Pretty interesting to see this move makes people so salty. There does seem to be a trend of people fleeing California, I dont know enough about the situation out there to comment on whether or not its valid. I suspect something must be going on for several high profile folks moving out. And before you bash Texas, its not perfect. But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here. I like that...
My birth certificate says "Texas" across the top and people have been "fleeing California" to Texas for as long as I've been alive. There's nothing special about Musk; he just happens to be high-profile about it and managed to extract more from California before decamping to a "cheap" state than several of those who came before him.
I disagree with your assessment that Texas has wide acceptance for opposing viewpoints, at least out in the suburbs where I grew up. If you were not religious and conservative (I have my own anecdotes), you did not fit in. Only when I went to college in a college town did people largely seem to want to live and let live. Sure, inside the larger cities it is more cosmopolitan, for lack of a better word, but lots of people live in the 'burbs and around the smaller areas and do not get the benefit of this peaceful coexistence. For example, to this day I do not recommend being openly gay and living near Tyler.
If someone moved to Texas, they made a choice to accept it and I will not knock people for their individual choices. But my experience is not that the prevailing view is open acceptance of people of all stripes like found in other parts of the country.
It's been a massive windfall to people who have been homeowners for 40 years in California. High rents due to the fact that you're not allowed to build new housing, high property taxes paid by new residents, while old residents pay nothing, high income and sales taxes to paper over the gap in the budget left by the lack of property tax paid by longtime residents.
The whole system has been optimized to milk as much money as possible from newcomers. The people in power in California even scapegoated the newcomers for a long time, and pretended that they were unwanted. Now that the system has finally become unsustainable, we get these ridiculous takes about how somebody "extracted wealth" from California.
If you don’t build luxury housing, affordable housing becomes luxury housing. San Francisco is a perfect example of NIMBY extremism and the damage it does to communities.
It's worse than that: The entire concept of "luxury housing" is a lie.
The words "luxury housing" are designed to make you think that it is taking up space that could be used by non luxury housing. Like the only reason a new apartment is so expensive is because it has a gold-plated toilet or something, and if only the developer had built an apartment without a gold plated toilet you could afford it. But in Minneapolis, for example, a 2 bedroom apartment in the nicest building in the city, with a built in pool, car wash, and cigar lounge, is $2000 per month. That barely gets you a spot in someone's living room in SF.
This proves that it is not luxuries that make "luxury apartments" expensive in SF. The only luxury is having a roof over your head.
Minneapolis has had it's waves of pricing over the years. The hay day of build happened starting in 2005 and ran for the last 15 years leading up to where it is now. I lived in the Northloop on the front of the trendiness (pre-Target Stadium) and Uptown was still the land of said "hipsters" (such an unfortunate moniker). I can tell you that in 2010 I was paying more than $2000/month for a 2 bedroom there because supply was much more constrained. Now there's easily 20x availability of options. The downside is it's become much more crowded, the upside is it draws a lot of new food/entertainment options. Ultimately I'm glad I don't live downtown anymore. I think prices in Minneapolis will drop again as people spread back out if large organizations continue to dry up in the city. Don't get me wrong, I love Minneapolis and very much my time living in the city. But - things have definitely changed a lot in the last few years and I wouldn't say for much, if any, gain.
The gain is that a lot more people get to live there now, which benefits all of those people. It no longer being for you is more than made up for by the fact that it is now for so many more other people.
In my opinion it's a stretch to say that an oversubscription on housing "benefits all of those people". I enjoy Minneapolis, but it's in a very odd state right now.
Huh? If all the housing is occupied then how is it possibly an oversubscription? If anything it sounds like an undersubscription -- even more people would live there if there were more housing, but there isn't, so they can't.
If you consistently get the choice between paying $2000 for that or $2000 for a dingy basement suite with no windows, then yes it is luxury and will stop the price of those less desirable homes from rising. The key is to ensure supply outpaces demand. Meaning: let developers build luxury developments. The more the merrier.
This, a thousand times. Housing advocates often call for building “affordable housing” but the problem of high prices is solved by building any housing. As you suggested, if new luxury housing comes on the market, then some older apartments can’t charge luxury prices anymore. The same effect works all the way down to the lowest priced units. Also people don’t increase their consumption when prices go down (housing is an inelastic market). So, new supply at the top of the market pushes down the prices of everything.
In practice, "pushes down the prices" is an overstatement, and what actually happens is that once demand pressure reaches a certain point new luxury supply only opens up higher pricing tiers. It potentially stabilizes older construction, which is not bad, but doesn't seem to provide downward pressure. The only thing that seems to do that is non-marginal demand dropping out of the market.
And if you follow it through that's how the incentives seem to be aligned. Capital examining opportunity in construction will want to chase the highest return it can and if you have capital the marginal cost on luxury construction over non-luxury at the same unit scale is usually less than the return. On top of that, at certain scales of operation vacancy is apparently less of a drag on nominal property values involved in the accounting and financing, which means prices tend to float down when the fall rather than plummet. Though of course, any potential developer doing the math is going to look at vacancy rate and will make their decision about whether/what to build targeting points short of outright surplus.
There are some types markets where I think you can drive down pricing market-wide by coming in from the top (consumer tech sure seems to work that way) and that's my guess why so many seem think the same must apply to housing. Perhaps housing could indeed work the same way if the actual manufacturing techniques and costs were being iterated with the same speed and scale.
But that's why there are specific drives for affordable housing: building at the top slows/stops price increases but only lets people on the verge of being priced out tread water.
Personally I think there needs to be vacancy taxes proportional to the market segment being operated (probably also correlated to tightness of supply) so that prices clear on the falling side more easily, but who knows how that would change people's construction calculations.
Minnesota isn't "cheap". I'd say - depending on where you want to live in the city can influence your results. Ultimately it's what you're after. I think, today, you can live there very reasonably. We have better than average access to health care, but taxes are also an impediment in Hennepin county (Minneapolis metro). The metro is very conveniently laid out - so if you're looking to move there you should broaden your search as commuting isn't horrible, public transport is decent and there's a lot of option for reasonably priced rentals - but definitely not "cheap" compared to other metro areas. The area does have a lot to offer, however.
I liken it to the California of the Midwest. Its nots the cheapest, its more middle of the road (though, I think in absolute terms there are places around Chicago that outpace the cost of the highest cost parts of Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro last time I looked, granted that was a few years ago).
Its culturally though, very liberal (from my own experience, tends to also be very much a democrat state). One thing I will say is Minnesota's public school system is great, and the collegiate system is both affordable and high quality, on average.
It's still cheaper than California, New York, Seattle, Portland etc. paying 2000 a month for a place to live in Minnesota is still very much not the norm, even in nice parts of the Twin Cities.
If you're willing to live up North a bit, Duluth is amazing, its mostly a college town now, and you can surf in the summers!
The downside is always the snow, though if you live in the Twin Cities there are upscale parts of downtown that have miles of indoor walkable paths that take you all over the city.
I really love the state. I've contemplated moving back several times. I just don't think my tech industry connections would carry over as well, so it would limit some of my job opportunities, even with this big push to work from home by a lot of companies. That will have to shake out for me personally first before I would consider moving back.
Though, they've done a decent job netting progressive employers and have in large part been able to avoid the economic collapse that hit much of the Midwest (the rust belt, in places like Ohio). I know a lot of people out there employed in highly trained manufacturing jobs (highly skilled CNC work, maintain automated manufacturing facilities etc.) and those jobs are the only ones in that sector that aren't leaving the USA in droves yet, plus there are a lot of medical technology companies there. Also, a lot of enterprise software companies have HQ or large presence in the cities as well.
It's not a startup scene like SF, but its changing. When I was a kid the state had these huge policy pushes to try and get people entering college to focus on technical degrees (be it 2-year technical school at a community college doing CNC machining and the like or 4-year degrees in engineering/cs). It's also one of the most educated populations in the country [0][1]
Now I just feel like I'm selling it. Though I want to mention one quirk about the population that stands up to everyone I know who has visited. Minnesota Nice [2] is alive and well still. People tend to just be more friendly there than anywhere else I've lived or travelled, and I've been through more than a dozen states from coast to coast. It's just a general demeanor thing. Thats not to say that everyone is nice all the time though, of course. I'd say on average you're less likely to have small confrontations though, than anywhere else I've been.
Just the opposite, every community has a right to decide their future.
If a community says 'we'd rather be homes and don't want to turn everything in to high-rises' then that's entirely their discretion.
It's definitely not any individual townships moral or civic responsibility to change their community to accommodate either state/national strategic planning, especially for the benefit of people who do not even live there.
There's plenty of physical space in Cali, if anything, the opportunity might be in Sacramento and in-between. If the FAANGs having trouble with salaries and bringing in people want, they can be part of this strategy.
I bet there are thousands of G staffers who'd live to live somewhere south of Morgan Hill, away from the city.
It is. The government is expected to prevent tragedy-of-the-commons troubles, spite houses, and other anti-social troubles. This is largely why we even have a government.
Suppose a person buys a house to retire in, on a peaceful quiet little street with plenty of room to park. The neighbors then build: an 80-story apartment tower, a supervised injection place for IV drug users, an organometalic peroxide production plant, a hog farm, and a tire recycling plant.
Maybe we overdo it, but yes, we're going to curtail private property rights.
If this is financially viable, that land must be worth a ton. Retiree should sell the property and stop monopolizing such valuable land. They'll have plenty of funds to use to move elsewhere
> a supervised injection place for IV drug users
Very few people want one of these built near them, which itself causes huge societal problems. We'd be better off in aggregate if more services for the poor could be built.
>an organometalic peroxide production plant, a hog farm, and a tire recycling plant
Unlikely to be built on expensive residential land, but if they were it would help fight climate change by reducing commute times, since employees can now live nearby. The existence of actual property rights allows ample housing to be built in this high-demand area
Wait for gas stations to be built on either side of your home in 'no zoning laws' suburb, wherein you lose 50% of your house price and can't afford to move out, and have to live with that as you become enlightened with respect to zoning laws.
The real prospects of the lack of zoning is something that nobody wants, which is why literally every civil place in the world has zoning.
The failure in the 'property rights' argument is that what's built on one property affects the other - there are externalizations.
What is built on one plot, affects the materiality (and value) of the others.
These arguments exist only on HN and other boards, thankfully.
Yes, zoning is used to insulate and even inflate the local property market and preserve home values; no that doesn’t make it morally justifiable to tell your neighbors how they can use their property.
> The real prospects of the lack of zoning is something that nobody wants, which is why literally every civil place in the world has zoning.
Calling Houston uncivil is a subjective judgement I can’t objectively falsify, and so is calling its residents “nobody”, but the latter act strikes me as ironically uncivil, and IMO not in line with https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments.
What about people who would on purpose devalue land- buying a plot and putting say garbage recycling. In order to buy up local area that would plummet in value.
Philosophizing about why we have governments, self-executing organizations which can write new laws which become reasons for their existence, is a fools errand.
But there are good reasons we ought to have governments, and fewer reasons we ought to have a State. I would sum those up as keeping the four horsemen at bay, adjudicating disputes and delivering justice. A few decent reasons too, such as accelerating R&D with their justifiable actions, but pretty much everything else is an abuse of power and tax authority.
Also your examples are ridiculous. There are few places in the world where you can just throw up an 80 story apartment building, and even fewer people who can afford to to spite their neighbors. A world where police powers are not abused to the extreme that they are is also not one without a quiet place to retire without an organometallic peroxide plant nearby, nor one without remedies if a neighbor chooses to break ground on such a project.
What's 'ridiculous' is this notion that the state is using police powers to force people into zoning - or any other laws.
Zoning is an important and foundational aspect of civil governance, and works well for the most part.
If SF residents in any clear majority wanted to have zoning laws changed, they probably could, there's a fair component of democratic impetus here.
Most importantly - it's essential to recognize that points of property are not fundamentally discrete from one another.
The value of one piece of property depends a lot on what's around it. Large buildings vs small ones, noise vs quiet, density vs. green, sun vs shade, - there are major externalizations to every property, and zoning helps establish parameters for those things.
Go ahead and put a 50 ft flag pole on our front lawn with a flag on it and see how your neighbours react.
There are innumerable situations wherein tall towers would go up beside homes - they exist in droves in literally every city. Go to any North American city, go to where there are tall buildings - and find homes nearby. Those homes are likely there due to zoning.
There are even more instances wherein homes would be knocked down to put up all sorts of other things - office buildings, industrial facilities, retail outlets, clinics - whatever.
There is in general, no interest in that. Not even the folks wanting to build 80-story towers want it really, lets the autoplant be built across the street and destroy their own property value.
A democratic mandate to abuse State police powers to unjustifiably curtail private property rights is still an abuse of State police powers.
Where we disagree is whether it is an abuse, not the mechanism by which it is justified by the State.
We don’t disagree that what is around is a factor in our purchase and selling decisions, but to be frank, when the developer of your hypothetical skyscraper bought the land to build the skyscraper, he didn’t buy the lot across the street with it that would one day become this hypothetical autoplant, nor the use rights for the lot across the street. In fact, the developer probably didn’t buy across an empty lot because someone that is building an 80 story apartment building wants to attract tenants, and tenants want neighborhood amenities if they’re living in an apartment building.
You could still build across from an empty lot that might be an auto plant in the future, but you don’t build that big without a business case. Property doesn’t exist in a vacuum, we’re agreed on that, and I’m not even 100% against zoning, just maybe 99% of how it is used.
When you buy property, you buy property, not the rights to limit the development and use of all the other properties around you. That “right” comes from a simple tyranny of the majority using the State as their vehicle of power.
"Abusing police powers to curtail private property rights isn’t the high ground."
It has nothing to do with police powers, it's called zoning and it's absolutely a legitimate part of our governing structure.
If the residents of SF wanted to go Hong Kong style full on skyscrapers everywhere, they would have.
Bulldozing communities to create utopian/dystopian hyper density is one of the most short-sighted urban concepts going.
There's plenty of space, go elsewhere.
Also, I'll be even a hyper fast public transport system that connected the Bay Area with surrounding regions: imagine the Bart/Caltrain being 'one thing' running in a really fast loop around the bay, with quick buses LTRs as spokes - and then fast communter trains connecting them out to Sac, Modesta, Santa Rosa, that might work.
Especially if they build smartly around slight more dense centres instead of just pure suburban homes.
> It has nothing to do with police powers, it's called zoning and it's absolutely a legitimate part of our governing structure.
Zoning is a mechanism of economic suppression to appease the haves and separate them from the have-nots. They de-diversify and oppress.
> If the residents of SF wanted to go Hong Kong style full on skyscrapers everywhere, they would have.
Yes my point is that they didn’t, and now they’re paying the ridiculous cost: $3000 for a bachelor. Do anything other than work for FAANG? Sorry, you don’t get to live here. Please bus an hour so you can serve me coffee.
> Bulldozing communities to create utopian/dystopian hyper density is one of the most short-sighted urban concepts going.
Bulldozing exclusive communities and replacing them with inclusive ones, which create more local business opportunities and reduce dependence on transportation. Calling high density planning short sighted in favour of single family dwellings is absurd.
> There's plenty of space, go elsewhere.
This mindset is what causes suburbia, which has an absolutely disastrous impact on the environment and local economies. And leads to class segregation (which is a proxy for racial segregation in the US.)
"Zoning is a mechanism of economic suppression to appease the haves and separate them from the have-nots. They de-diversify and oppress."
The above sentence could be said about building codes.
I sort of jest but also shudder to think: How soon will progressive SFBA thought leaders call out building and health and safety codes as pushing up costs and excluding homeowners (and potential homeowners) that cannot comply with them ?
Because they absolutely do that. God help us if we act on that knowledge ...
> The above sentence could be said about building codes.
Dezoning is not an argument for deregulation, it’s about creating new economic opportunity in a very direct way. You don’t have to sacrifice building safety as a next step. Sure, you could. And you might be right that it is economically positive to do so. But that’s a sort of deregulation extremism.
"Zoning is a mechanism of economic suppression to appease the haves and separate them from the have-nots. T"
This is a ridiculously false statement.
Everyone wants zoning laws, you can't put up a gas station or an industrial facility right in the middle of xyz residential neighbourhood, nobody wants that.
"Yes my point is that they didn’t, and now they’re paying the ridiculous cost"
So you're saying that people are making a choice, but because you're not happy with the choice, they should change?
Are you arguing for rights or not? Which is it?
SF residents wanting to keep zoning laws intact are making their own choices, and that's fine.
"Calling high density planning short sighted in favour of single family dwellings is absurd."
Just the opposite when in fact the citizens are adamant that their city not turn into Hong Kong.
"This mindset is what causes suburbia, which has an absolutely disastrous impact on the environment and local economies"
Total rubbish. Suburbs are some of the most peaceful, plentiful, conscientious, and safe places in civilization ... which is exactly why those types of people move there. They are downright boring in their concientiousness.
That they lack trendy cafes, and hipster fentanyl needle clinics is not a problem for some.
> Everyone wants zoning laws, you can't put up a gas station or an industrial facility right in the middle of xyz residential neighbourhood, nobody wants that.
That’s not reality. It doesn’t make economic sense for a an industrial business to set up shop in a supposedly “residential area” - there will still be commercial clusters because that makes sense economically. And you can still define environmental regulations and build infrastructure where you want industrial commerce to happen. Zoning laws are mostly abused.
> So you're saying that people are making a choice, but because you're not happy with the choice, they should change?
The people who are making the choice are the ones who can afford to make the choice. Everyone else is forced out. So what you end up with is a bunch of entitled rich people who forced everyone else out of the market, bleeding the city of its charm and diversity.
> Just the opposite when in fact the citizens are adamant that their city not turn into Hong Kong.
You don’t reach the density of Hong Kong without need. For HK that need is to be included in the region of (former) autonomy. Naturally things aren’t going to get that dense. You can double the density of SF and it still won’t look anything near like HK. And once again, the people who are adamantly against densifying the city are not the ones who have to commute an hour by transit to work in it. They are the stakeholders because they forced their way in. What about people who used to work in SF but got forced out by rising rent, but who still work in the city. They don’t deserve a say?
> Suburbs are some of the most peaceful, plentiful, conscientious, and safe places in civilization
This is so painfully ignorant it’s hard to unpack. Do you understand the toll it takes on small business owners to not be able to buy commercial land where people live? Do you recognize the damage that daily mass commuting into and out of the city has on both the global and local environment? Do you understand that the “peace” is actually just economic segregation? Take a drive outside the gated communities and go on down to the economically segregated “suburbs” of the less fortunate. I believe they call those “ghettos” in the US. Not sure you’ll find much peace or safety there.
> That they lack trendy cafes, and hipster fentanyl needle clinics is not a problem for some.
> If a community says 'we'd rather be homes and don't want to turn everything in to high-rises' then that's entirely their discretion.
Nobody is arguing it’s not their discretion. I’m just saying it makes you a bad actor in the larger community of people who would like to benefit from the opportunity of living in a city that they otherwise might not get if they weren’t living in the city.
> especially for the benefit of people who do not even live there.
They don’t live there because they’re being systematically and economically excluded from living there by people of means who are unaffected by the damage they’re doing to their own local economy.
> There's plenty of physical space in Cali, if anything, the opportunity might be in Sacramento and in-between.
> There's plenty of physical space in Cali, if anything, the opportunity might be in Sacramento and in-between.
It’s the places that everyone want to live in that are crowded, and there are good reasons apartment blocks aren’t going up in farmland (this isn’t China where people are told to live outside the fifth or sixth ring road just because).
"It’s the places that everyone want to live in that are crowded"
So if SF goes 'Hong Kong' style i.e. tears down all those homes and puts full on sky-scrapers everywhere, will the 'current' residents be happy, and will future residents want to be there as much?
'Everyone wants to live there' - which is why it's so expensive - this is an inevitability of a good culture whereupon the physicality is usually critical.
If SF went Hong Kong it simply wouldn't be SF.
Pay the price or live elsewhere - California is vast and beautiful.
Also - if some areas on the peninsula put their minds to it, they could be as cool and fun as SF.
That is a very succinct way to put it. I doubt it will be fixed in our lifetimes as there isn't enough willpower or trust in the state government to make the needed change.
People who want change are free to leave. Only when there are no other places to leave to will there be change.
> The people in power in California even scapegoated the newcomers for a long time, and pretended that they were unwanted.
I feel like the average HN poster sits in a pretty air-tight STEM bubble and doesn't realise how bad life for most people in the Bay Area who are not in STEM. To them, tech workers can leave and the industry can tank and it would be a welcome change. The tax revenue the cities have made during this "boom" have not affected them at all. Building more houses just means more traffic, more crowded hiking trails and beaches, more crowded and trashed natural parks, and for what?
> The tax revenue the cities have made during this "boom" have not affected them at all
They think it has not affected them, but if they stop, the house of cards that is underfunded ultra-generous defined benefit state/municipal pensions tumbles like a house of cards. When the munis start going bankrupt, only then will people notice...
> the house of cards that is underfunded ultra-generous defined benefit state/municipal pensions tumbles like a house of cards.
Who benefits from these exactly?
Tax revenue is up ten fold from where it was at in 2008 and yet the quality of life for most of my connections not working in tech in the bay area is much worse. Everything is more expensive, taxes are much higher, traffic is 10x as bad, homelessness is more severe... Who's this "house of cards" supporting?
The minimum wage is up, that's the only thing, but it doesn't matter. Since a couple making minimum wage could actually have an apartment in 2008, which is not the case now.
Not only that, but there's often comments about how people moving from CA to TX are fleeing the results of a presumably left wing tax code to enjoy the benefits of a presumably right wing tax code, but it's not that simple.
CA is as expensive as it is in large part because of NIMBYs and tax schemes that were absolutely the product of right-wing ballot initiatives for the most part. OTOH, a large part of the appeal of TX is that it doesn't have a state income tax, but the state is absolutely on the dole. IIRC TX takes in ~$150b from the Federal government, but only pays ~$100b into the system. CA (like NY) pays more into the system then it takes out, so about ~$50b of the annual budget of TX is literally bumming money from other states, albeit indirectly.
Which is a roundabout way of saying, the narrative about people moving from CA to TX often makes it sound like a narrative about left-wing economic policies vs. right-wing economic policies, but the reality is that CA is expensive in large part because of right-wing economic policies and TX is cheap in large part because it's basically on welfare from the Federal government. Which is fine, the system should allow economically healthier states to help the less successful states get by (looking at you KY), but it's so counter to the narrative that usually surrounds these stories that people tend to sweep it under the rug. And also TX is hardly an economically unhealthy, depressed state in need of assistance from the rest of the country. It should step up and stop being being a bum, because AFAICT it's not a bum but rather a state with well above-average prospects.
> IIRC TX takes in ~$150b from the Federal government, but only pays ~$100b into the system. CA (like NY) pays more into the system then it takes out, so about ~$50b of the annual budget of TX is literally bumming money from other states, albeit indirectly.
This isn't true. According to the SUNY Rockefeller Institute of Government report dated Jan 8, 2019 (which used the data from the Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2019) the fifty states all had differing Federal expenditures vs Federal receipts but Texas and California were close. See page 15 at [1].
On a per capita basis, here are the federal expenditures per dollar of receipts for a few states:
Connecticut 0.74 50th
New Jersey 0.82 49th
Massachusetts 0.83 48th
New York 0.86 47th
North Dakota 0.94 46th
Illinois 0.97 45th
New Hampshire 0.98 44th
Washington 0.98 43rd
Nebraska 0.98 42nd
Colorado 0.99 41st
California 1.00 40th <=== CA
Texas 1.03 39th <=== TX
Utah 1.04 38th
Wisconsin 1.06 37th
Wyoming 1.06 36th
Minnesota 1.09 35th
Iowa 1.13 34th
Nevada 1.14 33rd
South Dakota 1.15 32nd
Kansas 1.23 31st
Florida 1.24 30th
...
Virginia 1.97 6th
Alabama 1.99 5th
West Virginia 2.17 4th
Mississippi 2.19 3rd
New Mexico 2.34 2nd
Kentucky 2.35 1st
"Other states are high or low for various reasons: the outliers Maryland and Virginia, for example, both have dramatically higher Federal spending per capita than the average state, as they are near the physical headquarters for most of the Federal government and have significantly disproportionate Federal spending for procurement and Federal wages."
So, while Virginia is a relatively high-income state and contributes a lot of Federal income tax, they also have a lot of Federal employees, grants, contracts, etc.
Holy shit! Just an example I found, 230 Atherton Ave, Atherton, CA 94027 vs 234 Atherton Ave, Atherton, CA 94027, both absolute mansions with pools looking at them on google maps and the former even has a tennis court. Property taxes paid: 8,000 for the former and 200,000 for the latter. Absolute insanity!
You're both right. Property taxes can increase by up to 2% per year, and new owners frequently pay far more than old owners because property has appreciated significantly in coastal metros with limited space for new construction.
This had been especially obvious because historically low interest rates have enabled a lot of asset appreciation, with real estate being one example. High real estate prices lead to high property taxes, which makes the difference in taxes paid much more obvious.
NIMBYism also plays a part, but I think people routinely overlook that developers often don't improve local facilities in line with local housing projects, which can lead to all kinds of awfulness. That new 1000 unit apartment complex also needs 1000+ parking spaces, along with other improvements in local infrastructure in proportion to the increase in population, but a developer won't care about that unless someone forces them to care.
1. You're implying that increased housing density makes it harder to find infrastructure.
This is just false since high density makes infrastructure cheaper per person.
2. Why should it be the developers jobs to build out new infrastructure that isn't directly needed by their building. It's their job to build housing which brings people, those people bring taxes and those taxes pay for upgrades to infrastructure.
I'm not implying it's harder to find infrastructure. I'm arguing that developers don't want to pay for any infrastructure improvements needed to keep services operating in the same manner with more people. Like everyone else, they're self interested and will act in ways that maximize their own interests, even if it externalizes certain costs to the surrounding community. I suspect it's also more expensive per person to upgrade existing infrastructure compared to building it new.
