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Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

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Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#5
post #3

Curious how much of this is “natural”, how much is forced by stupid CA policies and COL, and how much is “spread out jobs and investment to reduce government risk/gain government support at state and federal-legislative levels.”

As companies grow they naturally tend to distribute. As you get to this sort of scale it’s not like employees are co-located in any meaningful sense even if they’re in the same general geo. Distribute risk, get access to an additional pool of workers. Certainly COL (and general congestion) in the Bay Area will inevitably bias most companies against doing any sizable expansion there.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#6
post #3

Curious how much of this is “natural”, how much is forced by stupid CA policies and COL, and how much is “spread out jobs and investment to reduce government risk/gain government support at state and federal-legislative levels.”

I seriously do not understand anyone in the Bay Area that’s anti development. How can you justify yourself in good conscience to be anti development when CoL is so high?

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#7
post #3

Curious how much of this is “natural”, how much is forced by stupid CA policies and COL, and how much is “spread out jobs and investment to reduce government risk/gain government support at state and federal-legislative levels.”

If you compare the bubble map of new jobs with the heatmap of existing jobs it looks like they are expanding proportionally to the amount of people they are already employing in the different areas.

To me that seems like it might just be a natural expansion.

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#8
Big corps love to brag about "adding jobs", but don't like to brag about the "tax incentives" they are getting. There are usually huge costs for the whole community.

Austin tax incentives for Apple seem to be relatively small [1], but Foxconn factory in Wisconsin is an extreme case. I highly recommend the Replay All podcast episode on this [2][3]

[1] https://www.statesman.com/news/20120901/austin-council-oks-8...

[2] https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/132-negative-mount-ple...

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128133/foxconn-deal-wis...

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#9
post #8

Big corps love to brag about "adding jobs", but don't like to brag about the "tax incentives" they are getting. There are usually huge costs for the whole community. Austin tax incentives for Apple seem to be relatively small [1], but Foxconn factory in Wisconsin is an extreme case. I highly recommend the Replay All podcast episode on this [2][3] [1] https://www.statesman.com/news/20120901/austin-council-oks-8... [2]…

I saw this video about LA a few days ago and it is very sad how these tax incentives are ruining entire states. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38

Re: Apple to build campus in Austin and sites in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City

#10
post #6
post #3

Curious how much of this is “natural”, how much is forced by stupid CA policies and COL, and how much is “spread out jobs and investment to reduce government risk/gain government support at state and federal-legislative levels.”

I seriously do not understand anyone in the Bay Area that’s anti development. How can you justify yourself in good conscience to be anti development when CoL is so high?

People who have vested interests in keeping it that way: NIMBYers. People who currently own homes and want to see their habitable “retirement plans” grow indefinitely. And god forbid we build apartment complexes greater than 5 stories all over the Bay Area. We wouldn’t want anyone’s glorious viewshed of the surrounding yellow hills to be blocked.

Of course, increasing housing density highlights other problems: terrible traffic and poor public transportation. We’d need to make large investments in both housing and transportation infrastructure if we’re ever going to make headway in the CoL problem.

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