-down. I’d certainly say that people have misconceptions about Christianity or might paint Christians with broad strokes in discussions. But I haven’t found people to be rude after I try to explain my stances, even if they disagree, unless they are not great people to work with in the first place :)

But I don’t think that’s anywhere near as intolerant as for example racism I’ve experienced, which is why the claim that the Bay Area is more intolerant irks me.

I’m a Presbyterian and consider myself to be pretty hardline theologically. TULIP and all that.

EDIT: I would definitely expect different reactions if I said inflammatory things to coworkers like “you’re going to hell!”, or to people against the second amendment “hope you don’t miss your children when the oligarchs enslave them because you didn’t have a gun!” But I think communicating while disagreeing without resorting to vitriol is also just a core part of being an engineer. Maybe those things are true but they’re not really productive ways to engage people.

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

#599

Post by thu2111 »

phobosanomaly wrote: post #530
thu2111 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That >100% of beds can be occupied with COVID should raise some questions about those stats. ICU beds are flexible, it's more of a designation than a hard constant. Sweden doubled their ICU capacity in a few weeks without much difficulty back in March. So it's normal for ICU to run near "capacity" because it'd be kind of wasteful if it didn't. Remember also that "COVID patient" means "patient who tested positive for…

As an alternate perspective, that >100% of beds can be occupied by people with COVID could terrify you. People in gurneys lined up along hallways, PPE running low, overflow tents in the parking lots, nurses WAY over ratio handling more patients than is safe, doctors burned-out and scared. So, any patient in a hospital that tests positive should be going into a negative-pressure room so that the hospital doesn't becom…

People in gurneys lined up along hallways, PPE running low, overflow tents in the parking lots, nurses WAY over ratio handling more patients than is safe, doctors burned-out and scared.

'Terrified' is all relative, right? Such things are reported in recent years with nobody panicking like in 2020:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/saline-solution-s...

“This is a serious situation and right now we are at the limits of our conservation and adaptation strategy,” said Dr. Paul Biddinger, director of the Center for Disaster Medicine and vice chairman for emergency preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “We have seen an increase in the number of flu cases compared to last year. If this continues the current trend, we are worried that this will stress our system and make us run out of IV fluids,” added Dr. O’Neill Britton, chief medical officer at Mass General.

https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

"Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents"

A lot of things that are actually not that alarming and do not cause mass deaths, have been recast this year into apocalyptic end-of-days events that must not be allowed to happen at literally any cost. It's not rooted in anything hard or real, it's to do with the scale of the original projections (which were all wrong).

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

#600

Post by chrshawkes »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #596
chrshawkes wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Tesla and Palantir?

Palantir has always been creepy and isolated, and Tesla is led by a super-villain who is moving to a state where he can legally force people into offices during a pandemic. Plus his rockets are there, so that's a perk.

What about Charles Schwab? What about co-founders like the Reddit dude ditching CA?
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