In terms of who should improve infrastructure, it doesn't really matter who does it, but I think either local government or the developer should be required to do it and not be allowed to let things slide. I focus on the developer because they're the first in the process, but it doesn't matter if instead the city requires the developer to build in the infrastructure improvement costs and does it themselves. The only position I have is that it should get done.
I gotcha. I'm also thinking of mass transit, parking, retail, and probably a few more things I've forgotten about. Even the local geography/weather can play a part in terms of pollution. If we go from a subdivision with 40 houses to apartments with 4,000 units and update the existing infrastructure, 4,000+ cars starting up every day could result in a significant increase in exhaust pollution that we may not be able to design around. The climate/geography are going to be the climate/geography.
They do pay. Major developments get slapped with a mello-roos tax which leads to even larger disparity in taxes paid between long term resident and new residents. It’s huge, you could be paying $20k in taxes while the person down the street is paying $5k.
Mello Roos doesn't make the developer pay, they make the people in the special district pay. The developer gets to sell the units without any concern for what more people will do to local infrastructure.
I guess they could be $15k/year, but I've never seen an example that high. My mom lives in Yucca Valley and has two or three Mello Roos items (water district, local community college, and something else), and I think maybe pays about $600 total for them.
Of course it's false. Old residents don't pay "nothing", they pay "next to nothing". Look up any house that changes hands after 40 years. The old owners were paying a tax liability an order of magnitude less than the new one.
It’s simply amazing how allowing to build 50 high rise condos would bring the entire bubble down but the CA (or most American) cities or the state won’t. It will obviously fail on the ballot due to NIMBYism but I’m not sure why would that even need to be on ballot.
So allll the people who sit hours and hours each day in traffic, pay a fortune for a shack don't outweigh those that just want to preserve the neighborhood's character?
Because of it's size and market influence, California laws can effect the rest of the country, should the rest of the country vote in California elections?
The people who _choose_ to sit in the traffic are getting what they signed up for. I could be that person and I choose not to be in no small part to that situation.
What do you mean they don't live there? The folks who live in CA and commute all day (BART or cars or whatever), or are priced out of their old neighborhood, or sleep in their car? Or pay a fortune for a room illegally sublet? Can't they vote on CA elections?
We're talking about local (county or city) regulations that prevent the building of high density structures in a lot of these cities. Those regulations exist because the residents want them. Non-residents don't vote on those regulations because they don't live there, just like non-CA residents don't get to vote on CA laws even though those people are affected by them.
This is not completely true, as the cost to build high rise condos is extremely high and the land is very expensive. Every place in the USA that has kept housing affordable has done so with sprawl, which California's government doesn't allow.
The land is very expensive, shouldn't that be good enough of a reason to build high rises? It works in NYC and most of Europe, the only reason there are few high rises in SF is because of the government that prefers artificial scarcity.
Building sky scrapers is way more expensive than building single family homes on empty grassland, where the land is also cheaper. Of course the city should build up, but building out is the real way every US city has kept housing affordable (look at the study I linked above)
Luckily, earthquake-resistant structures have come a long way since then. For example, Tokyo is home to the second-tallest structure in the world, and they're not exactly unfamiliar with earthquakes
It doesn't go on the ballot directly, it goes on the ballot in the form of voting in local city officials (specifically the city council) who set the zoning laws/rules.
Many properties I’m looking at are assessed at a value in the $50-200k range but sell around $1mm. Long time residents in such cases Pay less than 1/5 the property taxes new residents pay.
I grew up in Tyler but have lived in Austin for 15 years. I don't mean to be argumentative but you seem to be comparing Small town Texas with "Big City" California. I've vacationed in smaller towns in California and the conservative nature of those areas remind me a lot of Tyler,Texas.
Having grown up gay in Dallas, I didn't exactly have a great experience. While I'm sure Tyler is worse, even Dallas is not so accepting (unless you're planning to move to Oak Lawn and never leave your neighborhood).
Your onto something, and I think another crucial detail is that the small, southern town I grew up in is more tolerant of gay folks now than the vast majority of big cities were 20 years ago. There's been such a massive shift in tolerance towards gay humans across the entire culture that comparing any place I go to NOW vs where I grew up WHEN I was a kid is a massive difference.
Compared to 2020 Anywhere, 2000 Anywhere was a very bigoted place.
In general that's true, but there are some specific exceptions that are worth remembering. Houston, for example, has always been unusually gay-friendly by Texas standards.
This is true. Even in big cities with large gay populations the reason why gay villages aros is because of safety. Now gay areas are disappearing from big cities because satefy is less of an issue and acceptance is much more widespread in society.
I think you might be thinking of the plot of the movie 'Milk' while not realizing it took place over two decades before the time being talked about here.
How long have you been out of Texas? I think we know people aren't coming to Texas to live in Tyler; They are moving to the cities, Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, which are all diverse, and have large gay communities.
But that's rather my point: if you're living just in the larger metro areas, you're choosing to insulate yourself from the rampant discrimination and bigotry that, numerically, forms the bulk of the electorate and shape the cultural mindset. To be clear, that's not a bad thing that people make that choice; I would, were in that position.
If Texas voters will finally vote in someone who is more like Ann Richards than Greg Abbott, I will believe the mindset is changing. Statewide votes for Governor, Lite Gov, Comptroller, and so on are not gerrymandered so a vote in San Antonio counts just as much as a vote in Midland.
(To your first question, I have not lived in Texas for over a decade, but I am the only member of my family who does not so I have pretty close connections to this day.)
Is that really any different from any other state, including California? Rural vs urban culture are completely different in every state in America. As Californians we still insulate ourselves from rural culture. The only difference in California those counties don't form the bulk of the electorate while in Texas they do. We still have the same problem: a cultural divide between rural and urban.
Yeas it's different. I'r invite you to drive through the rural west America, through arizona, nevada, wyoming and colorado. Even the rural areas of california have so many people. You will also noticr that the californians are almost all wearing masks even in the rural areas.
Rural California north of Sacramento is similar to those places and a lot of no mask wearing also. It is a large portion of the state. Check out a map to get a good feel. Texas is big, but California is not far behind.
It is. I've spent time in most of the U.S., minus Alaska and a few north eastern states, and some states have very distinct boundaries between city and rural atmosphere. In some states, I found places I was not supposed to be and it was made abundantly clear to me. There are some places that saying the wrong words or having the wrong beliefs can be incredibly dangerous. The degree of difference varies from state to state and also seems to change based more heavily on latitude. Not sure I understand why it works out that way.
I live in TX. I am very, very careful when I'm out in the sticks since the shitkickers are dangerous. I also lived in CA and even in the sticks out in central CA there's just nothing like the scale of xenophobic belligerence in rural TX (or the rest of the Bible Belt).
Careful how? Do you typically "stand out" as in being overtly gay, or wearing anti-relgious clothing?
I'm a white man and I suppose I would be a bit wary if I had a huge Bernie sticker on my car, I otherwise don't feel unsafe in the middle of nowhere TX. I just don't like that they're all rah rah GOP.
Careful how? Do you typically "stand out" as in being overtly gay, or wearing anti-relgious clothing?
My own (black) experience in West Texas (Ft. Bliss), "Careful" meant driving across state to see family in Houston and absolutely not stopping in certain counties, not even to piss or stretch my legs.
After getting stopped, pulled over and ordered out of my vehicle while an officer stood back at his car several times and interrogated about "where are you going" "where are you supposed to be" "who do you know in this town" and "where did you steal the car from" (all separate experiences) while doing nothing but trying to take holiday leave.
So... that kind of careful for some of us.
edit, before anyone even makes the attempt:
- I was not driving erratically
- I had no bumper stickers on my car signaling political viewpoints
- I was not wearing any 'curious' clothing other than a shirt and jeans
- I had functioning turn signals and brake lights
- I was driving a legally purchased, registered and insured vehicle at the speed limit (or +5mph) consistent with how I drive literally every day
That's terrible. I'm not completely shocked, but it is always jarring to hear that things like that happen.
I remember my truck breaking down in Menard, TX and my black friend and I walked into a restaurant in the morning... everyone stopped and turned around and stared at us for a moment and went back to their business.
I apologize for taking this less than seriously all things considered, it's a coping mechanism these days but I immediately thought of Blazing Saddles reading this
I've had ... interesting interactions with police and even some ornery locals as far south as Austin (yes, that "blue dot surrounded by red" as people like to call it) and as far north as Milwaukee, which isn't that far from where I live now, comparatively.
Kinda stopped believing in that whole "social avarice is relegated to certain parts of the country" stuff before I even hit 23.
(but don't get me started about certain parts of Missouri)
A man was lynched in east Texas by dragging him behind a truck, that was in the news in our lifetime (in 1998.) I was surprised they prosecuted the killers because prior to this, no white person even went to prison in Texas for killing a black person post reconstruction.
It can be surprising. Hell I'm from Louisiana and find it funny that people are just discovering how much White Supremacy took off in some places like the North West US. They somehow think we kept it all contained here for the last 120 years.
Oregon was founded as a "white utopia", so I guess it makes sense.
I think we need to admit that we are all racist. Every ethnic majority thinks they are the greatest, it seems. If we can't even admit it, I don't see how it will change.
The Pacific Northwest has had a problem with right wing extremism (skinheads, neo-Nazis) for decades, and the polarization between left-wing cities and right-wing rural areas is particularly extreme in Oregon.
It goes both ways. Try walking around Town Lake in Austin (where I live) wearing a MAGA hat and the tell me how much more diverse and tolerant folks are in the big city.
try that with a Vote Republican hat instead of a symbol of the man trying to pull a political slow coupe currently. MAGA is about Trump and his inhumanity and not necessarily party affiliation.
>I live in TX. I am very, very careful when I'm out in the sticks since the shitkickers are dangerous.
Put on a "Make America Great Again" hat and walk through downtown Chicago, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, or Cambridge before or after election day 2016 (or 2020). Now, put on a "I'm With Her" or "Biden/Harris 2020" shirt and walk through Provo, Fort Worth, Pensacola, or anywhere in "the sticks" of Texas or Oklahoma or Utah or Alabama before or after election day. In which scenario are you more like to be yelled at and/or physically attacked?
Yeah, if you're running around in a rainbow-colored, "I Love Sucking Cock" t-shirt, or wearing a, "Communism is the Bestism" shirt or some stupid shit like that, then yeah, you're not going to like rural Texas.
Newsflash, you're not going to like upstate New York, either.
Turnout says far less about political views than you might think. Voter suppression is a common and effective tool used to keep a political party in power even as they loose popular support.
All it takes is realizing changing X rule like a deadline will help or hurt your party and then voting based on that rule. Eventually this can fail, which oddly enough tends to flip states so they can quickly go from solidly party A to solidly party B.
Voter supression is certainly an important point, but it seems like people have completely stopped feeling responsible for elections too. Even in Texas we had nearly 3 weeks of early voting. If you can't find a way in 3 weeks to go put in a vote I don't know how much more you can help someone. Texas democrats could have beaten Trump here if everyone would have shown up and voted rather than complaining and staying home.
We just had a massive natural experiment in loosening voting laws that showed that “voter suppression” is less extensive than many people assume. Take Georgia for example. Turnout was up 20% compared to 2016. But the Black share of the electorate went down again, to the lowest levels since 2006: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/17/upshot/georgi.... What flipped Georgia was white voters in the Atlanta collar suburbs—and 100,000 people who voted for Biden but a Republican (or not at all).
And that’s exactly what you would expect from the data. Georgia is one of the few states in the country where Black voter registration rates are equal to registration rates for whites: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/voting-and-voter-r.... (California, by contrast, has a 12 point difference in Black-white registration rates.) In 2018, the Black voter turnout rate was actually 2 points higher than the white voter turnout rate in Georgia. It makes total sense that as you increase turnout, you’re going to see roughly the same demographics.
Same thing in Texas. 87% of votes were cast by mail in ballot. Turn out was up almost 7 points compared to 2016. But Trump earned basically the same percentage of the vote as in 2016, with Biden gaining a few points from winning people who voted third party last time: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/04/texas-voter-turnout-...
Democrats have this idea that voter suppression is preventing more minorities from coming out (and voting Democrat). But what the data seems to suggest in Georgia and Texas is that people who want to vote are already voting. Making it easier to vote or having a high states election will increase turnout, but by dipping into a pool of lower propensity voters who don’t look all that different demographically than the people who were already voting.
Voter suppression isn’t specifically targeted at minorities. That’s a common misconception, it’s tailored to individual states voting patterns. Overall turnout consistently favors Democrats which doesn’t win every state, but control doesn’t require every state.
As to the extra voting in Texas. 2020 had an additional + 1205300 Republican votes and + 1381258 Democratic votes in a solid red state which just hit 1/2 of voting age population. That’s 46.6% Republican and 53.4% Democrat and means those extra votes very much favored Democrats. Project a 20% increase in turnout with that kind of margin and Texas is in dead even recount territory.
Of course any election where Texas is that close Democrats have already won by such a margin as to make possibility flipping Texas largely irrelevant. Further, looking at these numbers it’s clear why targeted voter suppression becomes so significant.
> As to the extra voting in Texas. 2020 had an additional + 1205300 Republican votes and + 1381258 Democratic votes in a solid red state which just hit 1/2 of voting age population. That’s 46.6% Republican and 53.4% Democrat and means those extra votes very much favored Democrats.
You can’t conclude that because it overlooks third parties (who performed very well in 2016) and people who changed their votes from 2016 to 2020. That happened in suburbs all over the country. My traditionally red county (where voting was always super easy) went for Clinton by less than a point, but for Biden by 14 points. Voter turnout was up only 4 points, so Biden’s gain came mainly from flipping votes.
In Texas, Trump won basically the same share of the much larger turnout compared to 2016 (dropping just 0.1 points). Biden’s gain came almost entirely at the expense of third party candidates.
Indeed, nationwide, turnout went up 11 points. But Trump’s vote share also went up, from 46.1% to 46.8%. Again, Biden’s increased margin came entirely at the expense of third parties.
In our system third party votes for a presidential candidate are equivalent to people staying home. They are signaling a dissatisfaction with both candidates, and a willingness to vote.
Donations to the Green Party for example are a clever and accepted means of reducing Democrats’s turnout. Libertarians draw surprisingly evenly from both sides, but Republicans have had their own spoilers.
I don’t see how that’s responsive to my argument. My point is that, despite much higher turnout, Trump maintained his vote share in Texas.
Biden increasing his vote share at the expense of third parties doesn’t indicate any structural benefit to Democrats from higher turnout. It seems quite specific to Trump/Biden as candidates versus Trump/Clinton. Clinton and Trump had very high disapproval ratings, which pushed people to a surprisingly strong third party vote. Biden had much lower disapproval ratings than Clinton, which led those third party voters to vote for him in 2020. That doesn’t show a structure benefit to Democrats from higher turnout.
I’ve done a little numeric modeling, and it produces some surprising implications about who new 2020 voters selected. Pre-election polling showed that 9% of Trump 2016 voters planned to vote for Biden, while only half as many Clinton 2016 voters planned to vote for Trump. Moreover, they showed people who voted third party in 2016 strongly favoring Biden.
Trump won about 11 million more votes than in 2016, and Biden won about 15 million more votes than Clinton. But there was an over 3 million vote drop in the third party vote. If you assume that Biden pulled in a significant number of Trump 2016 votes, say 6-8%, while losing only 3-4% of Clinton 2016 voters, and won the majority of people who voted third party in 2016 but not in 2020, then its quite likely Trump actually won a majority of the 22 million new votes in 2020.
For Trump to nearly maintain his vote share in Texas while dramatically lower percentage of people voted 3rd party would have taken ~100% of third party defectors voting Biden. That’s simply unrealistic.
Your nationwide numbers are also off for several reasons. For example many people voting in 2016 skipped the 2020 elections for various reasons like death. Further pooling including exit polls doesn’t match up with actual voting very well suggesting a significant portion of Trump voters are unwilling to say they voted or plan to vote for Trump. That or a truly massive pro Republican voter fraud which seems unlikely.
Anyway looking at hard data. In 2016 Clinton got 65,853,514 votes Trump got 62,984,828 votes. A Democratic margin of 2,868,686 million votes. In 2020 Biden got 81,282,896 votes vs Trumps 74,222,484 a Democratic margin of 7,060,412.
Using the middle of your range 62,984,828 * 0.075 - 65,853,514 * 0.035 that’s a net gain of 2,418,989 votes which far less than the actual net gain of (7,060,412 - 2,868,686) = 4,191,726 votes that Biden over Trump.
To gain the (4,191,726 - 2,418,989) = 1,772,737 votes from a 3 million 3rd party voter drop would have taken a truly extreme margin of ~80% even assuming your other assumptions where correct. That might be reasonable if they where mostly green voters, but it’s largely from the Libertarian party.
Having satisfactorily worked hard to make voting as difficult as possible in Texas, he wants to use the state's limited funds to sue other states that dared to improve their democracy. This is the government of Texas.
I would find it much more interesting if you were to engage on the legal argument being made rather than this sort of perfunctory dismissal.
Are you stating that as long as public officials are "daring to improve their democracy" that they are free to ignore Constitutional requirements that the legislature has plenary authority to proscribe the manor of selecting electors?
Note: Setting aside the likelihood that any of the alleged unconstitutional actions resulted in a different electoral outcome, isn't it important that election law is established through the Constitutionally proscribed legislative process and not via executive and/or bureaucratic actions independent of the legislature?
What legal argument? Texas has no standing to sue Pennsylvania over what is an internal matter to Pennsylvania.
Let's not pretend that this absurd lawsuit has any merit -- it's one in a long line of losing lawsuits (what are they up to, 50 out of 51 lost now?) by the current president to overturn an election result he didn't like.
Standing might certainly a reason why Texas can't sue Pennsylvania in this case, but you've neatly avoided addressing the underlying argument that they are making that the election rules were not changed by the legislature in these states and those actions are unconstitutional.
I'm interested in poking holes in that argument not avoiding it.
> Standing might certainly a reason why Texas can’t sue Pennsylvania in this case,
It is.
> but you’ve neatly avoided addressing the underlying argument that they are making that the election rules were not changed by the legislature in these states and those actions are unconstitutional.
The reason why that is false is well-argued in some of the briefs for the defendant states in Texas just-failed lawsuit, but, in summary: State legislatures are constitutionally free to, as part of the rules they set for elections of Presidential electors, submit those same rules to the same judicial and executive constraints otherwise applicable to state law including those applicable to state elections, the defendant states (and most other states, including those suing) routinely do so and specifically have done so for the rules applicable in this case, and the rules for the elections were all handled according to state law (including the role that state law affords judicial and executive officers in its application).
Setting aside standing and even setting aside any effect on this election, does it not matter for future elections that it be clear that the legislature can't be bypassed in these matters?
> Setting aside standing and even setting aside any effect on this election, does it not matter for future elections that it be clear that the legislature can’t be bypassed in these matters?
No, it would actually be terribly disruptive if the legislature could not subject its regulation of federal elections to the judicial and executive power in the same way as other state laws (and, particularly, laws governing the administration of simultaneously and on-the-same-ballot state elections) are.
The concern here was entirely feigned, hypocritical by the states involved in complaints, and substanceless and purely based on partisan advantage.
That’s a slightly different argument, if you accept that the courts are final arbiters then clearly they get to determine what’s allowed not the legislature.
It’s often argued by public officials that exceptions are allowed in extreme situations, though what those are is of course up to the courts. Perhaps best summed up as "The Constitution is not a suicide pact". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic... Which of course isn’t a blank check to do anything for any reason, but it is considered by the court system in various cases. There are many examples of this argument being considered acceptable, and perhaps more frequent examples of it being rejected.
As such simply saying the legislature was bypassed on it’s own is not considered a sufficient legal argument.
> As such simply saying the legislature was bypassed on it’s own is not considered a sufficient legal argument.
Well, the interesting point of law here is that the Constitution specifically delegates the authority to the legislature. So in this particular case it may indeed be as straightforward as saying that the legislature was bypassed and didn't authorize the changes. At least that is my understanding of the case so far.
That’s a common thread across other instances of this legal argument and again on it’s own is considered insufficient.
It all rolls back to article III section 2 The Judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution
The legislature is often assumed to have a great deal of power, but it was intended to be relatively weak just like the other two branches of government.
Cases with original jurisdiction to SCOTUS are so rare that I don't think anyone can reasonably speculate to it being tossed (or heard) based on standing.
It's a relatively clean slate in state vs state case precedent. Clean enough that a majority will easily find a way to justify a desired ruling one way or the other.
It really is weird. Normally the supreme court only hears appeals, so it only rules on matters of law. It wouldn't normally rule on matters of fact, wouldn't normally call witnesses, and wouldn't normally have a jury.
If you knew anything about Ken Paxton you wouldn't doubt the person before yours comment. He is very likely guilty of several crimes and generally unliked in Texas. It is not unlikely that he is doing this in exchange for a pardon from Trump on the last day (week?) of Trump's tenure as Prez along with 100s more no doubt. This suit will go no where because no one has presented any evidence of widespread fraud or that states were outside their rights as to how they conduct their elections. It's a joke like Paxton.
You are right that I don't know the motivations of Ken Paxton, but aren't there 18 other states joining in the lawsuit?
In any case you can't dismiss a lawsuit "because no one has presented any evidence". That is part of a lawsuit itself. Perhaps the evidence will be determined to be insufficient but that will be determined within the proceeding itself.
Now if you want to say that the claims presented in this particular motion is unconvincing, that would make logical sense. But any rationale for dismissing the motion has to be based on what is in the motion, not on what is floating around in social media.
> but aren’t there 18 other states joining in the lawsuit?
No, six attempted to do so (since the suit was never permitted to be filed, no one actually joined it.)
18 states (including the six that shortly after that filed to join the suit as party intervenors) filed a request to file a pro-plaintiff amicus brief, which is different than joining the suit.
I think you’ll find that that is true of all southern metros. Atlanta is different from Calhoun, Birmingham from Anniston, Huntsville from Madison, etc.
It’s not that people are choosing to insulate - the metros are where the jobs are. Those metros have been changed by the influx of people, and if there were jobs the suburbs you would see the electorate change there as well.
That's true for California, Washington, Oregon, New York, and Illinois as well. The big cities in every state are going to be culturally and economically different from the countryside. The only exceptions are affluent tourism-oriented rural areas like Napa.
"If Texas voters will finally vote in someone who is more like Ann Richards than Greg Abbott, I will believe the mindset is changing."
I think the problem with this is that it rests on a fundamental assumption that someone's primary motivation for voting Republican is bigotry. Polls by the Pew Foundation do not bear this out. Non-college educated Democrats and Republicans have equally wrong knowledge about what people on the other side of the spectrum believe. College educated Republicans match their numbers. The outliers are college educated Democrats. They, by far, have the most distorted view of what right wing people ACTUALLY believe. It goes both ways of course, with conservatives dramatically underestimating the patriotism of liberals, etc.
When I lived in Arkansas, the voters simultaneously voted for a Republican governor and state house, AND a ballot initiative to significantly raise the state minimum wage, as well as a ballot initiative for medical marijuana.
The GOP politicians were all against these measures, but the voters approved them by large majorities.
The point I'm making is that the politicians on both sides aren't in step with the electorate, even if they are chosen by the electorate. People are voting for the lesser of two evils a lot more than we give them credit for.
Politicians are not in step with the general electorate, they are instep with party elites and primary votes. The primaries tend to select most "ideologically" aligned candidates and by the time you're in the general election the politicians on both sides are far away from the median voter.
I think you might be dismissing that even in suburban California, things are much closer to suburban Texas.
California may seem like it's 100% different, but that's mostly because people only know San Francisco, LA, and the other coastal cities. CA has its other parts, too.
>But that's rather my point: if you're living just in the larger metro areas, you're choosing to insulate yourself from the rampant discrimination and bigotry that, numerically, forms the bulk of the electorate and shape the cultural mindset.
Put on a "Make America Great Again" hat and walk through downtown Chicago, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, or Cambridge before or after election day 2016 (or 2020). Now, put on a "I'm With Her" or "Biden/Harris 2020" shirt and walk through Provo, Fort Worth, or Pensacola before or after election day. In which scenario are you more like to be yelled at and/or physically attacked?
I feel like Texas is basically California in the 1980s. Back then CA definitely used to vote in Republican governors, etc. San Francisco and downtown LA were surrounded by very Republican suburbs. As they grew into the surrounding suburbs, the voting trends changed.
The "dysfunction" is more likely a function of population density as it is a unique California thing. Watching local Austin news - definitely some familiar problems - gentrification, what to do about the homeless/crime, pollution, desires to raise taxes, traffic.
While that strikes me as an odd article to have shared, for some perspective, it was published in 2009--less than a year after Californians voted "yes" on proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage.
It's not as though California was always unicorns and rainbows, either.
The liberal inner cores of Texas cities primarily grew up in these burbs and small towns, and know that despite being a MAGA bro, their uncle isn't satan incarnate.
Compare that to the dirty looks I got walking around SF in a Buck-ees hat that happened to be red. It bordered upon comedy.
49ers hats are not bright red, and tend to be fairly distinctive.
Anecdote time - my buddy sometimes wears a red hat with the California bear on it, and he regularly (as in without fail) gets dirty looks because of it. I personally stopped wearing my red Nike running hat in public last year because of the reactions I'd get. For context, we live in a relatively conservative East Bay suburb of Northern California.
>Compare that to the dirty looks I got walking around SF in a Buck-ees hat that happened to be red. It bordered upon comedy.
For those who doubt you, I ask them to ponder the following:
Put on a "Make America Great Again" hat and walk through downtown Chicago, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, or Cambridge before or after election day 2016 (or 2020). Now, put on a "I'm With Her" or "Biden/Harris 2020" shirt and walk through Provo, Fort Worth, or Pensacola before or after election day. In which scenario are you more like to be yelled at and/or physically attacked?
Provo is full of overly polite Mormon families and BYU. They chose cartoonish examples of polite conservative locales to make their point.
There are plenty of conservative places that would be upset to see Harris / Biden attire. Look no further than the classic Top Gear episode with the Gay Pride car and the Clinton car driving through the south.
> Provo is full of overly polite Mormon families and BYU. They chose cartoonish examples of polite conservative locales to make their point.
Are Fort Worth and Pensacola also filled with "overly polite Mormons"? Are they also "cartoonish examples of polite conservative locales"? (Congratulations, by the way, on making polite Mormons and conservatives sound like bad things.)
Conversely, are San Francisco, Ann Arbor, and Cambridge "cartoonish examples of crazy extreme leftists", or are they (unfortunately) typical of places where such congregate?
They’re about as liberal as places get, yes. I currently live in SF, spent 5 years in Utah, and my entire childhood in Texas. I know several of the places you mentioned quite well.
Mormons are excellent people. I sincerely appreciate how absurdly polite they are. They are cartoonishly polite. It’s just true. My newly married 20 year old next door neighbors moved in and immediately brought me, a plate of fresh baked cookies on day 1.
Fort Worth is a place with plenty of parts of town where I can pretty well guarantee that you’d catch some flack. That said, most big Texas cities are as liberal as they are conservative, if not more, so it’s a bad example of an absurdly conservative place. It’s nowhere near as conservative as SF and Cambridge are liberal. No major city in Texas is. Texas is more diverse than anyone gives it credit for.
I don’t know anything about Pensacola, so I can’t comment on that.
>I disagree with your assessment that Texas has wide acceptance for opposing viewpoints, at least out in the suburbs where I grew up. If you were not religious and conservative (I have my own anecdotes), you did not fit in. Only when I went to college in a college town did people largely seem to want to live and let live. Sure, inside the larger cities it is more cosmopolitan...
That doesn't sound very specific of Texas, that's the case pretty much everywhere
A couple years ago I was at a bar in Marfa, Texas - a small art-centric town that gets a lot of tourism for things like it's fake Prada store (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prada_Marfa) - and overheard a few guys celebrating a birthday. They were all clearly gay, which isn't unusual in Marfa. I started talking with them and it turned out that one of them, who was black, had just bought a ranch a half hour north of Marfa outside the town of Fort Davis. Fort Davis also has a bit of a touristy feel with its exaggerated "old western town" look and because it's right outside Fort Davis State Park, but culturally it's no Marfa.
The fact that an openly gay black man felt comfortable buying farmland in a small Texas town was pretty awesome. I have a hard time believing that would've happened even 10 years ago. In fact, he might be the first.
> For example, to this day I do not recommend being openly gay and living near Tyler.
I've never heard anyone in Tyler scream at random strangers calling them "f*t". But that does seem to be a pretty much daily occurrence from the illustrious cast of characters that hang out around the Powell Street BART station.
Well he hasn't made shit yet, since in order to access those "billions" he has to sell stock options to get them. And I'd wager every dollar I have he has no intention of liquidating all his stock options.
I’m not gay, but I’m a brown guy with a beard. I was in Tyler last year and it was great. Super friendly people. Also, extremely diverse. More so in practice than I remember from visiting San Francisco. You actually see white and Latino people eating together at the same restaurant, not like in many coastal cities where the diversity is on paper but different groups mostly never intersect due to massive socioeconomic divides.
> There's nothing special about Musk; he just happens to be high-profile about it and managed to extract more from California before decamping to a "cheap" state than several of those who came before him.
What did he extract from California? Was he on welfare?
Your anecdotal experience is not borne out by either facts or my anecdotal experience.
Houston is literally the most diverse city in America, statistically speaking.
And you have to look hard to find religiously conservative people in any Texas metro that are also exclusionary. I say that as someone neither white nor Christian.
If anything, the only place you may find a lack of diversity is Austin, which is overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly intolerant of non-leftist opinions.
As a Christian in California, I’m genuinely curious—could you elaborate on what it means for Austin to be overwhelmingly intolerant of non-leftist opinions, and for the rest of Texas to not be exclusionary?
I hear this claim from time to time but I’d like to know what it means concretely. Do you mean things like churches being closed due to COVID, or some sort of anti-white racism existing in Austin on the one hand while on the other hand racism isn’t prevalent outside of Austin?
> If you were not religious and conservative (I have my own anecdotes), you did not fit in
I think that people underestimate just how common this very same thing is here in California.
> but lots of people live in the 'burbs and around the smaller areas and do not get the benefit of this peaceful coexistence
Again, very similar to California.
I grew up in California and moved to Texas for 13 years, and have recently (begrudgingly too) moved back to California. Things have not changed a whole lot here. Once you get out of the cities and into more rural areas, it's about the same as you'd experience anywhere else.
In my experience, people saying “opposing viewpoints can coexist unlike California” really mean “conservative viewpoints are the norm here”. That might not be the case for the GP comment, but it honestly reads that way. It’s a common complaint and refrain from conservatives at the moment.
>Only when I went to college in a college town did people largely seem to want to live and let live.
It's odd because I grew up in a major metro, and going to college I found people in college to be very strict and severe about enforcing their morals on people. You had to use specific language, be nice and more forgiving and understanding to the right groups of people, and you were not supposed to disagree on specific subjects of discussion or you'd be a pariah.
The idea that this is "live and let live" is silly. It seems that way to you because your morals align very closely with the morals of people in a college setting. If they didn't, you'd notice the similarities to an orthodox religious community immediately.
I think you are making some rather large assumptions. It's possible that you and 'techsupporter went to similar colleges in similar cities and around the same time, and the only difference is between your perspectives. But if those conditions aren't true, especially the last one, then your experiences may have been objectively very different.
>>If you were not religious and conservative (I have my own anecdotes), you did not fit in. Only when I went to college in a college town did people largely seem to want to live and let live.
Any society will try to grind your unique edges off to more smoothly fit into their culture. Perhaps you were more inclined to explore liberalism or intellectualism (more prone to be the culture around colleges) or had had enough of conservative religiousness. I had that same kind of inclination from ~18-30 years old.
I have seen plenty of discrimination and judgment coming from 'the right' in my upbringing (usually directed toward others). But now that I'm much more center road and no longer extremist leftist, I am experiencing increasing hostility from my still left leaning friends/groups.
I hope that the internet can somehow transform into a vehicle of understanding rather than a vehicle of argument. Maybe video comments would be more helpful in this regard.
The state has gone downhill on every metric possible. People can't name even 5 things that have improved over the past decade. Taxes, infrastructure, homeless, rent/housing, cost of living, gas, traffic, smog and pollution, crime, illegal immigration, gangs, fires, droughts, private property issues, local govt gridlock and deficiency, and now the weather isn't great either.
Unfortunately many of those leaving don't realize the policies they voted for are the main cause of this mess and might repeat the same thing in the new areas.
Crime in almost every category has gone down over the last decade. You have to be crazy to think gang activity has gotten worse over the same time period. Immigration is not the domain of the state. I'd argue that given the number of people here, the traffic could be a lot worse. I've personally seen worse gridlock on worse infrastructure in other states with less people. Even if you account for the days that fires affect a significant amount of people's weather experience, we still have great weather for the vast majority of the year.
It's not perfect by any means but you could easily draw up a similar list for any state. A state is a big area and it's probably more useful to talk about most of these kinds of things at a local level.
> Crime in almost every category has gone down over the last decade.
This isn't true at all. Since prop 47, property crime has exploded across the state. Even violent crime rates are significantly higher in LA than they were in 2010.[2][3] In particular gang-on-gang violence may be moving the homicide rate lower, but predator-on-prey violence has shot up. Rapes have more than doubled in the past decade.
> From Seattle to Los Angeles, a “shoplifting boom” is hitting major retailers, which deal with thousands of thefts, drug overdoses, and assaults each year. Since 2010, thefts increased by 22 percent in Portland, 50 percent in San Francisco, and 61 percent in Los Angeles
> Rapes have more than doubled in the past decade.
Do you have any source that states that this increase is actually due to more crimes taking place, rather than more victims reporting rapes due to shifting attitudes and/or less fear of societal rebuke? It could very well have been under-reported in the past due to stigma and other reasons.
These kind of societal factors can often affect the number of reported rapes more than the actual crime rate does. And we absolutely know that the attitude toward sexual violence and misconduct has changed a lot in the last decade. So it is reasonable to believe that this had had some effect on the increase of reported sexual violence, especially since most other violent crime has had sharp declines.
Summary of the provided source for people scrolling past:
Since 2010, homicide had a 21% decrease, robbery a 14% decrease, aggravated assault a 25% increase, and rape a 94% increase.
The contrast is even more sharp when looking 20 years back:
Since 2000, homicide had a 52% decrease, robbery a 35% decrease, aggravated assault a 47% decrease, and rape a 41% increase.
If you want to distort the statistics, you can do this the other direction, too. It's common for people in Seattle to point out that they don't file police reports for theft because it's a bunch of work waiting on the police to arrive (it can take hours) and filling out a police report only for the police/prosecutors/judges to literally do nothing about it. So anecdotally, people say property crime is underreported.
Also, police departments and mayors have every incentive to keep reported crime lower. The LAPD, for instance, has a history of underclassifying crimes to maintain appearances that their city was safe: https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-lapd-reclass-20141...
Also, the OP specifically pointed to 10-year statistics, not 20. Isn't it at all concerning that we're erasing all the progress we've made over the course of decades?
And then the bar of criminal charges for theft is getting higher and higher. In San Francisco nobody is getting bothered by a "criminal according to old stat rules" going through a row of parked cars smashing windows and grabbing everything in plain sight anymore. Not even arrest record would show up in modern stats. We are totally safe these days
Crime and gang activity is increasing, especially in prisons where every yard is now active. Local street gangs sets have multiplied with the influx of people (many homeless), drugs, welfare and larger organized crime operations. Also recent policies decriminalized many acts and have led to rampant street crime in areas like SF and LA.
CA provides sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, along with driver licenses, free healthcare and other benefits paid for by tax-paying citizens. Traffic is terrible because of a lack of any other alternatives that are routinely defunded, destroyed and dismissed from high-speed rail to bus lines to ridesharing.
CA is now worse than before. It's also worse than many other places. Just because 1 facet is better than somewhere else doesn't impact the objective collective decline. Again, please name 10 things that have gotten better in CA over the last decade if you can.
I've been a California resident for over 20 years. Feel free to come down to LA and I'll walk you through the actual streets from downtown to Inglewood. We can even visit a few prisons where I can introduce you to people on both sides of the law, visit the various homeless areas, and talk to the gang task force and DEA agents. Maybe we can also go down to the border and see how things are.
Or perhaps are you too used to a single media perspective and have little experience with the reality on the ground?
I've lived in California all my life which is over 40 years now, everywhere from LA/Sand Diego to Sacramento, in the bay now. I'm afraid I seem to have more California experience than you.
I'm also from a multi-racial family with rich African American roots and spent many summers and trips with my family who mostly live in Lynwood/Compton (no these aren't scary names to me, just places with fond memories of summers spent with cousins).
> Or perhaps are you too used to a single media perspective
I don't get my perspective from media. I get it from living.
Great, so you know the area. What about the experience with the people then? Because that's where the perspective comes from, not the location. If you haven't spent much time with the homeless, criminal, and their countering police and federal agencies here then you don't actually have the experience.
But since you have such a long history, what part of my previous comments are you disagreeing with? Care to tell us what in CA has improved over this last decade?
There is such a high degree of historical segregation in the state, that sheltered white folks definitely do have a big shock when they, say, hop onto the Purple Line to visit Watts Towers. It's just so different, and I think people don't know how to process it since they have no frame of reference.
It's a shame, because historically African American parts of Los Angeles have a wonderfully rich history that is much more than just 'Crips and Bloods.'
Cross at San Ysidro, grab lunch at Tacos El Franc and some craft beers at Border X Brewing in Tijuana. Visit CECUT, navigate the traffic circle around Las Tijeras for a real Latin American driving experience, and pick up a torta and some chapulines at Mercado Hidalgo, and then head over to Tecate for a relaxing stroll around the zocalo and a visit to the brewery. Or even south to wine country, and beautiful Ensenada where I've spend many weekends wandering around on-foot exploring by myself.
The beaches in Ensenada are gorgeous and don't get the crowds of the So Cal beaches. I recommend the Ultramarino bar for craft beer and live local music (mostly rock), and if you can find them (it's a very walkable city), the fish taco stand across the street from the birria stand (you'll know it when you find it) is where my family and I head straight-for when we enter the city limits. If you're just looking to hang out and get some work done with your laptop there are several good hipster coffee shops with wifi.
If you're really, really fancy, Verde y Crema in Tijuana is pretty cool (I've only eaten there once, it's a little pricey for me). Tijuana also has a bunch of hipster bars, that are what I imagine SF looking like back when Lenny Bruce was doing shows (Try a big 'ol caguama of Indio beer at El Tigre - It's walkable from the San Ysidro pedestrian crossing).
We could even do the biannual Rosarito to Ensenada bike ride when things open up again after COVID. Hundreds of people turn out, they let you cycle along the toll road, and it's very family-friendly. That Tijuana-to-Ensenada toll road drive is my favorite coastal drive, only second to California 1.
Aw hell, maybe we could even go to a Xolos game.
A visit to the border sounds just wonderful right now, and I can't wait until we get the vaccine out so I can start heading down every weekend again.
So you had some tacos and craft beers in hipster cafes and and now understand drugs, homeless, cartels and criminal activity along the border? What is the point of your comment?
Yep, it's sad that we are selling all of that ammunition into Mexico. The fact that the United States is supplying the cartels with military-grade weapons and ammunition is a tragedy, and my heart goes out to the Mexicans whose lives have been ripped apart by weapons and ammunition imported into the country from the United States.
The drugs coming this way I couldn't give less of a shit about. I'm pro-decriminalization anyway.
I hope that doesn't stop anyone from spending time in Baja, California. It is truly one of the hidden gems of the area. The people are wonderful, and the region has a lot to offer. Your least pleasant experience will be dealing with US Customs and Border protection on the way back in. Those people have a real stick up their ass.
To add on to the understanding thing above, I did a master's in International Affairs with a focus on Latin American Politics and a special interest in the Drug War in Mexico at UCSD's school of Global Policy and Strategy. I took a class from David Shirk. My final GIS project was tracing narcotics trafficking routes up through Mexico. I know more about it than I want to. And yet, despite all that, I will talk anyone's ear off about the absolute wonders of Baja, California to anyone who will listen because it really is a special place.
I guess border patrol and customs can be mean. They do save the most lives on the border while dealing with some truly evil people but sure, they can improve their approach to tourists and well-meaning citizens.
As for the rest, yes the situation complicated, although I'm not sure what the people of Baja and its tourism have to do with the state of California and its conditions. Were you using this to refute any of my previous comments or something else?
No, no I'm not trying to refute anything. You were just being very, very negative, and if you read any of my other comments I have a deep passion for the southern part of California extending down into Baja, California.
This state has massive problems that do come with its massive population and economy. But it is also a truly special place with a totally unique geography, a rich, diverse culture, a robust economy, and one of the best public university systems on the planet.
I hate it when people start on the 'California is falling apart' train, because it's not. The state has massive problems. Yes, I've walked alone south of Los Angeles street recently. I've seen the used needles scattered on the Gold Line tracks. But that is just one tiny part of what is a truly magical place. For all of that, there's Joshua Tree, and Grand Central Market, and Lake Sabrina, and the quiet postwar bungalows of San Diego, and the Sutro Tower poking out of the fog, and Coronado island, and the Griffith Park Observatory, and the Broad, and Big Bear Lake, and Kelso Dunes, and Telescope Peak, and the French Laundry, and Pappy and Harriet's.
California is falling apart in some places and booming in others. It's a big 'ol nuanced tapestry. That's how it goes when you have 40 million neighbors. But, I wandered around downtown Palm Springs this morning, and lemme tell ya San Jacinto has never looked more gorgeous. I was in Oklahoma two weeks ago, and man the first thing I did when my plane landed back in California was remind myself how fortunate I am to live here.
So if I understand your response to everyone in California in this thread: "Yes, but there are also bad things, and thus everything positive can be contemptuously dismissed."
You misunderstood then. The very first sentence in my first post: CA has gotten worse in every metric.
Of course positives exist, but they are few and decreasing. Unsurprisingly, nobody has yet to answer my repeated question to name 10 things that have gotten better over the last 10 years.
2. Craft beer has continued to get better and better in San Diego.
3. The Black Mountain bouldering area has been more highly developed.
4. Shoshone got internet.
5. Grand Central Market got refurbished.
6. Angel's Flight is open again.
7. Modern Times got Black House on nitro (ok, so this belongs in 2, but it's just so good it deserves its own point.)
8. They re-did the 10 between Redlands and Cabazon.
9. The San Diego light rail got extended out to UCSD.
10. Pho came to 29 Palms (although the loss of Palm Kebab is deeply mourned).
11. Here's an extra one just for fun, Mira Mesa got an 85 Degrees. Hello sea salt coffee.
12. Oh, here's another one. They fixed the toll road between Rosarito and Ensenada where it got wiped out by a landslide, so it took like 40 minutes off the drive.
13. Wait, here's another one. They opened the CBX cross-border express in Otay, so you can fly cheap and direct from San Diego to Mexico City by just walking directly across the border into the Tijuana airport.
14. Oh, and the Sand to Snow National Monument got established.
15. California got three brand new medical schools as well.
16. Oh, and now you can fly in a P51 Mustang at the Palm Springs air museum (They have a C47 as well that is so cool. The sound of radial aircraft engines makes my knees weak.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbc5OCU0s00 ...Just do it. Why haven't you done it yet? Hurry up and do it. My god...just listen to those engines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlpmHBgHBCg)
17. Marijuana also got recreationally legalized in the state.
18. Bodie remains the same, which in the grand scheme of things I consider a net positive.
19. The Broad opened in Downtown Los Angeles.
20. Oh gosh, I guess I'll round it out. The cops stopped hassling people over doing the Carrizo Canyon hike (to the largest wooden railroad trestle in the world) in Anza Borrego from Carrizo Gorge Road (the coolest route) along the railroad tracks. (If you do it, do yourself a favor and round the day off with a visit to the Arroyo Tapiado mud caves)
Cool California stuff from a Californian who spends their time doing cool California stuff instead of sitting around getting bummed out about statistics. Elon can have fun in Texas, no hard feelings.
This makes me want to check out Southern California more again once it's more feasible.
I'm up in Silicon Valley, and... would say some things have gotten better in 10 years. The craft beer explosion has definitely hit here, too, and even more so around Sacramento.
A terrific new tiki bar opened in Oakland (The Kon-Tiki) and multiple terrific new tiki bars opened in San Francisco (Pagan Idol, Last Rites, Zombie Village; Smuggler's Cove opened in 2009, so not technically within 10 years, but they're considered one of the best bars -- not just tiki bars -- in the world).
As much as San Franciscans like to dump on San Jose, I think downtown San Jose has actually gotten pretty cool in a lot of respects, and that's entirely in the last decade.
There's a fair number of other smaller towns scattered around the Bay Area which are seeing some silver linings of gentrification.
I could probably come up with a more detailed list, but despite some very real downsides, particularly economic -- real estate prices really are out of control (and there is no One Single Cause to point to, despite a lot of folks trying); homelessness has become a genuine epidemic -- it's still a great place to be, and it's hard for me to think of another place in America where I'd genuinely rather be. (This is distinct from "another place I'd still like.")
I guess every place is jam-packed with cool stuff if you're the kind of person who actively goes out and hunts for cool stuff. I could go on-and-on about So-Cal, but I guess the die-hard Nor-Cal folks could do the same. I know I've blown a fair number of weekends at Morro Bay, the Monterey Bay aquarium, and wandering around The Mission. Haven't gotten around to San Jose yet. Maybe after this whole thing blows over. My buddy keeps trying to get me to go up for the Cherry Blossom festival.
I hadn't heard that tiki bars were a thing! That's pretty cool. Talk about a blast from the past.
With regards to real estate prices, that is one thing where I can really, really understand people's complaints. Even down in So-Cal you can see desert cabins on the market for $300k. I figured a bubble would burst at some point, but it hasn't so far. Maybe with more WFH folks who don't really want to be here can go somewhere that they can get more bang for their buck in terms of property, and the die-hard California folks can catch a break on real estate prices.
Cheers though! Good to hear from someone who isn't so down on California. It really is a cool place, and it's easy to take it for granted until you've spent some time in the Midwest.
Assuming it makes it through the pandemic, one of the original huge "tiki palace" type restaurants from the 1950s, Bali Hai, is in San Diego. There are some older ones in LA, but Bali Hai is more of an experience. (And actually has good drinks and food, from what I remember, unlike its closest surviving relative in San Francisco, the Tonga Room.)
I expected real estate prices to start going down, well, any year now, and they're definitely a drag on things. I'm likely to have to leave California in a year or so for family obligations; moving back a few years after that will prove difficult, I suspect, unless I find one of those "merely" $300K desert cabins!
Just the kind of disingenuous commentary that led to the policies that have turned the state into such a sad state of affairs. I'm glad you're fortunate enough to not realize the plight of so many others but clearly there's no discussion to be had here.
I was clearly being a bit snarky with my first response, but I'm going to be sincere now: you asked for people to list good things about California, and they can be summed up as "there are, despite the problems, still genuinely good things about the life one can have living in California." If none of those matter to you, so be it, but that doesn't make those things irrelevant, and mentioning them is not disingenuous.
And let's be real here: the policies that have driven California's economic woes date back to the 1970s (tax policy, rent control) or far, far longer (water and fire management), and many of those old policies were pushed into place because California has long been a place people genuinely want to be. If you think we're being obstinate in pushing back against you, it's perhaps because we think you're coming across like "California is NOTHING BUT A PIT OF STEAMING DESPAIR." No, sorry, it isn't. Even now, heading into 2021, it just isn't. The highs aren't going to balance out the lows for everybody, and yes, it would be disingenuous to pretend the lows aren't there -- but it's just as disingenuous to pretend the highs aren't, either.
I asked specifically for things that have gotten better.
The lack of people being able to answer yet type multiple paragraphs in response is extremely telling. If you can't even explain how quality-of-life has improved for yourself then what argument is there?
Yeah, if you don't spend your free time sitting in your apartment wringing your hands over statistics on a Silicon Valley startup incubator's message board, you are a terrible person who is totally disconnected from reality.
In Seattle, the official crime rate is down, but a lot of people have simply stopped reporting crimes because of lack of response. The actual crime rate is unknown. But the boarded up shop windows say a lot.
...based on reporting of crime; reporting which is directly affected by the very proposition that completely reclassifies criminal acts, and in reality makes many of them go unpoliced and unreported.
Do you have any source on these claims? Cause these are typically hard to measure and I get suspicious when I read "Also recent policies decriminalized many acts and have led to rampant street crime" and other welfare correlation with crime. Happy to learn new things tho :)
Why are you suspicious? When you stop arresting people for crimes and allow criminal behavior then you get more crime. This is so correlated as to be mathematical fact. This is no different to NY removing bail and then being surprised that criminals walk right out of the courthouse and back to their operations the same day while being further emboldened by these policies.
Many think there isn't much crime because they're usually sheltered from it by distance and police activity. It only takes a small gap to notice how bad conditions can get, and how quickly they deteriorate.
I'm suspicious because oftentimes things are more complex than a single source. These articles all point to a single prop (47) and seem to really point out to shoplifting. At the same time the homelessness increased 14% from 2016 to 2017. So is there more crime because of lawmaking or more crime because more desperate people with seemingly no other recourse?
Not claiming to know better, but when it comes to social issue I'd stay away from claiming "mathematical" like correlations. Just my 2c :)
Illegal immigration should not be seen a failing of the state but as the abject failure of the federal government's immigration policies. Texas has, proportional to total population, more illegal immigrants than California and indeed any other state (at least by estimates). And guess what? They are getting free healthcare there and everywhere else too! If California's sanctuary policies are what's preventing the feds from deporting them, why does Texas, who is staunchly anti-illegal, continue to boast such a high illegal population? I'm actually proud that California gives some small humanity to the illegal immigrants here since the federal government has decided not to do the job that they decry as such a huge problem.
Also, it's really...strange...to place the blame for the fires or the weather at the foot of the state.
Does your point only work if you do "proportional to total population"? Why does that matter? Texas has El Paso which has major criminal drug and border activity. What does Texas have to do with California anyway?
Why is your only defense picking single skewed metrics and comparing it to separate places? Are you going to compare CA as a whole against TX or would that reveal your bias?
You still haven't answered what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years so I'm going to end this here.
EDIT for your newly added last line: I thought about this and figured that HN readers would understand that "weather isn't great either" was in addition to the other issues and even specifically wrote "main cause" in the hopes that nobody would conflate the issues but here we are. But yes fires are mostly due to poor planning and infrastructure. Wildfires are the most preventable disaster but California has gotten to the point where insurance companies are proactively cancelling policies because of the fire damage.
In a thread about people fleeing from California to other states, particularly Texas, it's certainly an appropriate comparison. Even more so when you consider Texas is about the closest in size and population except with nearly opposite politics. Comparisons are useful when talking about something in relative terms. Absolute statistics don't mean much in the context of moving from one place to another. You can say California is terrible but within the realistic options, not really. I didn't present any skewed metrics.
You twice pointed out illegal immigrants with emphasis on their contrast to "tax-paying" citizens but failed to connect it to any deeper meaning. So what if they've given them driver's licenses or paid for children & young adult healthcare? At least they've made attempts to integrate them, ostensibly recognizing their hardships and to prevent them from engaging in crime or becoming homeless.
Wildfires are easily preventable if you draw the line at individuals not lighting shit on fire in arid areas or private companies better maintaining their infrastructure.
Then make the comparison. That involves all of the details, not just a single facet, so compare all of the conditions of CA against TX.
Instead of costing citizens, working with federal agencies to remove illegal immigrants would be the better outcome. That would do a much better job of actually eliminating crime instead of enabling it with driving privileges.
But... you still haven't answered what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years. So let's call it done now.
Why should I? I can pick a single point out of your many with which to make a comparison without being obligated to compare them in their entirety and also without discrediting the entire comparison itself, whose purpose you seem to think is proving CA is the best state.
Would it? How do you know?
It's not that nothing has gotten better, but it's obviously relative. Everything has two sides.
- Marijuana was legalized and the convictions of thousands of inmates and priors adjusted accordingly, bettering the lives of thousands.
- Better protections and benefits for those here illegally.
- LGBT protections and rights under the law have greatly expanded.
- Worker protections from discrimination and predatory employers has expanded.
- Most types of crimes have decreased (and if you think things have been wrongly decriminalized, I'd be interested to hear what they are).
- Home values have probably doubled in that time without property tax increase.
- The tech industry continued to grow and employ more workers.
> CA provides sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, along with driver licenses, free healthcare and other benefits paid for by tax-paying citizens.
I see these easily debunked anti-immigration talking points regularly elsewhere on the web in right-wing circles, but I'm surprised to see it on HN.
I encourage anyone interested in the reality of immigration(including the common myths like the above) to either read Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, or watch a short talk on the subject here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6wGLhEW_uc
You didn't debunk anything but only posted some open-border ideology.
Feel free to actually respond to the specific policies that are affecting the state of California instead. Here's just 1 example to get you started: Illegal immigrants have free healthcare until the age of 26 in California, however tax-paying law-abiding citizens are fined if they don't have health insurance.
Why are you comparing a state policy with a federal one? Not to mention the mandate has been declawed and hasn't been enforced in at least a year or two.
It's a clear example of California's policies. There are many more but you have a strange defense of this state that I can only assume is due to being insulated from the experiences of millions and discounting them as false.
I posted some "open-borders ideology" from... noted anarcho-capitalist Bryan Caplan.
Indeed, I didn't attempt to debunk anything you said, other than point out they are easily debunked. You understand that these are two separate things, right?
I didn't say anything about being an anarcho-capitalist, just that it was open-borders ideology that has found zero working application in reality. You understand that these are two separate things, right?
If something is so easy to debunk, then please do so instead of just claiming it is and posting a non-sequitur.
I linked both a book and a talk that covers not only the specifics of the anti-immigration myths you raised by a great deal more on the subject.
To put it in briefly: Concerns over immigration's impact on labor markets and cultural assimilation are not only wildly sensationalized by not supported by any evidence in data or studies on the subject. They are a thin veneer over xenophobia.
The less immigration controls, the better off everyone(worldwide) is.
(I swear, the lump-of-labor fallacy is responsible for like 75% of this kind of populist tripe)
> The state has gone downhill on every metric possible.
Mostly because it got more crowded. As a CA resident, if you don't like CA, please DO move out. It will help traffic, for one.
If ALL you care about is a big house and taxes, then CA is probably not for you. As soon as you walk outside your TX McMansion, you may realize why CA is so crowded.
So what? That means more people and tax revenue to solve problems. There are plenty of very dense areas around the world run just fine. This is a failure of policy not population. If people are such a problem then maybe tax-paying law-abiding citizens should be prioritized over illegal immigration.
> "If ALL you care about is a big house and taxes, then CA is probably not for you... you may realize why CA is so crowded."
Who said that? Your dismissive and defensive attitude along with blaming completely irrelevant details like population is the reason why CA and its voting populace is in the state that it's in.
Please list what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years or I'll assume you have no argument.
> So what? That means more people and tax revenue to solve problems.
I'm not the state government though, I'm an individual with a life outside of my house. When the majority of the time for any activity outside of my house is sitting in traffic or waiting in lines, it's difficult to enjoy the area you live in. For this reason, I find myself heading further and further out of town to find areas or activities that aren't completely congested. Tax revenue won't make the lines shorter or traffic less. To do either would require bulldozing all of the housing and building up, at least where I am. Unfortunately, whenever this is done, luxury condos or apartments are the result, with rent that's higher than a mortgage, even for around here.
The flip side is that specialty services and shops are more likely to be available. This includes medical services. One may have to drive for a day or use airlines to reach the equivalent leaving from an isolated area.
If you don't spend your weekends fly-fishing Big Pine Creek, 4x4ing the Mojave Road, climbing at Joshua Tree, grabbing burritos and craft beer at Grand Central Market, and swimming out to the mile-buoys at La Jolla Cove, why stay? If your eyes don't light up when you hear 'Clifton's Cafeteria,' or 'Pappy and Harriet's,' or 'half-day boat' what on earth are you doing here?
This state is one of the most unique and incredible places in the country. I can drive from the lowest point in the continental United States (Badwater) to the foot of the highest point (Whitney) in a couple of hours. That's absolutely magical. I love this state with a deep passion, and I know many of its nooks and crannies (still exploring and learning). That's why I will never leave.
If you don't do any of that stuff and you just sit in a bubble writing code all day why on earth would you stay? Just takes parking away from the people that actually enjoy California for the magical place that it is.
I'm happy to pay higher taxes. It helps keep this state humming along as the 5th largest economy on the planet.
I enjoy the outdoors here more than most but the taxes are bullshit.
Tens of thousands per year in state income tax. The nation's highest sales tax on top of that and we barely even afford school buses for my kids.
Why? Because all that tax revenue is going into my landlords already fat pockets. Prop 13 is over $30B per year -- that's 4x the size of the NSF and $7B larger than NASA. That stupid law ruined the state and I don't fault anyone for leaving. I'm trying to figure a way out to.
You make a good point, California is beautiful. Texas isn't really all that beautiful. There are pretty areas, and there's some beauty in any natural landscape.
Still, why can't there be a beautiful place with lower taxes? If taxes are enough to drive people away from a breathtaking place, maybe they're too high.
I was very close to moving to Austin this winter. I decided to double down in SoCal instead and buy property. I've spent a decent amount of time in Austin for work and have family nearby, but the weather and cultural opportunities won me over in California. I like that I can go to running on beach path, cycle in the mountains, carve canyons on a motorcycle, eat stellar sushi, sit in traffic :(, and walk down any downtown all in one day.
I've been very grateful to have non-extreme weather throughout the year. I am looking outside at a sunny sky right now and I will go walking on a path shortly to clear my mind. For someone with high allergies, I found that I am not allergic to trees, pollen, and grass in LA. I've had several nasal surgeries in the past to fix issues from allergies. I didn't want to risk it in Austin with different plant landscape.
At last count I've had 14 friends move out of California in the last 3 years. All of them middle class. The biggest reasons given are cost of living and quality of life and education for their kids.
We will be moving out of CA in the coming months. We are lifelong residents. We are leaving due to cost of living and especially quality of life for our children.
I know everyone likes to scape goat some policies for that, but as Occam razors would have it, I think it's just the population growth that was the main cause of price increase, and a population decrease would probably result in a price decrease.
Calling this a simple supply and demand problem is not the whole picture. How come you can't just build new housing to accommodate for the population growth? What's the tax burden in CA relative to other states? Where do those tax revenues go that don't benefit the taxpayers quality of life? What other factors negatively influence quality of life for families which are encouraged by policy?
> I think it's just the population growth that was the main cause of price increase
Population growth without commensurate growth in housing. You can add people, but you gotta let them build houses. If you don't, then prices rise, for reasons that are very easy to understand if you're not financially (or otherwise) motivated to find them confusing.
Building houses isn't free, and when there's a huge demand for land to build on, and all the land is already taken, prices to build the house jack up, and everything follows. Find me a single city anywhere with similar growth that didn't have housing and rental cost go up and maybe I'll reconsider. But right now, I stand by the most simple explanation as likely the cause.
The most simple and obvious explanation by far is that demand has outpaced supply. The thing your analysis is missing is that this mismatch is entirely artificial. It is more or less illegal to build new housing. It is structurally and legally impossible to construct enough housing to meet supply. Zoning prevents most of it and excessive regulation takes care of the rest. The cost of housing is astronomical because it's illegal to build enough of it.
I'll turn your phrasing around and say show me a city that makes it legal to build as much housing as people desire for 30 years that still has high prices and I'll consider your point of view. But until then, it seems to me that you're going to have to make it legal to build housing if you want more housing.
I would love to move out of CA in the coming months. My spouse is begging me to. If my job were to finally announce permanent, optional WFH for employees, I list my house for sale that day.
Same complaints: cost of living / taxes, quality of life, and kids' education.
The only thing keeping me here is my current job and clear opportunities for future [tech] jobs. If WFH became the norm, I'm out of here in 50 milliseconds. There are probably a lot of people like me.
The key is to get out and keep your salary. If your job does go full WFH, you can most likely keep your salary and then move, but then if you want to find a new job in a couple years, finding that same SF salary will be much tougher. I live in Dallas and have friends in Austin. 6 figure jobs are available, but you won't find many (if any) of these 180-200+ type jobs outside SF and NYC.
Granted, $120k-150 for a single earner is plenty to live a good life in Texas, even in the cities (as long as you don't have excessive personal debts). Something to think about that I'm sure you've probably considered.
Interestingly, if you consider it at all, it means that you need to move out now: otherwise you are going to be caught in the huge wave of moving people and will be unable to realize all benefits, i.e. you might have to take the loss on the house, etc. Also, if you spouse really wants to move...
Before COVID and the prospect of multiple companies considering optional WFH became a possibility, I figured I was pretty much stuck here for career reasons, so might as well build home equity for 20 years or so.
Proposition 13, which arguably had a hand in creating the housing problem that exists there today (alongside neighborhood efforts to pause any new housing development, something Austin is facing as well) was championed mostly by Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, both of whom were conservative.
Anecdotal, but everyone I know who left California recently did so due to the high cost of housing, not because of their tax liabilities or a plastic straw ban. Kinda hard to be upset about having to give 9% of your income to the state when you have to give 50% if your income to the landlord (for an 80 year old, 350 sq ft studio heated by radiator in my case when I lived there).
I live in San Francisco. I literally do not see black people. I largely do not see brown people outside of the service industry (i.e. they are "kept back in the kitchen"). I will largely interact with only white people and asian people on any given day.
Where I will be moving to in TX has more diversity than where I live in San Francisco, which is something I am happy about. My children will be seeing more black & brown people in TX than San Francisco.
But hey, thanks for casually assuming racist motivations!
That's... strange. SF's black population has definitely been on the decline (but they're certainly here, all over!), but you must have been actively hiding if your only exposure to brown people was people "kept back in the kitchen".
I'm not going to claim that SF is some amazingly perfect bastion of racial diversity, but if you're mainly only seeing and interacting with white and Asian people here, that speaks more to the circles you spend your time in than the city's diversity.
The city of SF is approximately 40% non-hispanic white, 34% asian, 15% hispanic, 5% black, 5% mixed, and 1% other.
Other Bay Area cities have different distributions. For example Oakland is approximately 29% non-hispanic white, 26% hispanic, 23% black, 15% asian, 5% mixed, 1% other.
Not either of the posters, but in many demographic calculations, those of Indian descent are often referred to as "Asian" or "Indian" with "Brown" often referring to African-descendant or Hispanic.
There’s some interesting history here where the courts definition of caucasian used to include south Asians and was subsequently changed to prevent their naturalization.
As an aside, I often cringe at arguments involving skin-deep diversity. I’ve lived in towns that bragged of diversity when in reality they tended toward the same monolithic affluent culture regardless of skin tone.
The parent poster was making a broader point about "diversity". Unless they consider "Indians" as not diverse, that broader point doesn't stand either. Bay Area has many many towns with Asian majority - San Jose, Fremont, Sunnyvale, Milpitas, Dublin etc. come to mind. That comment was really ignorant
> As of the 2010 census, the ethnic makeup and population of San Francisco included: 390,387 whites (48%), 267,915 Asians (33%), 48,870 African Americans (6%), and others. There were 121,744 Hispanics or Latinos of any race (15%).
> In 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; the other Asian groups are Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%).
Not sure were you live in SF and what circles you frequent. I live in The Mission and most times I go somewhere in the neighborhood there's lots of "brown" people. There's not much black people in SF but black people from Oakland hang out in some places I frequent.
Maybe it's your neighborhood, some islands in the city look like a white suburb, like Noe Valley for example.
This is not really a response to you particularly, but Southern California is much more _visibly_ diverse than SF and the Bay Area generally, I think. I am very happy with the diversity in my 4 years living here, particularly compared to the southern U.S. where I'm from.
Enjoy Texas - cost of living is a very reasonable reason to move there. But know that the Bay Area is much bigger than San Francisco. To see more black and brown people people you only need to cross a bridge.
The average income in California 25% higher than Texas (60k vs 48k), but taxes and costs are more than 25% higher in California.
The typical home value of homes in California is $599,159. [1]
The typical home value of homes in Texas is $224,065
California sales tax rate of 7.25% is higher than that of any other state, and its top marginal income tax rate of 13.3% is the highest state income tax rate in the country.
Texas has an 6.25% sales tax and no state income tax. [2]
California's per capita combined state and local taxes is ~$6,000 per person.
Texas's per capita combined state and local taxes is ~$4,000 per person
For the cost of a normal middle-class home in Palo Alto [1], I could buy an entire public airport with a paved runway and home on almost 300 acres in the (not Texas) town I lived in as a child [2].
Just a nitpick, while Texas' state wide sales tax is 6.25%, every local municipality is allowed to tax up to 2% for their own revenues. I have yet to make a purchase anywhere in the state in my entire life and not been charged the full 8.25%.
Texas also exempts grocery store food purchases from sales tax, barring a few specific luxury categories, so that's something to keep in mind as well if you have a large family. Saving 8% on food could be a decent chunk of change for a lot of families. Restaurant food is still taxed at the normal rate.
I found grocery stores in LA to be incredibly affordable compared to Seattle. More variety as well. Not sure about Texas m, but prices for food in CA follow the west coast norm.
> The typical home value of homes in Texas is $224,065
It's not uncommon to find decent homes in decent neighborhoods well below that average (I'm in a north Houston suburb, in a 1600 sqft corner lot 3/2 that's currently around $160k)
I do not doubt or dispute that Texas is cheaper to live in. It was the "significant" quality of life for children statement struck me as a red flag. It's a form of WASP signaling I've seen many times before (I may be a WASP too...)
It's a particularly egregious statement given that people the world over (myself included) would love to retire in California some day due to the wonderful weather, the abundance of high-quality food and the lovely ocean next door, not to mention the world-class in-state universities, and the abundant employment opportunities. Yes, SF is expensive, and perhaps it makes sense to move out, but leaving California altogether is a whole other kettle of fish. Resorting to Texas as being significantly better given its poor social safety net, open-carry laws, wide variation in schooling based on neighbourhood wealth, well "significantly better" starts to look downright fishy.
I downvoted because you seemed to lump multiple items together assuming they are a universal bad (poor social safety net, open-carry, variation in schooling). I'd prefer you be more specific rather than losing your point in broad assumptions
I understand it's an uncomfortable discussion, and I'm happy to stop, although I personally think these discussions are worth having as there are some fundamental issues around diversity and inclusion at play here. For the record, I have not once claimed it's motivated by racism.
> For the record, I have not once claimed it's motivated by racism.
> Texas is still predominantly white. I'm wondering if that is the unstated preference here.
Sure, you didn't actually claim it was motivated by racism, you just wondered it out loud.
I think it's pretty amusing the only conclusion you can come to for why a person would possibly move from California to Texas is because of race. If CA has a kool-aid you've been drinking it.
I love where I live, in Colorado. I would not move to California. I'm not racist though, I promise.
When I type “california public schools” into DuckDuckGo, the top suggestion is “california public schools bad.” Accepting this, the top three results are:
① “California schools were once the nation's envy. What went wrong?”
> The enormous strike in Los Angeles paints a grim picture of wealthy state that is struggling to fund its education system
③ “California Is Home to Some of America's Worst Public Schools”
> In fact, a spokeswoman for WalletHub says, “California has the 12th worst school system in America.”
> The study was based on 17 metrics, including student-to-teacher ratio, dropout rates and average SAT and ACT scores. Compared with the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, California ranked 47th in reading test scores, 46th in math test scores and dead last in student-teacher ratios.
California funds schools mostly at the state level. Other states fund schools mostly at the local level. For wealthy people living in wealthy neighborhoods, local schools are therefore richer in states where they don’t also have to contribute to funding poor people’s kids’ educations. Here’s a clear summary I found describing education funding in CA https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays
The local -> state change to the funding structure in CA a few decades ago has benefitted previously grossly underfunded schools in poorer cities, but it is a trade-off for sure. Arguably almost all of the schools statewide are now underfunded.
One problem with funding schools at the state level is that it has made it very difficult to increase school funding, because it requires support from across the state to raise taxes for it, and (a) most people in the USA are generally opposed to any taxes that they can’t see immediate direct benefit from, and (b) Prop 13 makes the bar for tax increases very high.
If you are super rich sure, if not, Quality of Life in CA city is small apt in not great part of town vs suburban home in great part of town.
> Texas is still predominantly white.
Texas is big, it's not monolithic, percentage of ethic origins varies widely geographically. Also have you ever been to Texas, or anywhere. Your comments come off as extremely naive / opinions learned from online rather than experience.
You might have to adjust your statistics regionally for income. Middle class in California is upper middle class everywhere else, even adjusting for salary reduction. Leaving California put us in the 90th percentile for family income in our new region even accounting for change in salary, vs 75th back in the South Bay. That opens up a lot more opportunity for leisure and better schools - we don't have to live in a middling caliber town or neighborhood anymore.
Also, owning a home is a massive improvement in quality of life. Something we couldn't do in California. No more shared walls, a garage, a home office, backyard, basement hobby space, spare bedroom, nursery... I would have to double or triple my take home pay (not everyone takes equity to pay down a mortgage) to have the same quality of home in my old neighborhood than I do today.
Weather is meh, we can afford central heating and cooling and there aren't wildfires that turn the air to poison for days at a time. Snow be damned.
Sounds like Texas, except you got a basement (and snow)!
I really wish more homes in Texas had basements, but they add a lot of unnecessary costs to the building that aren't required for code reasons. Plus, then you can spend that money above ground increasing your living area. Unfortunately, most people don't factor in the extra expense of cooling more above ground space, whereas a basement would hold the temperature better. I'd reckon after a decade or so, the energy savings of putting some extra square footage in a basement would event out.
In many places in Texas it's just not economically viable to build a basement. Two examples, Houston has a very high water table, Austin has very hard limestone
> Unfortunately, most people don't factor in the extra expense of cooling more above ground space, whereas a basement would hold the temperature better.
I would recommend anyone building a new home have their basement on a separate HVAC zone, or else the heat rises in the winter and space heaters aren't a great solution.
I moved from the Bay Area (lived there 2 years) to Seattle (well, Bellevue) a few years ago. I had two elementary schoolers and a toddler. The main reason was that although I was paid fairly well, we would never be able to buy a house. So every year was a race between my raise and rent increases. We lived in a pretty decent school district, but it was difficult to move with in the same district, let alone the same school. I was looking at my oldest entering middle school and I didn't want her to have to face the prospect of changing schools every 1-2 years.
Our situation in California let us offer everything except stability. Younger kids are fine anywhere as long as their parents are involved, but older kids benefit from social stability so they have time and space to define who they are.
I know it's natural to want to optimize for your child's school, but doesn't most evidence show that your child's school is only marginally predictive of attainment? The fact that you care so much to optimize for them might be self-selecting because your concerned/aware/have the resources to help in other ways.
Not asking with snark, but does that matter if said school demonstrates very little ability to to explain variance in attainment?
I.e., if the school determines network and schools don’t contribute much to achievement, doesn’t it imply scholastic network effects have limited value?
I sometimes wonder is we dedicate too much mindspace to the wrong area and rationalize our choices
Without worrying about the exact split, I have always looked for good teachers, functional district, and motivated, education-driven peers. I don't have enough kids to properly A/B test.
More generally, public schools in many affordable parts of California are severely underfunded due to Proposition 13, while the statewide average is boosted by high-ranking schools in ultra-expensive cities like Palo Alto. Texas has less inequality between public schools and has earned international recognition for its Ten Percent Law:
I'm wondering if you're implying that there's something wrong with having such a preference though. You have provided some interesting statistics, would you mind if I did so as well?
Yes, you and poster you're replying to mention "quality of life". What does that mean?
A cynic would see this as a dog-whistle for "too many Asians/Hispanics/foreigners". (And I have actually heard a white person here in California say that about the schools.)
See my reply on a parallel comment. I will be moving to a more diverse area.
It's remarkable how "I don't like the Bay Area" translates so easily to "racist dogwhistle".
Quality of life means things like:
- "there are children in my neighborhood"
- "I don't need to keep looking over my shoulder at the playground with my children"
- "I can get a 15-yr mortgage on a house that is 2000 sqft, be financially stable, and safely deal with recurring large medical expenses that we will always have due to pre-existing conditions"
I don't think many people are attempting to raise children in SF proper, where this anecdote takes place, but walking into a safeway parking lot and having to dodge used needles is not what I would call high quality of life.
Although in all fairness, I am not aware of the drug situation in other parts of the country.
There are plenty of families in SF proper. If you don't have kids, you understandably aren't spending much time in parks, playgrounds, and kid-friendly neighborhoods.
I'm planning on leaving as well. Decided to spend a small stint in Lake Tahoe before leaving the state for good, but I'm not staying here. It's too left / socialist for me, and I look forward to the day I no longer have give the California government another penny.
No kidding. There's a Tesla Gigafactory in Austin and the SpaceX Starship construction site in Boca Chica; he's demonstrated that he likes to be at the bleeding edge of development on-site. This move isn't surprising.
The problem is that most people on HN, and elsewhere on the internet, got everything they know about Texas from watching cartoons on TV. (Same for their knowledge of religion.)
They enjoy repeating half-century-old stereotypes while turning a blind eye to their own region's failings. It's geographic fanboyism.
/Lived in Texas for five years. Also lived in 13 other states. Would return to Texas if the opportunity arose.
I lived in Austin for a summer, my dash board melted. I just wouldn’t like it because of the weather, but also the urban planning strikes me as fairly unsustainable (lots of sprawl, frontage roads everywhere). But mostly the weather, dashboards are expensive.
California still has every viewpoint that is imaginable though there does seem to be less space for far right. What's making everyone salty about Elon leaving is there was considerable amount of people who helped him build up in the state (i.e. state benefits, staff who worked incredibly hard for many years, consumers who bought his cars [drive in the bay area]) and he's peacing out, with a slap in the face to everyone seemilng all to avoid paying taxes on his unbelievable gains.
Edit: the reason I ask the question is that I've noticed a trend among people from very left-leaning areas to define anyone slightly right of center as being "far-right". I've been called "far-right" because of beliefs that were typical of moderate Democrats in the 1990s.
What label that leaves for people like actual Nazis, fascists, neo-Confederates, etc, I'm not sure. Far-far-far right?
I've been called far-right simply because I praised trump for a single executive order.
The virtue signaling left has made it to the point that words don't mean what they should anymore because they crank things up to 100 every time they accuse anybody of anything.
Some views Moderate Democrats held in the 90s could be very far right, depending on the subject. Bill Clinton supported "Don't ask, don't tell" and the defense of marriage act. They were considered moderate in the 90s, but I would classify them as far right today. A moderate in the 1930s could literally have supported Fascism, and the "progressive" Woodrow Wilson supported the Klu Klux Klan. I'm not saying this applies to you, but "moderate XX years ago" is not an argument against something being far right.
Exactly. By your standards, Bill Clinton was "far right".
Excellent example.
For the record, I support civil rights protections for all humans, including gays on the basis on sexual orientation. I disagreed then with most of Bill Clinton's policies toward gay rights (I also strongly supported making marriage a uniquely civil institution vis-a-vis government recognition available to all citizens, like France).
By the way, you know who else had that exact same views on gay rights as Bill Clinton when he entered office?
I'm pretty sure you're right, particularly if you combined the socio-cultural views from his first term and the global military actions of the second.
It's absolutely untethered how far much of the left has moved in 10-15 years. The right has also moved toward the right, but they're much less homogeneous in their beliefs.
This is reflected in polls over time from Pew and others:
How about the nuts between San Antonio and Austin that tried to run the Biden/Harris bus off the road. There are plenty like them in Texas. I live here I know.
I don't know much about them - probably "right" and possessed with the same moral hysteria as the left. I'm not a Trump supporter or voter, if that's what you're trying to goad out of me.
I'm not trying to say you are anything not sure why you are taking it as an attack on you I was just stating that those people exist in Texas and aren't a quiet minority. I live here I have reference.
We have a new lines drawn on acceptance for behavior towards sexuality, religion, women's rights and race since the 90's. The line has moved. The 90's was 30 years ago.
I don't know your exact situation at all and criticism of you may indeed have been unfair. But for fucks sake don't try to make a case that you're not far-right by looking to the behavior of people in the past. That indicates strongly you may indeed have backwards views that are 30's years out of date.
A belief that morality improves over time as you describe, aka whiggism/meliorism, is itself a kind of religious tenet of a particular set of worldviews (often called left, progressive etc). So I don't think one can say that rejecting that tenet places one outside of the Overton window of acceptability, while at the same time claiming tolerance of a wide range of viewpoints.
Morality has improved over time though and is still improving. I mean, if you look at how gay people were still treated in the 90s, it was terrible. Most gay people were afraid to be publicly "out" and forget about any sort of trans rights, if you were trans in the 90s you just never transitioned or basically told nobody.
Do you think going back to a world where gay people were often attacked and beaten in public is a good idea? Where women were regularly subjected to sexual assault at work? My mum who worked as a teacher in the 80s and 90s told me she was regularly slapped on the ass by male teachers at work. Is this ok? Would you be ok with your daughters getting this treatment?
I think your examples touch on the enforcement of certain norms, not on the change in the reigning social view. In other words, in the 90s neither the average man on the street nor the ruling class would agree that publicly assaulting gay people or workplace sexual assault are anything but immoral. Both were also still crimes at that time, of course. I'm also not quite sure that workplace incidents of that kind have declined substantially up to the present, but I'd be interested in seeing data.
How do you reconcile the fact that slavery was once widespread and morally acceptable by the majority of society, and defended by the church, with your position that morality does not improve over time?
How about the fact that interracial marriage was once considered sin, and that women allowed to own property or vote was also morally acceptable?
Would you prefer a return to the morality of the 1800s, since in your view morality does not change, where women and dark skinned people returned to their "rightful place"?
Even the Church has undergone massive reformation over the centuries, and what was considered morally acceptable in the 1200s is not acceptable to modern Christians.
I don't believe, correct me otherwise, that there are any major religions whose main stream/expression universally taught that interracial marriage was a sin. Certainly some Protestants in 1800s USA did, but Christians in 200, 500, 1300 etc did not.
Atlantic chattel slavery could be argued to be crueler than ancient/traditional forms of slavery and hence a temporal decline in moral goodness from the middle ages to late 1800s. It may also be noted that in a low-tech society, feudalist and traditional slave economies may have had some advantages over e.g. a laissez faire wage worker economy. (In a famine perhaps? A question for historians). The cruelty of nature itself on human lives in a low tech society interacts with moral judgments about economic systems etc. in ways that complicate these questions - I would say be careful not to credit to improved virtue what is really the due of technological innovation.
A counterexample of moral improvement could be respect and care for elders and parents, broadly speaking. The point being only that the march of progress is not always consistent nor can it be counted on to be so.
Exactly. Morality rises and falls. It's not an inevitable progress toward "better". Some new moral "innovations" lead to horrible moral outcomes, like when John Punch was turned from an indentured servant into a lifetime slave, presumably on the basis on his skin color.
And how to describe Nazism except as a moral abberation? That wasn't moral progress after the (already declining) morality of the Weimar republic.
And I'm getting weird dystopian vibes from a significant % of the present left. The moral crusading. The authoritarianism. The absolutism. The shaming. The religious ferver of its movements.
I don't mean to start a flame war, but how is the left more authoritarian? I don't really get it.
Conservative leaders, at least in the US, seem far more authoritarian and xenophobic than left leaning leaders. I'm curious what you see as authoritarian about the modern left.
Also, it is interesting that you associate shaming with authoritarianism. Shaming is intrinsically a grass roots thing - it's the people, not some autocrat, that shames people. Authoritarian governments don't need to shame people, they simply imprison them or take other direct coercive measures.
Societies shame people because they cannot physically do anything to them. That's a huge distinction.
I never said the left was more authoritarian than the right. That's your tribal brain making that assumption. I belong to neither your tribe, nor the other. The right has its own problems.
But as for all the others I insist that they are primarily left-wing phenomena.
And regarding your argument for shaming, what happens when the folks who do the shaming gain power?
I don't think this argument helps your case at all.
If you say morality was better in the past, which past are you talking about? After all, as you just admitted, morality changed in the past just as much as it did in the present.
Not only was morality not constant in the past, it was not constant geographically, nor even within the same religion (Protestant vs Catholic, Southern Baptist vs Episcopalian). Protestants in the US did not agree with Catholics in Europe, to say nothing of Muslims in the middle east and Buddhists in Asia.
What "eternal constant morality" are you appealing to? Are we talking about Protestantism in 1800? Roman Catholicism in 1400? Buddhism in 800 AD? Theocratic Judaism in 200 BC? Kantian categorical imperatives of the early 20th century?
So, again, if you claim that morality is constant based on some "past", it is incumbent upon you to answer : Which past, and in what country/tribe/kingdom, was the absolute "constant" morality that you claim we should now uphold here in the 21st Century?
Rejecting progressivism or meliorism of course doesn't place someone outside that window of acceptability by itself. It depends on what a person is clinging onto.
And I think it's still fair for a person to claim tolerance of a wide range of viewpoints while rejecting positions that are bigoted or deemed unacceptable.
For someone who rejects meliorism, what moment in human history is the correct frame for evaluating the world? Many social or religious conservatives positions today often overlook that certain perspectives they hold now were unacceptable a century ago. The use of contraceptives being one example.
I feel like the thread of the conversation has been lost. The answer here is that "no frame" is correct. If you simply believe what is morally fashionable then you likely would have had very objectionable "far right" beliefs in the 90s. This is the premise of http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
The original thread was a person upset about the definition of what society considers extreme viewpoints. I don't see anyone arguing which frame is correct but merely that the bar moves over time. Which we know it does. Your above link and statement reinforces this. So you can be an extremist today with a viewpoint that was common 30 years ago. That doesn't change the fact that you're an extremist today.
Let's say that 30 years from now some of your beliefs would be considered extremist. What value judgement do you place on yourself today?
Can we live in a world where "if you believe this now you're evil but if you believed this 10 years ago you're cool."? Replace 10 with any number of years.
Yes. What you've described is common. Think of all the encounters with racist old people that we tend to laugh off with "she's from a different era". The brush off we do doesn't change the fact that they have grossly outdated and evil views by todays norms. Also think about old people that did change. We don't judge them too harshly for past behavior given it was the norm at the time.
As a personal anecdote; every time i've been slow to adapt to the new societal norms, when i look back it's been me who was wrong, not society. It's just taken me time to realize it. I've learnt to force myself to accept, based on repeated past experience, that it's probably not society that's wrong when the overton window moves, it's probably me. I'm yet to regret adapting my viewpoint even if at the time it irks me somewhat. If you're over 30 think back to the school yard gay insults and compare your own viewpoints now. It's not wrong you've changed is it? Take that lesson into account with todays changes and you won't regret it.
What i'm trying to say here is that fighting against changes to the overton window will cause you to end up as a sterotypical old person with grossly outdated views. There's no need to be this way.
If you had been slow to adopt the moral changes of Nazism in the 1930s, would you have been "wrong"? What about women slow to adopt the moral changes of revolutionary Islamic Iran? Are they wrong?
And before you ask what my morality is, I'll just sum it up as enlightenment Western liberalism, for want of a longer essay to explain it. And today's left (and right!) are starting to leave that outlook behind, to our detriment.
I don't care what your views are and yes you're right. Sometimes it's quite right to have views outside the social norms.
Now remember this thread started because you specifically raised an issue with being called far right. Do you think that maybe you do have views outside the norm. Note that i'm not saying it's right or wrong nor do i even want to know what your views are, i'm just pointing out that you might just fit the description of far right/left if your measuring stick for normal is to compare your views to those of a decade that started over 30years ago.
You say you don't care what my views are, but all of your responses suggest otherwise.
And yes, I'm right. It's sometimes right to have views outside social norms.
However, my views are not "outside social norms", unless you only count members of the full-on right, and full-on left as "social norms". My views are right in between those two.
Edit: "You can still be outside norms without being at the fringes." Hehe, we used to have a name for this: centrist. I know your kind hates us even worse than Trump supporters. They're beyond your influence, but you know that bullying, shaming, and harassment can "convince" many centrists. Well, not this one.
And boy, I screwed up by saying 1990s moderate Democrats. I should have said a 2008 Obama moderate, which is basically the same thing but few would dare call him "far right". BTW, I voted for him in 2008 (but not 2012).
You can still be outside norms without being at the fringes. This has always been the case and nothing new. And i really don't care about your views, note from the start i have explicitly noted that you may be right or wrong. It's just that what you've said about having views that other people had in the 90's isn't proof that your views are within social norms. You may be outside them or you may be within them but "Someone X years ago had the same views as me" isn't a defense to be called outside the norm.
> You can still be outside norms without being at the fringes. This has always been the case and nothing new.
That's absolutely ridiculous. "outside norms"? Whose norms? Your in-group's norms, which is at best around 20-30% of the country. There's a stronger argument that you all are the ones who are outside our country's norms, at least at present.
BTW, I'm directly in the center of the country wrt most of "my views". I have a few economic views that are center-left. So I'm certainly not in any "extreme", the delusions of the left aside.
The problem I have with this statement is recently(past 4-5 years) the left has gone extremely far in their beliefs and ideas. Take real life examples like - completely disbanding the police, emptying prisons, outlawing all criminal laws. Deciding that people of a certain race/social class are the cause of all problems. Destruction of city statues without due process. These ideas are dangerous for any functioning society and saying every idea from 30 years ago is bad or backwards is wrongheaded.
In addition alot of the far left is pinning 'nazi' or 'facsict' on any politician or idea that does not meet their ever changing ideas. Even feminists are now getting trampled on if their ideas don't meet up to the week culture temperature checks.
So much of what you just said is completely untrue. Not a single leading Democrat is calling for any of those things. Emptying prisons? Completely disbanding the police? Outlawing criminal laws? What does that even mean?
I think the commentor was as much concerned with the namespace pollution: to some people on the left, there doesn't seem to be a "right" (or even a "center"), anymore, only a "far right". This isn't because because they all share the same views, but rather because there's a lack of nuance to the language used by many people in discussing politics.
(I say people because the same thing occurs in reverse when talking about "extremist leftists")
Just so we’re clear. You’re position is that the democrats in the 90s were far right? Like actual racists/ultra nationalists/believers in the superiority of certain races etc?
What constitutes center right, center, center left in your view?
And my specific viewpoint in question? That all people should be treated equally, and given equal opportunity, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
I will die with that belief, even if 99% of the population believes otherwise.
Is this a successful way to dodge taxes? If so, that loophole should be fixed. I left California 4 years ago and yet somehow still pay taxes to the state.
If you're saying that anyone who was professionally successful in California has no right to ever leave the state, that seems like a tough sell.
I left California for Nevada many years ago, and I subsequently sold stock I accumulated while in California without paying state income tax.
It is legal and you can do it, but there are a lot of legal hurdles. They're pretty well documented around page 5 of FTB 1031 [1].
In my case, I quit my W2 job in California, entered into a contract to lease a home in NV, got rid of all leased or owned real estate in CA, sold or re-titled all motor vehicles from CA, registered to vote in NV, surrendered my CA driver license for a new NV license, re-titled all my financial accounts at my new address, got a NV phone number, etc.
This was all easy because I was single without children. If my situation was more complicated, like I had a spouse or ex-spouse with children enrolled in CA schools, or decided to retain owned real estate in CA, the situation can quickly fall into a gray zone.
If you have a W2 job in CA while claiming you're in NV, it's very hard to escape the CA FTB.
CA is very aggressive about chasing down its former residents. It's important to check all the boxes to get them from chasing you.
After I left, I filed non-resident CA returns for three years basically saying, "I had income but I am not a resident and it was not from a CA source, therefore I owe no CA tax." This is important because it starts the statute of limitations running. If you don't file, the statute of limitations doesn't start.
And while I'm writing all this: what in the world is up with a 13.3% state tax bracket? Screw California.
Those high brackets really only apply to people that are making a lot of money. I make $100k right now and my state tax in California would be nearly the same as it is in Ohio at that rate. That being said, with my work being remote indefinitely I’m going to Texas to save over $400 a month in tax (and cost of living is about the same — very low).
I guess your case was extra special. I remained employed by the same company after moving from CA to AZ and the FTB never bothered me. The year I relocated, I filed my.. 540? after determining what income I earned while living in CA. And that was that. No issues with my options or RSUs either. Being married and having a child was also a non-issue.
If you're married or have children AND they come with you to AZ, that's obviously no problem. In that case, it works in your favor: it's just more data that you're a bona fide AZ resident. I was pointing out that if your children stay in CA while you go to NV, it works against you.
And AZ isn't NV. The FTB pays special attention to NV in particular because it has no income tax. Someone who moves to AZ isn't so obviously trying to skirt CA state income tax.
My case was a little special because I sold a lot of stock right after leaving CA, which makes it a little suspicious to the FTB.
If you have RSUs that were in while you were working in California or a resident of California, the Franchise Tax Board claims a portion of the income as California source when (if) they finally vest. That could be years later, when you're no longer a resident.
If you move from California to another country, and are subject to US Federal Income tax, and don't qualify for an exemption, the Franchise Tax Board still considers you a resident of the state, and as such, taxes you on your worldwide income; as you did not end your residency by establishing residency in another state.
In this case, one also assumes that Musk will continue to spend a fair bit of time in the state. Low-profile people can usually get off with just paying taxes in their home state even though they spend a lot of their time at company offices, conferences, etc. elsewhere. But presumably there is some threshold beyond which you're supposed to be filing taxes in other locales.
New York city has its own income tax rate of 3.9% for high earners. This can be quite a bit of money for hedge fund managers/owners. I've read that some of them live outside NYC to avoid the tax but need to hire a full time person to document and make sure they are not counted as a NYC resident by the city. You can only spend so many nights in NYC and not be counted as a resident, show proof of you being somewhere else, etc.
Income taxes has so many bad consequences. It would be great to ban it and replace it with land value taxes.
The letter of the law in a lot of places can be even worse than that. [1] There's been federal legislation proposed but AFAIK, nothing has been passed. A lot of states theoretically require you to file a tax return even if you only travel there for a day. Of course, I'd be shocked if pretty much anyone complied with that for sometimes travel. But it means lots of people are basically committing tax fraud; many/most probably don't even know they are.
I did on internship in Texas when living in California. I had to pay California state income tax on what I earned there. Luckily Texas has no state income tax or I would have been paying in both states.
> If you move from California to another country, and are subject to US Federal Income tax, and don't qualify for an exemption, the Franchise Tax Board still considers you a resident of the state, and as such, taxes you on your worldwide income; as you did not end your residency by establishing residency in another state.
While this is strictly correct, I think the implications of what you wrote are too strong. If you move from California to another country or U.S. state, the requirements to get an "exemption" from California tax residency are essentially "convince the FTB that you have weaker ties to California than to your new location."
While arbitrary and open to abuse in theory, it appears less so in practice. Quoting from California's Guidelines For Determining [Tax] Resident Status [1], heading "Leaving California" on page 6:
> Example 4 - You and your spouse/RDP are California
residents. You accept a contract to work in South America
for 16 months. You lease an apartment near the job site.
Your contract states that your employer will arrange your
return back to California when your contract expires. Your
spouse/RDP and your children will remain in California
residing in the home you own.
> Determination: You maintain strong ties with California
because your spouse/RDP and children remain in your
California home during your absence. Your intent is to
return to California, and your absence is temporary and
transitory. You remain a California resident during your
absence. You are taxed on income from all sources,
including income earned in South America.
> Example 5 - You receive and accept a permanent job
offer in Spain. You and your spouse/RDP sell your home
in California, pack all of your possessions and move to
Spain on May 5, 2019, with your children. You lease an
apartment and enroll your children in school in Spain. You
obtain a driver’s license from Spain and make numerous
social connections in your new home. You have no
intention of returning to California.
> Determination: You are a part-year resident. Through
May 4, 2019, you were a California resident. On
May 5, 2019, you became a nonresident. All your income
while you were a resident is taxable by California. While
you are a nonresident, only income from California
sources is taxable by California.
> Example 6 - You are a resident of California. You accept
a 15-month assignment in Saudi Arabia. You put your
personal belongings, including your automobile, in
storage in California. You have a California driver’s license
and are registered to vote in California. You maintain
bank accounts in California. In Saudi Arabia, you stay
in a compound provided for you by your employer, and
the only ties you establish there are connected to your
employment. Upon completion of your assignment, you
will return to California.
> Determination: You have maintained greater connections
with California than you have established in Saudi
Arabia. Your absence is for a temporary or transitory
purpose. Therefore, you remain a California resident.
As a California resident, your income from all sources
is taxable by California, including the income that you
earned from your assignment in Saudi Arabia.
Example 5 above is closest to what I think you were talking about by "moving from California to another country." The only way I think FTB could go after you for here is to argue that you could have an "intention" of returning to California eventually, and I do not know whether keeping your American bank accounts at California banks would be enough of a hook for FTB to decide it's worth the effort to try that argument.
For myself, if I did move from California to become an indefinite expat, I wouldn't worry too much about the FTB going after me. Opinions may vary, of course.
Thanks! I hadn't seen the FTB guidance for example 5. I think the tricky bit comes when you plan to live in another country for an indefinite period of at least several years, but not forever (and without any specific return state in mind), and keep a storage unit (in California) with some stuff that you want to keep, but don't want to move to another country because of the expense.
FTB can use 'has a storage unit in California' as a factor; and maybe combined with California banks and California voting, and maybe a California mailing address, if you use friends/family to forward your mail, could be enough to tip the scales for them. It's rather opaque.
I don't think it's a small motivation of Musk to escape the tax rate when he starts to sell his shares. Just because he vested them while in CA - if he's a resident of Texas when he sells I don't think he owes CA a dime.
I wasn't responding specifically to Musk's tax burden, but the question of why would someone who moved out of the state still be paying taxes to the state several years later.
It depends on what type of shares/options/equity grants, and what's still vesting, and what isn't.
ISOs that are exercised in a qualifying disposition are taxed based on residency on the day of exercise.
RSUs that vest while you're a resident are taxed on vest day, and any capital gains from that are taxed based on residency on the day of the sale, yes.
RSUs that vest while you're not a resident are taxed on vest day, and a portion of the income will be california source if you worked in California during a portion of the vesting period, or if you were a residing during a portion of the vesting period.
I recognize this is just my personal experience, but this doesn't hold true for me in the slightest. I grew up and lived in CA for over two decades, but now located in a state with no income tax and employed by a company in the bay area. I pay zero state income tax, as do all my coworkers in the area.
Which is often just not that necessary... must people's income levels in retirement are low enough that CA's income taxes are competitive with many other lower-tax states (not those with no income tax, though, of course).
I don't know the specifics, but I believe the parent comment is alluding to business specific taxes, not the capital gains tax you probably pay as a no-longer-california-resident.
I think rather that people/gov gave a bunch of benefits to be in state that cost the state, but they didn't require that he stay in the state. So i think the implication is that he took resources from the state but didn't stay long enough for the gov/people to see an ROI.
But, as much as i am a lefty(+capitalist), that seems a fault of the state. States should expect this more imo. You give near negative returns to companies to come to your state and then you're shocked when they leave and you haven't gotten your ROI?
But maybe this will be good. If the migration continues perhaps California will have to stop subsidizing low-tax states and let them fend for themselves more.
I'm going to reply with a comment I made an hour ago.
"The far-left managed to create an "amazing" (and terrifying) perspective.
If you're a leftist but not as leftist as them, you're a centrist, maybe even center-right which makes everybody on the right to be automatically far-right."
I mean, the Third Way Democrats whole shtick is embracing right wing policies and injecting them into the democratic party. They gained power as a faction in the democratic party around 1992 with the argument that after Reagan changed politics in the US and after losing the presidency for three elections, they argued that the democratic party needed to shift heavily to the right to chase what Americans were looking for. Clinton got for instance got elected on a platform to "end the welfare system a we know it", and gun control (which at the time was a right wing policy because scary minorities were open carrying. Reagan actually passed the law against open carrying, the Mulford Act, stating at the time that there was "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons"). The explicit goal here was courting center right moderates.
Since then the Democratic Party has continued tracking to the right, with Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation's 1994/94 HEART Act being slightly edited and passed as Obamacare.
This isn't a "terrifying perspective", but literally public statements and accepted political science.
> I mean, the Third Way Democrats whole shtick is embracing right wing policies and injecting them into the democratic party. They gained power as a faction in the democratic party around 1992
They gained power before that (their main original organization, the DLC, was a powerful force in Democratic politics well before its former head became the Democratic nominee in 1992), but they were definitely the unquestionably dominant faction from that point forward, though that has gotten weaker over the past decade or so.
Sure, by "gained power", I mean that they went from fairly important group to _the_ leadership of the party, actively purging other groups, and their decisions were the de facto decisions of the party as a whole.
Anti-capitalists, socialists, police defunders, censors (they can be also far right wingers), haters of every western thing, etc. You can easily identify them inside the democratic party, they have a lot of power now.
Those aren't far-left. Especially the "haters of every western thing" lol.
Far-left is the complete abolition of private property, abolition of police and prisons, in some cases the abolition of monies period.
There are literally zero far-left people in elected or appointed positions within the US government today.
Your worldview is much smaller than reality and the dog-whistles you lean on are obvious. Educate yourself before choosing to expound your limited views.
Except for the fact that a mainstream democrat is a center-right politician anywhere else in the world. The "far-left" you reference doesn't exist outside Twitter and a small group of congresspeople, giving that small group an outsized image of power isn't very congruent with reality.
Neoliberalism is based on economic policy position. Your lack of understanding of the term doesn't mean people are using it incorrectly.
It does have a meaning.
> Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.
The Democratic Party is a centrist party whose dominant faction is center-right but which has a substantial center-left and smaller further-left factions.
You can be right of the Democratic Party and be anywhere from merely slightly-less-center center-right to, well, anywhere to the right of that.
But the US polítical spectrum is basically bimodal, and the peak to the right of the dominant faction of the Democratic Party is far-right.
yes? you see people like yang advocating for things like UBI, and others like ocasio-cortez wanting similar programs along with other big spending programs like getting rid of student debt and free college.
OK? Yang is hardly a democrat and he is not in any position of power. Nothing you are saying is actually backing up what you are claiming. Quite the contrary, these are examples of democrats who have been pushed away from power because of their ideas. How many delegates did Yang get again?
Ocasio-Cortez is one congress woman who has been in office for less than two years. She is not in a position of power within the democratic party, in fact they actively oppose her.
So what is your point? AOC does not reflect where the democrats are as a party, and it's dishonest to pretend so.
And student loan relief is not socialism. Free college could arguably be, but what is being discussed is far from free college.
The GOP put itself out of power in CA by pursuing a series of explicitly racist policies in a white-plurality state, and then later settling on total political obstruction as its backup plan (in the short term this was effective at preventing the state government from addressing a wide range of serious problems). My former GOP state rep in SoCal used to send out mailers proudly proclaiming that he had voted ‘no’ on 100% of legislation, with some race baiting mixed in as seasoning. Considering that a couple decades of this led to the Democrats winning all of the statewide offices and supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, perhaps it wasn’t the best long-term strategy.
But the state remains a very conservative place overall, just like the rest of the USA. There’s a broad swath of the public who distrust the government, are opposed to taxes of any kind, and so on. Even in 2020, 34% of voters picked Trump, even though his rhetoric has included badmouthing CA as a cornerstone. And many CA Democrats are pretty conservative by the standards of most other developed countries, and would most naturally fit in a centrist or center-right party.
It's kind of funny how hard the CAGOP pushed for independent redistricting thinking that the Dems were gerrymandering them out of existence. After the independent redistricting happened they lost the few seats they had and now essentially cease to exist.
The Fremont factory and Palo Alto headquarters will still be in California... for now. I imagine they will open up some Texas sites, which everyone is doing, but I think Tesla will have a CA presence for some time. It's difficult to move these things. On the other hand, Elon has a "damned the torpedoes" attitude, so who knows.
Genuine question: how do states like Texas, Florida, etc. get by without taxing income? Do they not need that money for their operations? What is the difference between their government and California's?
I figure Florida makes it up with their tourism industry but Texas decidedly does not have that.
Houston, unlike the rest of Texas, has a strong Louisiana influence stretching back generations because of the shared oil and gas economy, and was enhanced by immigration and outflow from New Orleans by Katrina in 2005.
Hmm; apart from restaurants, I'm not sure many Houstonians would agree that Houston has "a strong Louisiana influence stretching back generations" — if anything we'd probably say it's the other way around (but then that might be just local boosterism).
As to Hurricane Katrina: We took in about 250K evacuees but only about 40K stayed permanently (which is a bunch, of course). I'd guess most of those were the sort who liked being here better, so they made lemonade out of the lemons that the storm forced upon them. [0]
I think a lot of what folks see as a "Louisiana influence" in Houston is mostly "Gulf Coast TX" vs the rest of Texas.
It's not that it's a Louisiana influence, it's that we're all on the gulf coast and all have a lot in common. (Not with New Orleans so much, but certainly with Lake Charles/etc.)
That somehow gets misnamed as a "Louisiana influence", when really it's just the region we're in.
Higher taxes elsewhere (which I think more sense anyway), and honestly probably just less wasteful spending and fewer beneficial (or potentially beneficial) programs.
Compared to California, most states depend less on income taxes and more on property taxes, which is part of the reason why property prices are higher in California.
I think California would have higher property taxes if they hadn't implemented prop 13 back in the 80s. Really messed up the state tax dynamics imho. Policy started from a good place but ended up with weird ripple effects.
Oil is taxed quite a bit there, along with higher property taxes (some of the highest in the nation). But you'll also notice the roads aren't stellar, and many areas have issues with public education. Lack of state tax is reflected in all of this.
Property taxes. This also means more taxes stay local and in the communities paying them. Of course there are opposing viewpoints on if this is good or bad. But the state still gets a good portion of those taxes.
On the east coast some of our states have high state income tax AND high property taxes (and property is very expensive) and I’m not sure the services or infrastructure are any better than in states like Texas. At least in California your property tax is locked in, which has its own problems of course.
At least where I live, a good deal of today’s tax revenues go to pensions to people that retired to Florida or Arizona (or some other tax free state) in their 50’s. I think Texas has avoided this trap many states are in today.
Those east cost states just have a lot of debt (including their unfunded deferred compensation such as defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare), plus debt from old infrastructure that needs to be updated.
By taxing the shit out of my property. I pay more in property tax in Texas than I did in income tax in CA. My property tax doesn't care how employed I am or how much money I'm pulling down either. It's probably going to nullify any appreciation on my home.
Lots of trade-offs.
P.S. Tourism's economic impact on my city in Texas was over 15b BC(before COVID).
Texas gets a lot of income from the energy industry (oil and gas). Texas recently changed the law to require a state-wide vote to allow income tax (previously, the state legislature could hypothetically introduce it).
People don't move because there's a tax hike proportionate to how long you've lived there, so there's less turnover in housing, meaning less supply, meaning higher prices.
It puts a hard, long term, effectively permanent cap on tax growth, so cities must plan for everything to continually get leaner. Cities make land use and zoning decisions based on uses that are net contributors to revenue, vs net costs. What is a net cost? Housing in general, especially housing that might contain school aged children - that's why 3+ bedroom apartments are so much more rare. What are net contributors? Offices and retail. So the places with demand get to pick, and SF and the Peninsula restrict housing as much as they can and have a huge concentration of offices.
Places on the outskirts (e.g. Dublin, Livermore, Gilbert, Brentwood) are allowing housing to be built because they're trying to turn nothing into something, but any established, and especially built-out city, has a strong financial incentive not to admit a single additional resident to live there, while encouraging everyone they can to shop and work there.
How do we get rid of Prop 13? Supporting repeal is a political death sentence for anyone in local or state office. Homeowners of course love it (even when it has negative effects on them), and renters tend to be less politically active. What kind of campaign would it take to do this?
It's a constitutional amendment, so it would take another amendment to overturn it. It has created its own positive feedback cycle for support, because its beneficiaries are long-term residents, which means older older and wealthier people, who vote more. If a) your rent isn't going up, because you own and your taxes are fixed, and b) your kids are old enough to be out of school, and c) you live closer to work because you bought when the areas were less developed, then you're insulated from the 3 main problems that Prop 13 creates.
Those who would benefit from its repeal - renters, people who moved out, people who choose not to move to CA in the first place because of cost and governance, children, etc, either don't vote as consistently or can't vote in CA at all.
In case you were unaware, there were two proposed constitutional amendments that would reduce Proposition 13 benefits this past November:
Proposition 15 (which would have eliminated commercial property tax breaks) failed 48%-52%. I think its biggest political flaw is probably the fact that it would apply July 1, 2022, with no phase-in for small businesses whose lease passes through the property tax. So hopefully in November 2022 another attempt can be made that addresses the political shortcomings.
Proposition 19 (which eliminated tax breaks for inherited investment property in exchange for increased tax portability for the elderly) only barely passed 51%-49%, and that was after it received overwhelming support from the legislature, and a $45 million advertising campaign from the California Association of Realtors that some people criticized for only highlighting the goodies for old people and not the costs for inheritors.
No one is attempting a full repeal of Proposition 13 including residential property.
It could also be attacked judicially; see this episode of the Henry George Program for a discussion of Nordlinger v Hahn and whether different legal arguments could be tried (e.g. does Proposition 13 impinge on the American freedom to migrate under the US Constitution?) http://seethecat.org/ep/2017-07-11.html
The way to have a shot would be to have a ballot which simultaneously gets rid of Prop 13 property tax caps (and increases property taxes) while capping income tax. If you are going to increase property taxes then people are going to want to see corresponding decreases in income tax.
I believe it could be revisited on the grounds that Prop 13 primarily benefits white families (makes sense -- they were the only ones buying property 40 years ago).
There is now good data on the racial disparities in our current tax law and with enough money I think another lawsuit has a chance.
You're absolutely right: it's a massive transfer of wealth from the young, productive class to older people and to commercial landlords. But it can't be changed: it's the "third rail" of California tax policy.
Prop 13 doesn't allow taxes to grow at a rate commensurate with infrastructure, which is why so many counties in California are teaching out of "temporary classrooms" installed in the 70's and 80's, except for the wealthy counties. For example: Folsom has a multi-million dollar highschool, but south sac has Luther Burbank, with aforementioned trailers.
Another problem is that many California counties subsidized suburban sprawl by not charging for utility hookups (like sewers). This put them in debt which caused them to encourage sprawl to balance the books, and some day someone will get left holding the bag, as is happening now.
California catered to the wealthy for decades and now they are having to pay the piper, so to speak.
This is what happens when you bend over backward for the super rich. I say good riddance, maybe California's taxation policies will recover to something more equitable without the 0.1%ers fucking it all up.... Like lowering income tax and repealing prop 13.
Yes, it both drives home prices up and robs the state of taxes. It would also devastate many people already invested if it went away overnight; there's not really an easy solution to fixing it.
Repeal it ASAP for commercial properties and rental properties (even if SFH).
For single-family, owner-occupied housing, remove Prop 13 provisions for new sales, but grandfather in all current owners until their death or 20 years, whichever is sooner. After which their assessed values are gradually (say over 5 years) allowed to rise to the fair market value.
Force a reassessment upon the property being inherited, and remove Prop 13 protections from it. Right now, there's no reassessment if a child or grandchild inherits the property.
Eventually all grandfathered owners will die off, sell and leave, or start paying taxes based on the fair market value of their property.
There's also the approach of allowing property taxes to be accrued as liens on the property owned by the government, to be paid on the death of the owner or the sale of the property. This ensures that retired people are protected from paying high property taxes, as was originally intended, while ensuring that there's no actual tax break, just a deferment.
I think it's probably overstated, California isn't the only place that's seen urban areas with a lot of high-paying jobs + a lot of property value growth in the last few decades.
It probably means prices are a bit higher than they could be, and people have stayed in their current property longer than they might've, but as a dominant factor? It's a lazy explanation since expensive city property is a problem elsewhere in the US and internationally too.
That continued price growth also tells you that "exodus" is a misleading oversimplification, since it means people are still buying. It wouldn't be too expensive for the people leaving if there weren't richer people buying!
(Even in a prop-13-less CA, the additional people selling their current properties to buy new CA properties instead would be adding to both the buyer pool and seller pool, it's not like there'd be an increase in inventory without an increase in buyers. So price effects seem potentially weak?)
I think he's pretty tired of being used as a punching bag by various elected representatives.
He's not a perfect person by any stretch but he's been a net benefit and gain for CA, the US, and maybe the world?
The guy constantly gets called out for his twitter shitposting and people think he's some evil overlord... these same folks don't seem to care at all when their elected reps sell them out w.r.t housing, development, healthcare.
FWIW, several youtube celebrities have also spoken about having moved out - or expressed serious interest in moving out - of CA. Most have deliberately stated that taxes are a major reason, but they also cite increase in homelessness (which has become particularly bad in LA and SF) and related safety concerns as factors (especially considering how said high taxes are supposed to go towards fixing these issues).
The challenge is if you need to work in tech and eventually need to commute daily/weekly to headquarters. You'll need to be within 30 minutes of Austin if you want to be in new tech (Apple, Google) or 30 minutes of Dallas/Houston if you are okay with legacy tech (HP, IBM). And you'll want to be in a good school district with like minded high income folks with restaurants options.
You'll likely be paying close at best the equivalent of Silicon Valley housing.
Property Tax rates are higher in Texas. But there is no major city in California near a job center where I am able to get a nice move in ready home for 250k. A comparable home to that house that is 250k in California will be paying more in property taxes annually.
I think as long as you have enough acreage you can qualify. Texas privileges wealth so I imagine he can gain the privilege if it's limited as you've described.
The percentage of someone's income that they spend on property/land probably goes down as their income goes up. For someone like Elon Musk, the lower tax rate is probably more enticing than the lower property/land costs.
If you want to do things, it is easier in Texas. That's a general statement, and I mean it generally. It isn't just taxes. There is friction on everything you try to do in California. Life is easier and happier without it.
People aren’t “fleeing” California per se, but the long-term trend across the board is people migrating to the sunbelt. California will probably lose House seats in this decade’s reapportionment. This trend has been going on for a very long time—and it’s in part why California itself happened in the first place. Bell Labs was in Manhattan and New Jersey. When Silicon Valley arose, California was a red state with low taxes, low regulation, and cheap land where you could build semiconductor factories easily. Virginia was the same way—the Dulles Tech corridor was farmland when I was growing up.
Lord you bought this story hook line and sinker...
> But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here. I like that...
You hear this a lot lately from tech bros. It's hilarious considering how many things are illegal in Texas. Ya you can buy an assault rifle, but its illegal to buy hard liquor on Sunday. Have you ever looked at their gerrymandering? Did you know during the 2016 election they didn't allow mail in ballots?
Hispanics are set to become the largest racial demographic soon. ~13% of the population is black.
Houston is one of the, if not the depending on the report, racially diverse cities in the country. It's a bit self segregated geographically, but is pretty impressive and there is a lot of culture to be found. Large Asian community with substantial communities from countries that don't really exist elsewhere in the state.
The state is also more or less purple outside the voting booth. Major metro areas have higher concentrations of liberals. Etc etc.
Yes the like most urban areas they trend left and more ethnically diverse. Thus Texas is also trending left. I'm not sure what your point is.
Is your point that change is coming for Texas? I totally agree with that, but I think it's going to be a longer and harder fight than most think. From my experience a lot of the white population there are some of the worse bigots I've ever met.
My point was it's not a very free state, lol there are just certain specific things allowed. And it has low taxes so it's great if you're already rich and successful.
I think the strategy is to get rich in California then leave when your are financially secure. Very few software jobs in Texas have salaries in the 300-500k region.
Having grown up gay in North Texas and then moved to California for college, I strenuously object to your assertion that "folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here." It's truly leaps and bounds more accepting for LGBT people in California than in North Texas.
Depends where in Texas and where in California no? If you grew up outside Bakersfield and then moved to Austin for college would the reverse not also be true?
I moved from North Dallas to South Bay, so I think it's actually a pretty apples-to-apples comparison: both places are basically semi-dense suburbs just outside the urban core, with lots of jobs.
Thanks for sharing, sounds like a reasonable comparison. I’m really sorry to hear that by the way. I spent a year in a suburb outside of Houston and also felt it was far less tolerant than Palo Alto / MTV / Cupertino was, but wasn’t sure if it was a fair comparison for me to make given the differences between the two (the suburb of Houston I was in was an hour outside of the outer loop and had very few jobs and very little diversity, whereas the suburbs making up the Bay Area all felt a bit like one continuous city to me, with a large population and the university right next to them). I haven’t spent any time near Dallas either though, thanks for that perspective.
My local south Bay Area school district had a large drop in enrollment for the 2019-20 school year. The district administrators track where students go based on record transfer requests and they told me the most popular out-of-state destination was Texas.
Lived there for 4 years, your last couple of sentences made me laugh. People would drop racist statements in conversation as if it was normal, and I guess it was for most people, but not for me, coming for Portland and now living in LA.
Its just part of his naturalization package. Are you really American if you didn't non-consensually penetrate California's electrical grid and resources before doing an energy play in Texas?
> But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here.
I think you're talking about Dallas/Houston/Austin vs everything else. I actually wouldn't necessarily call that diverse, it's in fact polarizing, but that's okay.
At the end of the day, no one in Texas really cares because the economy is strong and people's assets are going up. Until that stops (and it will eventually, like California) then thats where the divisiveness is going to be a problem.
California has a ton of people moving here. That means there'll be some combination of population growth and people moving out. Of all my friends in SF, there are only five of us from here. When many of them move back out, it sounds like an exodus, but it's really just circulation.
Unless you are referring to specifically the covid moves, which are high cost of living minus geography mattering. It's anyone's guess whether it'll continue or reverse or what after covid.
^ an Austin tradition typically reserved for the yearly SXSW festival, when the city is flooded with tourists during a time that has nicer-than-usual weather. It is also traditional to develop a cruel sense of joy when people begin complaining about how hot it is in early July, as you tell them it is about to get, somehow, _much_ hotter.
Houston in August is pretty much just misery. That said, we're pretty wimpy in the 40s and acting like it's the ice apocalypse when it's 30, so we earn similar ridicule.
I moved from the Bay Area to Houston in the summer. Having grown up in the bay I assumed that it would cool down at night like it does in California. I was wrong.
"Nothing works in California; it is “failed state” tier. It is also a preview of the national dystopia to come if California isn’t sawed off and left to drift off to sea in a Calexit. It is either that, give it back to Mexico, or a war of extermination -nothing less will save us from the nightmarish California Dream. The Bay Area has nice weather, and some interesting people live there out of what I assume is inertia and provincialism, but there is no worse place to live in North America today. It’s a physical paradise made into dystopian hellscape by the people who live in it."
This is completely unhinged (and bigoted) fantasy. I have lived in multiple places around the US and liked many of them. California works pretty well, actually. It is not remotely like the USSR circa 1985.
It does overtax and underdeliver. But the federal government does that on a much grander scale.
The Bay Area and LA are overcrowded. There are other places to live in California! Some with much more natural beauty.
I think if you look for trends among the people fleeing, that might be a clue. It is mostly libertarian, or right-wing egos: Ben Shapiro, Elon Musk, Alan Karp (Palantir) were the three mentioned in an Axios article today.
There was similarly a little mini-trend of rich people making a big show of renouncing their US citizenship in the Obama years, with probably a 10:1 ratio of articles to people who actually did it.
I know plenty of diverse liberals (the conservatives already fled) who are moving outside CA due to tax reasons and housing reasons. These are not rich people but a range of professionals in a handful of salary brackets.
So it's not just Elon. It's those who have the opportunity to do so where it does not impact their lifestyle significantly.
This may be glib, but: snowflakes who can't handle or else absolve themselves of the responsibility of taking care of the community they inhabit don't generally get much support from said community.
Indeed and people leaving LA or SF because of the homelessness problem are going to have a serious wakeup call when they get to Austin. It's certainly not as bad as it is in CA but there are tent cities under countless overpasses and downtown has a large amount of homeless.
>it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here.
Lol. A couple weeks ago, there was footage of a bunch of Trump supporters in trucks boxing in a Biden campaign box on I-35 and trying to run it off the road.
This isn't a state where people with differing political opinions can coexist harmoniously.
My hypothesis: it's a direct reaction to so many media and entertainment business being based in California, making it appear from the outside like Californians are especially smug about their state.
From an outsiders perspective, even in HN there have been people saying that if you didn’t like SF then you are just not enough sophisticated nor enough out doors to appreciate it so I can definitely understand where the smugness talk is coming from. But I think it’s a necessary smugness if that makes sense, if you want talent to gather to a specific place you have to be ruthless in marketing for that place, but of course that will create a backlash when people actually visit.
> And before you bash Texas, its not perfect. But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here. I like that...
Interesting point.
It reminded me that in his past he has also left South Africa, and yet South Africa could also be described pretty accurately as "its not perfect. But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here."
Now I'm fairly certain based on his interviews that the reason he "left South Africa" was more to do with him wanting to move to the US since it increased the odds of success of his entrepreneurial dreams.
So I suspect his move to Texas might be along similar lines?
> I suspect something must be going on for several high profile folks moving out.
Interesting question you raise there.
If that were indeed true, what would you guess might be the cause?
I'd guess it might have to do with freedom of some kind.
I've met quite a few people who moved out of South Africa to the US and UK, and the reason I was always given was something to do with the common advice being to not stop your car at night or at remote intersections lest you get carjacked or worse.
Of course, South Africa (and the surrounding countries, and quite frankly much of Africa below the Sahara that I have visited) is gorgeous and unparalleled in almost all aspects.
If it wasn't for the lack of a high trust society, I would actually look into moving to Cape Town myself.
If you can afford it, perhaps consider purchasing a small beach-front studio apartment along the Atlantic Seaboard of Cape Town.
Then should South Africa evolve into a high trust society you'd feel comfortable living in, go spend a few months in Cape Town during its spring/summer (October to March) and check out the local beaches and mountains.
Crime was always going to be significant in South Africa when you have such a large gap between the rich and the poor.
You have massive slums of people with no hope or future less than a 100 miles/kms away from the billion dollar French Riviera esque lifestyles of Camps Bay.
And with so many refugees coming in from the rest of Africa it almost seems like an unsolvable problem.
In South Africa you the most gorgeous landscapes that are freely accessible public landscapes on everyone's doorstep - irrespective of their financial position in the steadily recovering historically unequal society.
Yeah, there will continue to be crime until balance is had, but there are plenty SaaS opportunities, and the forested cliff-side hiking trails ending in tranquil beaches are an awesome way to experience nature.
Refugees are welcome in South Africa. The media has its paws in everything.
Texas is huge. It’s hard to make any sort of generalization. But there are homeless camps in particular places in cities if you go looking; with the weather, it’d be surprising if there weren’t. But from what I understand it’s still not as bad as some places in SF/LA.
All I come in contact with, living in middle income suburbs, is panhandlers at intersections.
Does anywhere not? It was visible when I lived in Missouri. It was in Illinois. It was visiting Baltimore, Atlanta, LA, the Bay, Buffalo, Cincinatti, Flint, Indianapolis, Topeka, OKC, Denver, Little Rock, Arlington, Milwaukee, Nashville, Memphis, Toledo, Sioux City, Davenport, and Louisville.
Here in Houston there are $500 per month apartments and $25,000,000 estates within the same city limits, yeah. There are some homeless folks, but not like Sacramento or San Francisco. Some people who work make less than $8 per hour right now. Other people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in just insurance premiums.
I fail to see the devastating difference in Texas when cities in California are adding to their own homeless populations by refusing to allow more housing to be built. Austin is a little more strict than here, but in Houston there are practically no zoning laws.
California is actively looking for ways to extract more money from Elon.
It likely posed an appreciable risk to his business ventures that CA at some point will try to tax unrecognized capital gains, which would require him to liquidate shares to pay the tax. Basically akin to a hostile government takeover.
If CA were to aggressively pursue such a policy, they would likely go after anyone they perceived as fleeing just ahead of it.
In a situation like that, best to cut ties from the state as much as possible as soon as possible. This is why he had to sell all his CA assets.
Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget rather than adjust their policy to match what they can afford.
The same has been happening in New Jersey with its insane taxes that don't really go to pay for services anymore and have diverted from transportation & infrastructure projects for decades now to bail out their severely underfunded pension funds...where the pensioners have almost entirely moved out of New Jersey to avoid the same taxes.
There's a point where what you get out is not worth what you put in. I don't blame Musk at all for doing what's best for himself, his company and (probably) his employees.
>Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget rather than adjust their policy to match what they can afford.
You mean the budget that included tax abatement and subsidies for his factories and the people who buy his cars?
You mean abatements & subsidies required to push "clean" vehicle policies that are among the most aggressive in the world?
Without Tesla & CA's policies, auto electrification would be at least a decade behind what it is today... Being at the forefront of environmental policy has real costs.
Why? The purpose of those subsidies is to benefit all of us. Not to benefit Elon Musk. He's just the only one who stepped up to solve the problems for us.
California would've had to make that responsibility known up front. They chose not to do that.
And California directly benefitted from the money they spent. That benefit is electric vehicles in the hands of its population, which improves the state's pollution levels long-term.
Electric cars & clean tech generally have made leaps and bounds because consumers want it. Climate agreements help somewhat, but they're a lagging indicator of the trend.
Paris climate targets will have done far more to push EV forward than Tesla/CA.
Most governments e.g EU, UK, China all looking to curtail/ban ICE cars within the next few decades. And of course this has resulted in car manufacturers rapidly pushing EV cars.
It's impossible to say what would have happened in a different timeline, but Tesla made electric cars cool. Yes, there were EVs before, they were half-assed token efforts by the big automakers to pretend that they were trying. Tesla forced them to be competitive.
Are you talking about the same EU regulators that barely gave volkswagen a slap in the wrist for dieselgate?
EU regulations had approximately zero impact on Tesla's formative years -- and Tesla was the first auto manufacturer to meaningfully commit long-term (and not lip service) to EVs. VW and others are still today talking about how they're playing catch-up.
> Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget
They certainly waste money but... they also make a lot of it... why is the budget failing? This is a common refrain I hear but I've never really understood it.
There is something incredibly ironic about that, unfunded pension liabilities for pensioners who no longer reside in the locale that gave them their pension.
Well, pensions are taxable just like regular income. Minus some exclusions usually. People are just trying to extend their retirement as far as possible.
It might just be that income tax isn't the best/fairest tax.
It currently looks like CA will face a 54B budget deficit for 2020 [0], and "could see" a "one-time surplus" of $26B for 2021 [1,2], followed by projected deficits in 2022-25 [2].
California budgets from mid year. So 2020-2021 and that is projected to have a $26b surplus. There is projected deficits beyond that, but not sure anyone can say for certainty how fast the economy will recover
Texas is a no income tax, but moderately high property tax state. That's good when you are making money, but can be hard when you retire: low income, high tax on your house.
It also disproportionately impacts mid-tier earners. Ie, those who earn enough to own their home, but still have it make up a significant portion of their net worth.
Someone making 100k/year, and making 1M/year, both living in 400k houses (not uncommon in the Austin area), will be paying the dollar-amount in tax.
Ie, a high property tax and low income tax is very regressive.
Within the city currently I believe 400k is actually on the low end.
Originally I wrote 500k, but changed it to avoid "no one should be complaining if they life in a half a million dollar home, that can buy so much in Ohio!!" type comments.
I bought a house this year for $250k in 78744. Plenty others near that price range are available, but it is in a Mexican neighborhood with bad schools.
Failing budget? I get that it's super popular right-wing talking point but it just hasn't been true for years. Prior to COVID (which has decimated state budgets Red and Blue) California had a huge surplus and massive rainy-day fund.
Did you miss the part where there's been a massive pandemic and sky-high unemployment for the past year?
California had the nation's healthiest budget prior to the pandemic, with the highest per-capita surplus, largest rainy day fund.
It's true that California relies heavily on income taxes, which include capital gains, both of which are much more strongly impacted by the business cycle than states primarily funded by property taxes. You can make an argument about that, but California's budget was extremely healthy prior to the pandemic.
Where do you expect California to get the money for $1T in unfunded pension liabilities? California's budget is "healthy" only for as long as they ignore their long-term liabilities.
California's "healthy" finances was a lie that the state told you in order to have a hope of meeting future obligations. The legislation they keep trying to pass where they're going to chase after money of people leaving the state shows you the true picture. They wouldn't have a need for such games otherwise.
First of all, it's not 1T. The figure cited in that article includes not just unfunded pension liabilities, but all state and local debt. We're talking about California's State finances here, so the figure you're citing is absurd on its face.
I don't want to sugar coat the unfunded pension liabilities, but they are much smaller than you suggest. The official figure for the unfunded liability for CalPERS is about $140 billion and about $100 billion for CalSTRS.
Importantly, this is over a 30 year horizon. And the more we pay now, the less we pay later. Newsom's 2019 budget included $11 billion in pension liability payments. Even if you assume CalPERS and CalSTRS investments return worse than the 7% (or 6.1%) that they calculate, that's still in the ballpark of what is needed to pay the liability.
While this is a big deal, the funding levels in the 2019 budget are sufficient to pay the entire liability.
The numbers are only small on an actuarial basis which assumes positive things about the future like: the number of years employees are likely to keep working, the rate at which salaries are expected to increase, the rate of return on plan assets, the discount rate on future benefits.
When conditions are bad, you have to switch to the market basis.
And yes, sorry, technically I did lump in other unfunded liabilities (like bonds) in my calculation, but the number does indeed top $1T and California does its best to ignore these liabilities in their budgeting.
The number only reaches $1 trillion when you're talking about the entirety of pension liabilities, not unfunded liabilities. The entire liability is $1.05 trillion.
To put this in perspective, even if you assume zero investment returns, that works out to $35 billion/year over 30 years. The California 2019 budget was $215 billion.
Pension liabilities are a BFD, but I don't think it's fair to say the state is ignoring it. The state is actively pre-paying its obligations.
is this liability growing over the years or shrinking? Why do you expect that it's going to shrink at least 35 billion/year over the next 30 years? At some point every debt has either to be paid by the debtor or to be "forgiven" at the expense of someone else's livelihood/savings.
I don't think the liabilities are going to shrink on their own, I'm just trying to put the total cost in perspective.
You see a lot of people talk about the unfunded pension liabilities in apocalyptic terms. And when you hear figures in the hundreds of billions, or trillions of dollars, it sounds insurmountable. It sounds like a bomb waiting to go off that no one is dealing with.
But it isn't. The State is currently over-paying its required contributions. The State is not ignoring the problem. This thread spawned out of the assertion that California's budget is a mess. It started with a discussion of the 2020 budget deficit, and then spiraled into whether the pre-pandemic budget was a fiction which ignores public pensions. My assertion is that the budget was not ignoring the problem, the 2019 budget was funding pension liabilities at a level sufficient to dig out from the hole we are in over the next three decades.
It's also important to point out that the State of California is not the only entity required to fund the shortfall in CalPERS and CalSTRS. The State's liability in CalPERS is about $60 billion. The remaining $70 billion is owed by localities and other special districts.
None of this is meant to claim that the problem is not real. California is going to have to pay an awful lot of money for the next several decades. But that is an awfully long time horizon, with room for an awful lot of economic growth, and if we continue to prudently make payments towards the liabilities each year, it's not apocalyptic at all.
Importantly, the liabilities are owed over a long time horizon, and they don't scale with economic growth, or population growth. They are static. Meanwhile, in the past 30 years, California's real GDP has increased by a bit over 100%. Thirty years from now, it's entirely possible we'll have 2x the 2020 dollars available to pay the liability.
Pension liabilities are just a right wing talking point, which shifted from "budget deficits" when California started running huge surpluses and rainy day budgets
Pension liabilities and the government mismanagement surrounding the fund was a claim charged at the State of New Jersey from the left while Republican Governors Christine Todd Whitman and Donald DiFrancesco ran the state.
Then again with Jim McGreevey (Democrat) from the right.
It's a very bipartisan issue and both parties have fucked it all to hell.
Yes, most places in the country have a massive deficit this year because states are spending money to protect their citizens and stimulate the economy. So this year is an odd year for most states... don't try and single out California as this bad actor that can't manage its finances. That narrative is misleading.
California has historically had budget problems for decades and resolved things 8 years ago through increased taxes. It also increased taxes by about $2B this year.
As recently as 2017, the state miscalculated the costs of Medi-Cal and had a 1.6B deficit for the year.
The argument that I'm framing is that the state has to continuously dig further into its citizens pockets in order to fund its appetite for spending. It's entirely true.
Listen, CA is a state of big numbers - big deficits and big surplus's (Surplus of $9B in 2018, $7B in 2019). It's a function of being the 5th largest economy of the world Gross State Produce ($3.2 Trillion) larger than India and the UK. It has raised taxes, but mostly in a progressive way targeted at high income earners. At lot of marginal tax revenue comes from IPOs and equity sales. It has intrinsic problems and some pretty bad policies that linger to this day (impacts from prop 13 for example). It's still the best state to live in, has great opportunity for many people and tries to implement long term policies benefitting is citizens and is a global leader.
> It's still the best state to live in, has great opportunity for many people and tries to implement long term policies benefitting is citizens and is a global leader.
This is all good, until we put another element into the equation. How about stability of the system? It turns out it's predicated on your current- and future- (especially future) citizens' productiveness and willingness to cope with ever growing appetites of the state government. It's been accumulating debt since 1990s, and all the growth that you attribute with a "success" tag is predicated on the expectation that the future generations will figure the solution to the ever growing debt problem. What happens in fact is that the government is stealing the future from the generations to come - it's they who will have to pay for the debt of the current government. And they may just rightfully refuse to do it by moving elsewhere.
Listen, the debt problem is still a debt problem that isn't fixed in one year and definitely not this year or the next couple. We aren't near a tipping point on debt so out of all our problems right now that one is sitting very low at the bottom. There are many lenders standing quite happily to provide debt to California for ultra cheap rates.
We aren't getting out of this pandemic financial mess through cutting spending. Literally no republican or democrat is pitching that solution - do you have your own economic crystal ball to read the future? Go look to how that worked out for the austerity measure put in play in the EU or during the great depression.
As well right now debt is ultra cheap so any borrowed money to cover downtime when people can't work to protect their health is likely going to have upside in generation of jobs, general well being and future revenue.
If you want to go take that generational wealth tax fight argument probably better to start with the federal government instead of wagging your finger at California.
And in terms of stability of the system that is a much larger macro economic question. There is a great amount of debate in the academic community on how much debt countries can sustainably support especially with Modern Monetary Theory getting traction. I don't think MMT is grounded in its origins but it has pointed to a greater sustainability of deficit on our countries balance sheet as well as us getting to a higher level of employment in our population than we had previously though.
> Yes, most places in the country have a massive deficit this year because states are spending money to protect their citizens and stimulate the economy.
This is Stockholm syndrome.
Are citizens being protected? Because last I checked, the "smart" people have largely outlawed working, destroyed any semblance of normal life, the average person is $5k behind on rent, and all the old people died.
The federal government has all but given up pretending money is a finite resource. Likewise states are much the same. There really is no such thing as fiscal discipline nowadays.
You can't stimulate an economy if no one is allowed to work besides the already well-off that can work from home.
It's just class war under the guise of public health.
California is a geographically large state, but the bulk of the population lives in dense coastal areas. Given that, you'd expect California to have a very high death rate from Covid. But it's actually ranked 38th on a per capita basis (where higher is better), right behind West Virginia.
California has about half the deaths per capita as Florida does, another warm climate, fairly dense large state. It has a quarter of the deaths per capita as New Jersey, the densest state.
San Francisco has one of the lowest rates of any city in the country, despite being the nation's second most dense city.
Agreed - I think one of the things most depressing about the misinformation narrative from the current govt and the far right narrative is that they are hurting their own voting base the most. In that rural counties that should have the lowest rates of transmission and mortality because of the amount of space are actually getting some of the worst outcomes per capita.
All of it much more manageable and probably many fewer businesses would have had to have been closed, jobs lost, people dying if we just adopted some straightforward measures at the beginning. Super depressing.
> California has about half the deaths per capita as Florida does, another warm climate, fairly dense large state.
That's not a fair comparison!
Florida's age demographic skews elderly because it's an extremely popular retirement destination for folks living along the eastern seaboard.
This census website is a little out of date [1], but it has good proportional data:
* California 62 years and over = 4,253,854 (12.6% total population)
* California 65 years and over = 3,595,658 (10.6%)
* Florida 62 years and over = 3,245,806 (20.3% total population)
* Florida 65 years and over = 2,807,597 (17.6%)
Florida is a retirement home. The reason it has double the deaths is because it has double the old people. That counts for a lot when age is the largest risk factor.
It's a long game guys, come on. It's not this year's budget or next years -- it's a multi year cycle. The stress off our health care system as a result of lockdowns and the lives saved is enormous. If California adopted a libertarian approach to the pandemic it would be in a step change of pain compared to where it is. I do get the sense that right now I am just feeding the trolls - it's a bad feeling.
> The stress off our health care system as a result of lockdowns and the lives saved is enormous.
This is all supposition that says nothing about the horrific costs.
You could be right, but this won’t be apparent for a while and it’d be nice if people at least had the humility to admit they’re making a bet and forcing a plan on people that will destroy their livelihoods.
What makes this particularly offensive is that the authorities have little accountability and skin in the game. The “libertarian” approach at least respects the dignity of people to assess risks they’re willing to take and assume the responsibility for the costs of the measures they take.
I don't think any authorities have taken these decisions flippantly and if you have seen the amount of hate fired specifically towards them and their families I challenge your assumption that they have no skin in the game.
Is it a well educated bet based on science? Yes. No one is saying it is proven to be successful, no one has had a pandemic or a virus this dangerous replicate itself globally in an incredibly short period of time. This isn't a panacea it's survival mode. We've been in a pretty unknown unprecedented state since February with some pretty bad information coming from the Feds to sow doubt into the equation.
What is your solution given the benefit of hindsight? Go the Texas approach? If you look at death per capita in CA it's highest in the red counties that didn't do any lockdowns and have the lowest population density. Meanwhile the second most dense city in North America (SF) has an incredibly low rate of mortality and infection with some pretty tough measures in place.
> Is it a well educated bet based on science? Yes.
Was it well educated when the surgeon general said don't wear masks?
The takeaway is that practically no one should be feeling sure-footed right now about their understanding of something as complex as the net-effect of a pandemic and counter-measures.
The hubris I see in practically everyone nowadays suggests to me people are more politically devoted to their opinions and defending them.
It is totally possible that lockdown measures will be shown to be marginally effective or net-negative in terms of life-years lost in several years time, factoring in the disruption to everyone's lives, children in particular.
Your gambit is a bit tough to swallow. Saving the lives of people currently and reducing the spread of a virus quickly vs a speculative view that in the long term the pandemic will have a worse out-come factoring in all the costs. Thats a very tough operational decision to make. Though, to be fair, I think we will have a good sense of how that factored out in comparing Texas to California over the next medium to longer term. I don't feel sure footed in the pandemic. I do feel absolutely certain in the science that masks work, vaccines work as do social distancing measures for reducing the spread.
If you are implying that the surgeon general said don't wear masks then yes I would say it was an uneducated statement or alternatively that he was under political duress to appease the president's administration. After all the Surgeon General is a political appointee serving at the whim of the president.
Are there better ways to implement shutdowns? Probably yes. Are those difficult decisions to make? Absolutely. Are they made with imperfect information? Yes.
I'm not politically devoted to my position - what part of my comments have been political?
> Is it a well educated bet based on science? Yes.
I'd like to see that scientific research that proved that it's definitely permissible to continue filmmaking in LA County, while dining outside a small restaurant is an intolerable risk.
I think you are conflating what I am talking about being the general scientific consensus that says that masks, social distance and vaccines work compared to specific local rules on shutdowns.
You are using one locations shutdown rules to make a broad unfounded statement against the broader scientifically proven base of research.
ok, I'd like to see a scientific research that proves that face coverings (not medical face masks within the first couple of hours in a hospital environment, and not n95 masks, but all these various "face coverings" that are mandatory in the majority of places across the nation) that people use on a daily basis, without access to proper washing and cleaning facilities available at hospitals, are indeed effective at preventing the spread of the virus.
> You are using one locations shutdown rules to make a broad unfounded statement against the broader scientifically proven base of research.
Does it mean that in the context of this particular location and this particular ruling, you condemn Newsom and Garcetti and are willing to inform your elected government representatives about it?
Go do your research, I’m not here to do the research that you can’t be bothered to do yourself. And I’m not here to get into a political argument with you about lockdown in LA. You brought both those things up and clearly have an ax to grind. Best of luck sorting it out.
I will spare your time, there's no such a research. I've done my research and I'm just exposing your unsubstantiated broad claims about scientific basis of the lockdown measures introduced by the government figures of that locality, as well as your bias and hypocrisy. If your standard is scientific, you'll have no problem condemning the authors of the initiatives that ruin individuals' lives in the name of "safety proven by science".
My bias and hypocrisy - if that was your goal you have failed. All you have shown is that you have an ax to grind. I haven't talked about lockdown measures at all, only in response to you bringing them up. And at that I haven't even said anything. Like I said before, you have an ax to grind and aren't reading what I am writing.
I will wade in here. Lock down measure do restrict the spread of covid - that I won't refute - and that is scientific in nature and if you are of scientific worth you can't deny that. It's merely physics - if people don't see each other there is no ability to transmit the illness. The debate that you are referring to is whether the severity of the lockdown measures are worth the cost. Thats a political calculation. I haven't waded into that in any of my comments and don't intend now.
> Thats a political calculation. I haven't waded into that in any of my comments and don't intend now.
you literally began this thread by posting under the comment that questions the degree of "responsibility for the costs of the measures they [authorities] take", and you proceeded with defending authorities' actions and stating that they have their skin in the game and that they follow the science. Your comment was about politicians making political decisions and enacting certain rulings regarding the lockdown.
> Lock down measure do restrict the spread of covid - that I won't refute - and that is scientific in nature and if you are of scientific worth you can't deny that.
What lockdown measures are you talking about? Generic lockdown measures or particular measures like enforcing "face coverings"?
> It's merely physics - if people don't see each other there is no ability to transmit the illness.
If people don't see each other, there's still a physical world they interact with. They can still pass stuff around and to each other, like food and clothing, right? Or do you live in a vacuum world of abstractions where no one sees nobody and lies still like a rock?
Are you trying to refute physics of breathing? Most of the virus spreads by air. The world of physics goods can be accomplished without breathing on other people hence the physical distancing. What world are you living in?
Yes the restrictions work at reducing spread. Literally all of them do reduce the spread of the virus. The question is the efficacy vs the cost not whether they reduce the spread of the virus.
> Paying for it now with future growth, health and improved revenues coming our way.
If the majority of the people dying are at the end of their lives (or at least at the end of their working lives), doesn't that mean we're shutting down society with no return in the future?
Healthy immune systems seem to be able to handle the coronavirus fine. That's the science.
You can't get revenues (or future health/growth) from the dead.
I don't mean this in a heartless way, but if we're going to say we all believe in science, you can't claim future benefits where there are none.
Are you implying that older people don't have value? They teach the younger generations, they work and produce value, they help raise families and communities. I don't know what kind of jaded economic math you are trying to conjure.
The thought that we could let our older and at risk population get decimated because we didn't think they had economic value is a crass oversimplification and belies a lack of understanding of how our systems work.
> Are you implying that older people don't have value?
No I was explaining the contradiction that you're saying there's some large future benefits from locking everyone inside and essentially halting public life to protect people who are defined by their very much bounded future.
And we've essentially failed to protect the elderly even with lockdowns.
> don't try and single out California as this bad actor that can't manage its finances
California's 2020 budget shortfall is projected at $54 billion.[1] Florida's 2020 budget shortfall is projected at $2.7 billion[2]. In other words, on a per-capita basis, California has ten times the shortfall as Florida.
The far-left managed to create an "amazing" (and terrifying) perspective.
If you're a leftist but not as leftist as them, you're a centrist, maybe even center-right which makes everybody on the right to be automatically far-right.
It's not a purity test. To be more clear, the New York Times is left for the media, but (like our entire government-corporate-media complex) center-right of public opinion.
They beat the drums of war for Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as every other imperialist act of war that the US dreams up, breathlessly reports the opinions of the NSA, CIA, and FBI as fact, and generally shills for the corporate-backed opinions of both political parties.
Poll after poll after poll shows these positions to be out of touch with the average American.
The fact that the NYTimes sides more with rich, hypercorporate big-govt Dems more than rich, hypercorporate big-govt Republicans is all part of the charade of choice between the two sides.
Keep the elites outside as they don't fit into the left-right political spectrum. They side with an elite that gets its power from the left, which is turning very radical.
The left wants to dismember corporate power and redistribute wealth, and there are those who want to defund law enforcement and scale back the military, all of which are actual power structures that elites depend upon. The culturally leftist policies that elites adopt are not where they derive their power from.
> very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico.
Those are not very left-wing sources.
Edit: to the downvoters, this is objectively true. In actual leftist media NYT is considered conservative. The reality is that they are mostly mainstream.
It's always amazing when I talk to conservatives about california how they know so many little negative details about my state. A lot of times I'll ask them about the budget of their own state and they won't have any idea.
> very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico.
Not disagreeing with your overall claim that CA does in fact have budget problems, but citing the NYT and Politico as "very left-wing" is a pretty hilarious example of just how far right "center" American thinking has gone.
NYT is a classic example of a centrist/liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left.
edit: If you think "liberals" are the same as the "left" you are about as confused as someone who thinks that JavaScript is the same as Java.
You are making the gp point. Democratic party is a centrist-liberal party. Not a leftist party. They are a publicly trades corporation owned by wealthy individuals.
They are not a worker co-op, they are not a mutual aid-organization, they are not seeking to overthrow the capital class, they are not socialist, maoist, communist, anarchist, etc. therefore they are not left.
Many, many billionaires live, have lived, and thrive in CA - probably more than any place in the world. In fact, I'd guess that more billionaires have made their fortunes in CA than any other place.
The grievance rhetoric has gone too far (and had awhile ago) when it's used by billionaires.
There is also strong reactionary political rhetoric here, the premise that taxes on wealthy people are nearly criminal theft, and nobody would want to live someplace where they democratically invest in their community (i.e., pay taxes). There's also the economic assumption that taxes, whatever their current level, are always too high; AFAIK, taxes on wealthy people are at historic lows.
> nobody would want to live someplace where they democratically invest in their community (i.e., pay taxes)
I don't think anybody has a problem with investing in their community, but when there's no return on an investment you cut your losses and move on.
Tent cities, rolling blackouts, no healthcare, no public transportation. What are you getting for the taxes?
I moved to Hong Kong this year. Public health care, amazing public transportation, no tent cities[1], and the top tax rate is 17%. It's not perfect, but this idea that the solution to every societal problem is just to pay more and more taxes is nonsense.
California has the highest taxes in the country.
If the quality of life there is worse than in states with lower taxes, then it's time to start questioning how that tax money is spent, not shovel more of it into a black hole that isn't doing anything.
[1] I won't say there's no homeless, because I don't know that for sure, but there are hardly any panhandlers. I know there is subsidized housing available, but I hear the wait list is long. Whatever they're doing, there's hardly any homeless on the streets.
Not discrediting your point, it's just that I'm not sure HK is a great point of comparison. How many people live in a room the size of a narrow walk-in closet? They have a massive, massive real estate problem in Hong Kong -- there is none left where people want to live.
It's true, real estate is expensive here, and apartments are small. I'm sure most of the people living in tents in California would be happy to have an apartment, though, even one the size of a walk-in closet. Is it better to have small apartments or thousands of homeless people living on the streets?
I am speaking for myself here, but the way I see it, the issue is more the way in which taxation is exercised than the taxation itself.
If I was in Elon's seat, I personally wouldn't mind paying 20 or 30% of my income in taxes. But vesting shares should not qualify as income. What should qualify as income is me selling those shares.
In other words, If I am awarded 1B$ in shares that I have no plan on selling short term, I still have to liquidate 20-30% of those shares just to pay taxes, which may have a pretty high negative impact in term of voting rights.
Why could the taxation not occur when I am selling instead?
> But vesting shares should not qualify as income. What should qualify as income is me selling those shares
I believe that the logic here is the same reason AMT was introduced in the past.
I vest $1M in shares. I get a loan against those shares for 500k. I now have 500k in cash, that I have paid no taxes on. Someone will definitely give me that loan because _worst case_ I have to sell the underlying shares, pay tax, and still pay back the loan. When that loan is due? Refinance against the same shares that I still haven't sold.
If you have a lot of assets, you can always get a loan against those assets. You can kick the can down the road long enough to, effectively, never pay taxes. Or you just kick it long enough for some sort of "tax holiday".
Real estate lets you do this with refinances and 1031 exchanges all the way until you die (at which point the cost basis resets, and your heirs will most likely pay no tax).
> Many, many billionaires live, have lived, and thrive in CA
That's probably owing to the fact that California's economy is just that large. We're the 5th largest economy in the world.. there's bound to be a higher number of billionaires here.
> The grievance rhetoric has gone too far
I live here, and I disagree. The civil situation in California has done nothing but slowly get worse for the past 3 years, and it has obviously started accelerating in the last 9 months.
> the premise that taxes on wealthy people are nearly criminal theft
That may be the argument.. it may be that for our high taxes in CA, we've been seeing less of it's impact in this state recently. I also have even been wondering if it's still "worth it" to live in CA over the past few months.
> AFAIK, taxes on wealthy people are at historic lows.
Federal personal and business income taxes are. State taxes are not. California in particular is not. Sales taxes are the highest in the nation, and personal income taxes are as well. The state spent the last 8 years going from running a few million in deficit to having several billion in surplus.
Unfortunately, due to corona, that surplus is entirely wiped out and now we're facing several billion in deficit again.
Ultra-wealthy people are over-represented in California compared to the rest of the USA. 100 of the Forbes top 400 are in CA [1], but the state only has about ~12% of the US population [2], and accounts for ~15% of the US GDP.
Just "wealthy" people? The taxes I paid when I made mid 6 figures were criminally high and they have only gotten slightly better with my shift to long term capital gains.
California subsidized every Tesla sold. I'm not complaining about it but it should be on record that California helped to give Tesla a boost. It was definitely the right move.
I can't think of another state in this country where Tesla would have thrived nearly as well as California. Do you think Tesla would have done well in Texas back in 2003? All those oil guzzlers would have laughed Elon Musk out of the state.
Technically that was an "electric car" subsidy, not a Tesla subsidy. But I am pretty sure the lion share of those 200,000 cars were Teslas judging by whose driving in the carpool lane with single occupancy, so it's probably fair to say it was a de facto Tesla subsidy. But do we really blame Tesla for other manufacturers not being able to take advantage? That seems a bit unfair too.
Yeah, a bit of a free rider problem where California has now paid to bootstrap the US electric car industry, to the whole country's benefit, and won't get quite the tax payment rewards for their investment that they are due. Just lots of smug scorn from Elon and the commenters here.
They'll still get sales taxes, corp taxes, and income taxes from people working at those companies... it's not a "free rider" problem - CA made an investment and it's paying off...
I don’t know about this, but California law makers were discussing an asset tax at one point. The discussed law would have worked across state lines for up to 10 years to catch rich people who leave state lines. Just the discussion of such a law probably spooked the ultra rich. More details: https://weaver.com/blog/california-proposed-wealth-tax-impac...
It's questionable whether such a law is actually enforceable, and I'd hope it wouldn't hold up in court. That said, I can't blame Musk et al. for being worried by it.
Being unenforceable doesn't stop a state from passing it (see AB5 recently with most industries getting exceptions). And once it passes, it posses serious business risk to operate in that state.
I think SALT deduction is an overlooked factor. It is unlikely that CA taxes or will tax capital gain more than the amount taxed by federal government. Before the 2017 tax act from, CA residents could have unlimited deduction on their state tax. This means that Musk would pay the same amount of total taxes whether he lived in CA or Texas or almost anywhere in the US.
Its funny to see how effective the PR of Musk is!
Tesla benefited the most from california's policies and budget. Now, as tesla scaled and succeeds California is the villain.
Its easy to see that Musk is more worried about the Income tax. Please dont fall for the PR.
And they would have done so if Musk went home to Texas every night from the start. What's the point you're making? It seems like the problem you have is with the folks in Sacramento, not Musk or anyone else.
Let’s say you are a painter, and you paint 20 pictures and sell 10 for 100,000 each. You pay taxes on the 1m you receive. The other 10 painting are sitting in a storage unit. Then at some point in the future someone, one of you previous customers sells their painting in a private sale for 10M. They pay capital gains on $9.9m. Now you as the painter hypothetically have $100M worth of in paintings in your storage unit. Traditionally this net worth is considered unrealized capital gains and is untaxed. It will be taxed when sold.
Replace paintings with ownership of a company (equity) and you should get the idea.
More-dangerously, it is taxing theoretical money that you haven't yet made.
There is no guarantee that the current market-clearing price for a given object is equivalent to that at which a larger inventory can be sold.
Taxing capital gains at the time of sale makes sense -- there is actual revenue available for taxation. Taxing unrealized gains can be a path to really-negative outcomes. This is particularly so if the government doesn't give matching credits for unrealized capital losses.
There are some loopholes that should be closed however. You can go to a bank and borrow against your shares, using them as an asset without realizing capital gains. In my mind, if you use the shares (gains) as collateral for your benefit, you should have to recognize the capital gains as mark-to-market immediately payable.
Presumably the bank won't accept them as collateral for more than can be realized at the time of sale?
I'm no expert, but I would guess that, if shares are foreclosed upon, the bank's basis is zero (and their taxation short-term)?
(Edit: the downside here is that the government doesn't see any revenue from this approach, which it might otherwise. The shareholder must pay interest, though, which might not be to their advantage.)
This is how it works (or at least used to work) in The Netherlands.
If you receive Stock options, you pay taxes over the gains, i.e. the money you would have made if you exercised on that date.
Even if you have not exercised. So the options were free, but suddenly you have to find a lot of money to keep them. Or you exercise a part of them.
Great example, and its a dangerous policy bc it makes the incentive to sell your assets to cover the tax bill higher, regardless of your personal plans with them. (Maybe they are future wedding gifts for your children?)
You have stock in amzn, say you buy at 3200 a share. A year from now it's 4k a share. 800$ capital gains...you get taxed on that.
It is a terrible tax law bc it is unrealized. What happens when you get taxes on that 800$, then the share drops down to 3300, you sell at 3300, making a REAL profit of 100$?
Do you feel fairly taxes at 800$ profit despit having only 100$ profit?
Thats...not unrealized cap gains tax, at all. That's property taxes and is a real thing to home owners. My tax bill grows every year bc my home gets assessed at higher values
Here is the thing though - it's not just a "few extra points".
By my calculation its 13.3% more living in California in state income tax savings alone. That is a huge amount of money for Elon, but is also a huge amount of money for people working on a SV salary. It could be more than a mortgage payment. There are probably additional savings with less regulation etc
California is not a state anyone should want to do business in in 2020.
That's a disingenuous representation of how much extra state income taxes are paid. 13.3% is the rate for single income above $1,000,0000. A richly paid SV worker making $500k single pays 8.75% to the state of CA effectively.[0]
I looked at Austin a few years ago, and after seeing the salaries I could find vs the cost of housing for 5 in a highly rated school district, I didn't even apply anywhere.
Aside: California is notorious for going after income that was "earned" in CA even if you no longer reside in the state. They'll still be collecting $$ from him for years to come.
While half the country cheers on. How many of those half actually believe in what's happening and how many are just along for the ride, pursuit of power above all else?
It's sickening how a coup attempt is being normalized by our media.
The big cities are something like 70/25 blue/red as of 2020, and you can be pretty sure they despise Ken Paxton et al. If you want to expand “the area you live in where people agree with me” to states the size of Texas/California, you can do that. But it seems a little silly to me. And you’ll have made a difference via voting when/if Texas votes these people out.
Capital gains and the new magical tax on the wealth that democrats want. They don't have enough taxing you for what you earn so they decided to tax you for what you're worth.
California changed their EV rebate rules in Dec. 2019, instating an MSRP cap of $60,000. Many (most?) Tesla cars cost more than $60,000 so Tesla buyers will not get the CA EV rebate.
Now that he's not there other willing people will have the chance to apply to those subsidies aware of the new regulations and the change in direction the state is taking.
It likely posed an appreciable risk to his business ventures that CA at some point will try to tax unrecognized capital gains,
People like Musk leverage their paper wealth into real (risky) loans and the like to support their business ventures (and personal lives)--part of the "socialize risk, privatize profits" model of pseudo-capitalism they practice.
A thoughtless approach to taxing unrecognized gains is not a good idea, but I certainly understand why it might be considered, at least for some minimum threshold. There's already something like this in the way some stock options are handled: individuals are taxed at exercise on the difference between the FMV and the strike price, whether they sell or not. I don't see why a similar principal couldn't be made to work with actual equities, at least for some high-value accounts/holdings.
Socializing what risk? What are you even talking about? Musk put his entire fortune from PayPal on the line for Tesla knowing that in all probability it would fail. It turned out well for him but it was still a huge risk he took.
I would argue that the opposite is true. California wants a larger cut of profits from business activity within their borders without any risk on their part, or even having to provide better services than competing states.
>> Musk put his entire fortune from PayPal on the line for Tesla knowing that in all probability it would fail. It turned out well for him but it was still a huge risk he took.
For sure Elon Musk is a very smart guy and he works really hard and he knows how to deliver amazing products and his PR skills are amazing... That said, we can't deny that he got a lot of support from the US government. Without US government help (e.g. subsidies, grants, carbon credits), he probably would have failed flat on his face like all other geniuses. His ability to secure government support had more to do with luck (history and social connections) than skill.
So as great as Elon Musk is, he did socialize a lot of his risk.
> For sure Elon Musk is a very smart guy and he works really hard and he knows how to deliver amazing products and his PR skills are amazing...
And again, don't ignore the part where he used his entire PayPal fortune to build a company that he thought had a high probability of failure. That's key to this conversation about risk.
The government chose to take on the risk of providing subsidies in order to get the benefits it enjoys today due to Musk's efforts, which is a growing electric vehicle industry. That wasn't Musk's choice to socialize risk, it was elected officials'. And that choice has paid off well for everyone.
> Government officials didn't risk anything, they risked other people's money
Government has its own accounts, therefore it has its own money to spend. It doesn't matter that they get that money from taxpayers, it belongs to the government by law.
> leverage over politicians
What leverage over politicians was used and what objectives did it achieve? Please give specific examples. AFAIK, the EV credits were designed to get more EVs on the road to reduce pollution and were successful at doing that. They are also not limited to Tesla.
> hoarding attention
What does that mean? You're complaining that people write articles about Musk?
Why does taking private loans against his private assets count as socializing risk? The banks he gets these loans from understand the risk and do not represent "society".
If you mean 2008, yeah, you're right, but those were mostly loans to relatively low income people buying homes, not loans against billionaires' unrealized capital gains.
It's unfortunate that Elon is leaving California given that the state has really lifted him to the pedestal he is on - through the talent network (highly talented employees, VCs), and the progressive policies that CA built for clean technology (Solar, EVs, Energy Storage). That was paid for on the backs of the people. Funny how short his memory is.
Elon is a talented man - I absolutely respect what he's done. However - let's call this what it is - he doesn't want to pay a large tax bill for the success that he has had (hence selling all property in CA). I get it - it sucks and you can also be much more anti-union in Texas.
Too bad he had to go along with the narrative “I think we’ll see some reduction in the influence of Silicon Valley” -- feels like a slap in the face to the market that lifted Tesla off the ground.
I think you're attributing too much credit to California.
> Highly talented employees
The vast majority of Tesla's "talented" employees came from out of state. Regardless of that, I don't understand the perspective that employment is an act of "taking from the state". Tesla pays above-market salaries. Isn't it, then, more accurate to view employment as Tesla giving back/helping to the community?
> Progressive policies that CA built for clean technology
I assume the policies you're referencing are the tax credits for solar installation and EV purchases. Aren't these credits independent of where the company is located? If so, Tesla would have been able to take advantage regardless of their location.
> Let's call this what it is - he doesn't want to pay a large tax bill for the success that he has had (hence selling all property in CA)
It seems reasonable to assume that his tax bill and California policies were both factors in his decision to move. What makes you so confident that the tax bill is the primary factor? Do you have some inside knowledge? If I were in his shoes, I'd be optimizing for Tesla's success, not my personal taxes. He's already wildly rich, and it's pretty clear to me that he's not doing this for the money.
(1) Tesla actually used to pay below market rate (bay area) and had incredibly demanding working conditions (see drive from Elon carries through the company and that it was a mission based company) for a good period of time. I'm not saying thats good or bad just that they weren't paying above-market. Not sure what the calculus is now that the equity value has gone right off the charts.
(2) No you get additional benefits for being in-state manufacturers. (I think its 10% vs 30% in state off capital costs). Referring to in-state policies not the federal ITC tax credit.
(3) Not that he would want to spend that money on himself but he would want to put that capital to good use elsewhere. If he doesn't believe the state to be a good deployer of capital he probably doesn't want to give them a large portion of capital at his expense. Less about himself spending lavishly then putting his hard earned capital to waste (one way of looking at it).
Got it. After looking into the details, it seems like Tesla received around ~$111M of additional benefit from SGIP due to being in-state. $111M isn't nothing, but I'm doubtful this is a big factor in Tesla's success.
In total, SGIP has issued $841M of incentives. SolarCity's market share is ~20%. The in-state incentive grants an additional 20%. $841M * .2 *.66 = 111M
There’s a bunch of other programs as well. I think la times did a write up in the past. There’s the california solar initiative, an california ev program as well. Would love to have the time to run this all down for you but frankly kids + life in general doesn’t allow for that...
Edit: not the best source but has some of the govt programs www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html%3f_amp=true
I find it tough to imagine Tesla pulling off its trajectory in any other state from the early days. He’s had some good tailwinds from the state until this spring.
> It's unfortunate that Elon is leaving California given that the state has really lifted him to the pedestal he is on ... That was paid for on the backs of the people. Funny how short his memory is.
It would be great if he recognized this when deciding where to establish future production/design centers. But as an individual, I don't think he owes any state or government an allegiance. If you had found career success in New York State, would you feel any obligation to NYS if you had family or a new opportunity in California? I should think not. Nor should Musk.
It is interesting that Tesla is expanding with a new factory in Texas and that could be a big factor in his move. Regardless, it's up to him where he wants to live.
> he doesn't want to pay a large tax bill for the success that he has had (hence selling all property in CA).
I like to think I'm pretty progressive and the wealthy should definitely have a significant tax obligation. But if he has been taxed on his wealth up until now, why would he continue to owe California? If he wanted to leave California on terms that you would find more legitimate, how long would he have to stay or how much would he owe to leave?
> leaving California given that the state has really lifted him to the pedestal he is on.... That was paid for on the backs of the people. Funny how short his memory is....he doesn't want to pay a large tax bill for the success that he has had (hence selling all property in CA).
Genuine question, not trying to be snarky.
I grew up in Australia, which educated, housed and fed me very well, and turned me into a successful Engineer. I decided I wanted to live in the snowy mountains of Canada, so I moved here.
At what point is a person like myself (or Musk) free to move wherever they want? How long to I owe an obligation to Australia for what they helped me with?
Clearly what myself and Elon are doing is perfectly legal, so it sounds like you have a moral objection to what we're doing. Do you think morally everyone should stay in the same district they were born, paying off their "debt" from being raised?
I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
I wouldn’t give California’s government any credit for Tesla’s success so far. If it was so good then Tesla wouldn’t be the only car company doing so well.
I know it's tough for free market people to understand this but it can't be understated. California SUPPORTS AND BUILDS the nascent market space from subsidizing Solar, Energy Storage and yes Electric Vehicles. I know it isn't cool to defend the government they are the ultimate boogeyman but like FFS they provide so many critical parts of our economy and, in progressive states like CA, help nascent industries get a footing. Without them, frankly, Tesla and SolarCity wouldn't be where they are. Prove me wrong with intelligible arguments.
""It’s hard to find a total dollar amount of California’s subsidies for Tesla, but the subsidies have been thick and fast. Until this year, the state government covered $7,500 of every Tesla bought in the state. The Tesla factory applied for and qualified for plenty of tax breaks.
Early on, it got $612 million in tax breaks from California, according to Green Car Reports.
The federal government also subsidized the factory in question. Musk was a major donor to and fundraiser for Barack Obama. Obama’s administration issued a $465 million loan to help Musk’s company, Tesla, build the Fremont factory that would build components for all-electric cars. (Tesla has since repaid the loan, according to the Energy Department.)"".
>I wouldn’t give California’s government any credit for Tesla’s success so far.
Tesla was (and remains) a financial basket-case, that in Musk's own words brushed with bankruptcy a few times, and yet the billions of dollars the California government threw at Tesla over a decade didn't help them?
California has a country-wide monopoly on weather conditions that many people consider ideal. This attracts people, which raises prices, which results in a proportionally better talent network, as higher income professions are better represented. It's hard to give the government much credit for that.
Also, Elon has been paying taxes there for how many decades? Is he forever indebted to stay there now? Ridiculous.
I see it the other way around. Musk's success and impact are of of truly historic proportions, and his being in California helped lift its credibility and reputation. It's sad for California to lose him (and the loss of his businesses to the extent that will happen).
It's odd to me to be so aligned with the State to claim it is responsible for one's success, without accounting for the jobs he created, and the related industries he energized. California benefits from people like Musk. As more companies and thought leaders leave (as they should given the direction of CA's policies), the state will suffer.
Things change - I don't disagree. Things can't always been boom times. California has had a pretty strong push since the 80s frankly with the telecom bust in early 2000s.
I would say the cost of living has escalated significantly, the companies that can afford to thrive in the bay area are not hardware startups as VC money has a difficult time support most of their higher capital costs, longer growth cycles and lower multiples on return. The pressure to succeed and level of talent is incredibly competitive. Therefore a lot of the software companies have taken over which is a different demo of people.
Don't believe the narrative on mass exodus - thats a signal that is being amplified in the press. Exodus? Yes, will it come back when we are not in pandemic? I would wager yes.
Is it time for some people to move out of state especially those who don't or never liked it? Yes, take the pressure off our public systems.
I was on the edge of the same decision. This move by the new district attorney in LA is so far beyond the pale that if it's not rescinded soon, I am gone too:
"NEW: L.A. County DA George Gascon has issued a directive to prosecutors that the following misdemeanors will be declined for prosecution, with exemptions.
-Trespassing
-Disturbing the peace
-Driving without license
-Prostitution
-Resisting arrest"
This is an abbreviated tweet, and each of these has some explanation and color, for example, resisting arrest will still be prosecuted if the suspect physically assaults the officer. But they can break loose from restraint and flee and not be prosecuted for resisting.
Prostitution was more specifically 'loitering to commit prostitution'.
My issue is the message this sends to those committing criminal behavior. They'd be attracted to municipalities that they know will not prosecute them. In many cases, it's likely that this petty crime is largely in support of drug addiction or influenced by mental illness. It would be more effective (and lauded by me) if this approach was paired with an effective treatment system. None is put forth(?), and we'll just see more and more mayhem, as we have seen already in San Francisco.
Most crucially, resisting arrest is only dismissed if it's in conjunction with one of the misdemeanors listed above. So for instance, if a sex worker was arrested for loitering, and resisting arrest, both the loitering and the resisting arrest charge would be dismissed. But if she hit the cop, she'd still be charged, and if she resisted arrest after actual prostitution she'd be charged with both.
I don't know how this is related to Elon Musk's decision, but:
Most of those have the exception clauses like "repeat offenses" or "imminent danger" (except prostitution) which sounds much more reasonable than how it's been described.
The message this sends to "those committing criminal behavior" hasn't really changed. If they have been committing criminal behavior, they will be charged, because repeat offenses are an exception.
More likely, this sends the message "doing a mistake once won't ruin your life forever" and "sex work isn't a crime".
You're in multiple computers all connected to the internet. Honestly these days we should all just be able to give the police our names and have them pull up our information. It's the same thing. You'll still get in trouble if the picture doesn't match. The ID could come through in ciphertext and need to be decoded using a secret known only to the person to whom it belongs.
It should be legal to drive without a physical license. We're all stored inside the computer now.
My guess would be eventually the fines rack up to the point where it becomes a more serious offense and more drastic measures are taken. Also, a lot of the enforcement measures likely do not fall under the umbrella of "prosecution."
I'm not sure if driving without a license can ever be escalated to a felony, but I'm sure they can do things like impound the car, etc. That would never involve the DA unless it was challenged in court
I doubt many explicitly pick their destination. But there's definitely a process of diffusion, where people are more likely to settle in jurisdictions amenable to their lifestyle and relocate when they're not. This is especially true for the largely transient community of petty criminals.
I can speak from personal experience here. Our local town had one of the toughest-on-vagrancy laws in the country. Then it go eviscerated in court, and the laws struck down. Without taking a position whether that was a good or bad thing, it's undeniable that the change was near instantaneous. Downtown became swarmed with aggressive panhandlers and park benches filled up with addicts on the nod.
It's not like the homeless in other cities were closely following the local court decisions, then strategically relocated. But by definition transient populations bounce around a lot. In previous times they might pass through before getting hassled, then thinking this place really harshes my mellow, then hightail it out of town. Now they show up, enjoy the good weather, panhandle off the tourists, don't get hassled by the cops, and what used to be a week-long residency turns into a year or two.
People do this all the time. People show up in San Francisco all the time with no money or belongings to their name.
It's very easy if you have incentive, or if you have nothing keeping where you are. Career criminals have every incentive in the world to move to a city where they'll be treated lightly, and often nothing holding them back.
Add to that the "do as I say, no as I do" attitude from the state government which seems to revel in the opportunity offered by the SARS2 epidemic to exercise power over their constituents upon which those constituents go from demonstrating against capricious rules [1] to sheriffs blankly refusing to enforce those rules [2] and the question really becomes why those people who can move out of California don't move out of California.
Have you considered the possibility that changing crime rates can be attributed to wider socioeconomic phenomena and not whoever happens to be in charge of the city/state/country? Or are you just using this opportunity to display your prejudices?
It has nothing to do with "who's in charge," but it has everything to do with the specific policies that have been put in place, and Gascon's policies have been terrible.
I think our justice system desperately needs reform, but it needs to be done in a competent way. Could it be that your own prejudices are preventing you from Gascon's half-baked efforts with an objective, critical eye?
The fact that even questioning the effectiveness of an individual's policies gets you labeled as "prejudiced" sums up so much that's wrong with modern progressivism.
"These laws make it illegal to buy a car from Tesla in person, at a Tesla Gallery. Thus, all Texas orders are taken via the internet or over the phone. Texas residents can still easily buy a car from Tesla, but the purchase is handled as an out-of-state transaction and must be completed before the vehicle ships to Texas."
Tesla is not your regular dealership. Car purchases are made online anyways.
This. All of our Teslas were bought online, and we showed up at the gallery or service center only to take delivery ("here's your [fob|rfid key] and we'll auth the vehicle in your Tesla account").
Carvana has a similar model for used vehicles, and they are very successful with the demo they cater to (buy online or in app, with a test drive period after purchase if you want to return the vehicle). People hate the traditional dealer sales experience apparently (half tongue in cheek, it's terrible, it really is).
My understanding is that car dealerships and the laws around them are essentially a sales union. They are in place to force manufacturers to leverage local sales people instead of their own.
It blew my mind when I went to a dealership that had radio ads about their great lease deals on a Chevy Volt. I walked in, told them I'd like to lease a Chevy Volt and that I was very excited about the deal.
They spent an hour trying to talk me into other cars and the sales people didn't know the first thing about what made the Volt so special. GM apparently didn't either since they discontinued it.
I'd rather a traditional dealership than having to log into my car. When I got my Skoda Citigo it was a pretty painless experience, aside from the fact that motorised wing mirrors weren't standard.
I'd buy a car through Carvana (in principle), but I don't recall the prices being very attractive. It was the same or slightly more than what was available at traditional local places.
Exactly. It's been awhile since I've bought cars, but I bought my last few cars through Carmax for this reason. The prices were not the lowest, but were reasonable. The process was about as simple as it could be though.
Contrast this with my first car buying experience where the 'finance guy' told me to 'get the fuck out of his office' when I explained him how he was manipulating the loan date payment, and price to charge me more. The deal still got done, but it was with the sales guy running between me and the finance guy basically relaying me saying no.
That's just saying they have a technological workaround to the policy of banning in-person sales at Tesla galleries, not a refutation of the reality of the laws themselves. If Tesla started eating heavily into Texas car dealerships' sales, don't be surprised if the dealers' associations show up at the state capitol demanding more teeth in the law.
Yeah its weird that Texas is "different" in this regard? The process is the same even in other states; I've never seen a Tesla store with a stock of cars just there on-site ready to buy that day, you always order online (or, I suppose, the salesperson orders online for you, and maybe that's illegal in Texas? I dont know).
And, frankly, this is how most new car purchases work. Every one I've purchased or been a part of; they don't end with you driving off the lot in a new car, they end with you waiting a week or two for the car to be delivered. I imagine some dealers have a limited stock of new cars in common configurations, and you could drive off in one of those, but that's the minority of purchases in my experience.
Around 15% are factory-ordered - typically luxury brands.
An additional 20-25% are sourced from other dealer inventory, or an upcoming shipment that is already specced and on the way.
The rest are on the lot and ready to go with the buyer. Dealer lots are huge in most of the country. Endless seas of near identical cars with minor variations in options and colors.
Yes, perhaps also Texas regulations prohibiting marijuana, assisted suicide, proper sex education in public schools, no liquor permits for public traded companies, restrictions on mail in voting, etc.
Restrictions on mail in voting are a bad thing. See Washington state and Oregon for how voting should be done. They’re still missing ranked choice/star voting, though.
> Texas residents can still easily buy a car from Tesla
Yeah, the regulation seems silly, but presumably it's a trite inconvenience compared to California shutting down various Tesla operations. Certainly we can't conclude from this one example that Texas and California are comparable with respect to "excessive" regulation.
I doubt Tesla really cares all that much. The link says Texans can easily buy Teslas from Tesla, but they have to complete the paperwork before the car ships to Texas. It seems like a very minor inconvenience compared to dealing with the various California regulations and bureaucrats.
Tesla is building a factory in Texas. What does the law mean whenever the car itself was made in the state? Does it need to leave the state and then re-enter? Serious question. Teslarati reported that's the case, so if they're right, I assume Tesla cares very much about the law changing, as it would save them quite a bit of money:
I doubt it. Car dealerships are still very politically powerful.
They are major contributors to state legislative and congressional races, support local charities, etc and employ lots of well-paid local staff.
As electric becomes more common, that will tip as manufacturers buyout dealerships. But that will take awhile and bigger dealers are gobbling up little dealers in the meantime. IMO, the dealers will be less of a big deal as they consolidate into regional players. Dealers were a barrier to Tesla selling cars at all -- they have traction now. Plus, the Uber-consolidated dealerships will continue to consolidate operations and shed overhead costs in the process) Even Coca Cola still has 60-70 independent bottler franchises.
I doubt car dealers will have much of a future in a world were you can just hop in a robotaxi for very little money and not have to spend on parking, fuel, maintenance, registration fees, etc.
I sold my car in 2018 and have been living car-free in Los Angeles since then. For the times they are a-changin'...
Unless you have quite a nice car or otherwise live in some logistical niche, rideshare is going to be quite a lot more expensive than car ownership. Some people will be able to replace some of their driving with public transit, walking, or cycling, but most people can't because public transit isn't feasible and commuting distances are too great for walking or cycling (this is especially true for people who aren't in peak health or who have families or pets or anything else that they need to regularly transport). Until "robotaxis" actually refers to fully-autonomous taxi services, I don't think we're going to see wide-scale movement away from car ownership. Remember that HN skews urban and our bubbles aren't indicative of the real world.
This is not the case for likely 90% of the country. Note that I'm currently in Chicago where we have much better public transit (in addition to rideshare) options than you do in Los Angeles, but most of America doesn't have the population density to support it.
I'm in Chicago as well. Yesterday I had to go downtown during rush hour and Lyft wanted $15. I'm not sure if this is normal (although I believe we have a hefty tax on rideshare to downtown, at least during rush hour), but at that point it's significantly cheaper to pay the $10/day or whatever that the parking garages charge (of course this isn't factoring in the cost of ownership nor is it considering other transit options).
Isn't the actual listed location of residence more a formality for a billionaire like Musk? I presume he'll still rent residences in LA and the Bay Area considering he'll be back and forth for business related to Tesla and SpaceX.
This seems like he's renting a place in Texas and making a big deal out of 'moving there' to make a point about California's regulatory environment.
Finance YouTuber Graham Stephen recently made a big deal out of moving from Los Angeles to Vegas because the tax savings more-or-less paid for a giant mansion in Vegas. (And because of some slightly cringey comments about not wanting to see so many homeless people, but that's not the editorial comment I'm trying to make right now.)
But, he's keeping his house in CA (for "weekends and vacations"), and he's building his studio in Vegas to be an exact replica of the old one.
So, yeah, charitably, "moving" for the highly wealthy does not really look anything like "moving" for anybody else.
Less charitably, it seems like a scam. In GS' case, nobody can tell where he's doing his work from, so "oh we spent too long at the beach on this 'vacation day,'" better stay here and film tomorrow's episode from CA, nobody will ever know." In EM's case, I suspect he spends more time business-traveling than at home anyway, so it would be pretty difficult to prove which of his houses he "lives" in.
And if anybody balks, there's a huge amount of PR content proving that they "moved."
This wouldn't bug me so much if it weren't for the arrogant, selfish, hubristic political comments they always make on the way out.
The California Franchise Tax Board actually spends a lot resources catching people who spend too much time in state and don't claim to live there. It's actually surprisingly hard for would-be tax dodgers to pull off, and the penalties are severe.
This reminds me of the lengths Ernest Hemmingway went to avoid paying taxes - he kept meticulous diaries, in part because that's who he was, but also to prove to the US and Cuban authorities that he didn't live in their respective jurisdictions long enough to be taxed at <whatever rate>.
Of course, the Castro government seized his assets in Cuba come the revolution, so I don't think it worked out for him in the long run, financially speaking.
> In EM's case, I suspect he spends more time business-traveling than at home anyway, so it would be pretty difficult to prove which of his houses he "lives" in.
I'm not sure about that. I think in these high profile cases tax authorities are more inclined to look into it given how much money there is in the balance. And it's somewhat easier to track people like EM precisely because of their lifestyles: flights would be paid by his companies which would keep receipts for a few years, they would interact with other people from the company in certain location and have a shared calendar, including meeting locations.
"About half (47%) of a CEO’s work was done at company headquarters. The rest was conducted while visiting other company locations, meeting external constituencies, commuting, traveling, and at home."
Shockingly I didn't see anything about time spent on Hacker News. There's probably a lesson there, or something. :)
I meant that yes he travels a lot, but no that doesn't make it harder to know in which state he has been the most (or whichever rule applies in the US to determine in which state you officially reside) and thus to figure out where he should pay taxes.
why is it cringey to not want to see too many homeless people? the existence of homeless people is a failure of the state and it’s perfectly reasonable to want to avoid them on the basis of personal safety.
I have no direct experience in this, but an acquaintance of ours whose startup exited successfully is similarly leaving CA for tax reasons. My light understanding is that CA has some pretty tight rules around how often you can work in CA before you automatically become a resident for the purposes of taxes. If they find out that you’ve worked in CA too much I presume they’ll try and tax your yearly income.
The distinction CA (and other states) make is between being a "resident", "part-time resident", or "nonresident". If you are classified as a resident or a part-time resident, you pay CA income tax on all of your income, even if it was earned from work that happened outside of CA. If you are a nonresident, you pay CA taxes only on the income that was earned from work happening in CA.
It's possible this move might help Musk become a "nonresident" and pay less CA taxes, but I kinda doubt it. The classification of type of resident is based on more than just "official address of your house". It also includes things like where your work is, what banks you use, what doctors you go to, and even what social activities you take part in.
This is pretty common in many states, btw. One time I had to file a tax return to a small city in Michigan because I had a 4-hour work meeting there and they taxed it.
This is why he sold all his properties. He undoubtedly has good tax attorneys and is doing everything required to be a nonresident. I wouldn't be that surprised if he decided to just never set foot in California again.
Yes, actually every state (and most countries) have a similar law. Some people who live and work across state lines deal with this every year on their taxes. I worked part of one year in two different countries, same thing.
Another commenter clarified what I was trying to say; if you become a part time resident of CA then all of your income gets taxed, not just the stuff you earned in CA.
The CA Franchise Tax Board aggressively pursues departing taxpayers who maintain even slight residual connections to the state. There are no bright-line rules to determine residency, so the state has great leeway (and incentive) to pursue punishing residency audits. Horror stories abound!
Tax requirement in CA doesn't allow for that. You can't own and live most of your time outside of CA to strictly avoid paying state taxes. This is multifold but I think a lot of it is to prevent people just buying up all the housing stock and putting pressure on the market as well as the state needing to make money since we have prop 13 challenges.
Are US tax agencies that easily fooled? From what I know in Europe, you generally have to pay tax in the place where you reside more than 50% of the year (additional taxes may apply for secondary residences, but that's very regional). It's fairly common for a tax agency of one country to demand proof that you actually moved and physically reside in another country so that they don't double-tax you, so you better have documented the travels between both countries and kept as many receipts as possible.
> From what I know in Europe, you generally have to pay tax in the place where you reside more than 50% of the year
What's the definition of "reside"? In the US, it's generally not just a matter of where you sleep at night or where you keep stuff; the legal definition of "residence" is a matter of intent, where you intend your permanent place of residence to be. Of course there needs to be objective evidence of your intent: you can't just say "I live in Texas" if you own a home in California which you aren't renting to anyone else, but don't own any real estate in Texas. But it looks like Musk is selling all his California property. Even if he doesn't buy a home in Texas, if he has a permanent rental of one there, but only rents places in California temporarily when he travels there for business, legally his residence would indeed be in Texas.
It is more than just a formality. To no longer be considered a CA resident for tax purposes you need to abandon your CA domicile and establish a new one. The CA franchise tax board is more aggressive at pursuing taxes owed than most states. If you spend more than half of your nights in CA, it is very likely you will be a resident for tax purposes. Presumably he will hire experts and listen to their advice, and he sold all property in CA. But lots of people get caught trying to dodge these taxes unsuccessfully.
I wish public rhetoric was less combative/twitter-like and more collaborative.
Elon has built incredible companies doing incredible things. He's also made some stupid comments re: covid.
SV political hostility towards technology companies and employees is frustrating. I wish the government was more aligned with helping these companies grow and things weren't treated as if they were so zero-sum (when they're not). I also wish the taxes weren't so extreme (including state capital gains tax).
I wish there was more housing supply so cost of living wasn't so high and the focus was on increasing supply rather than band-aids that provide short-term relief, but make things worse long-term (rent control, price controlled units).
The "Fuck Elon Musk" tweet from a politician is dumb and makes this kind of thing worse, why can't people in government behave better than this?
If we could coordinate better we could do so much more. It's just frustrating to me.
In general, you are right, the Twitter-sphere is a cancer on civilized discussion.
That said, Elon Musk is an active participant and influencer of "F*ck X" culture on Twitter, so he hardly gets a pass when others use that same rhetoric on him.
> why can't people in government behave better than this?
Likewise, why can't Elon Musk behave better? The answer: Acting the way he does publicly is part of his marketing tactic.
The second richest person in the world should arguably be held to an even higher standard, also for the benefit of the public. I say this as a huge fan of Elon's companies. But dude, just pay your damn taxes.
I'm an optimist and forward looking person at heart. But the last couple of years have made me cynical enough that I researched the 'most free' country in the world as an expatriate destination[0].
We are witnessing super-wealthy individuals, I think the word is oligarch, use their out-sized wealth to advance causes outside of the domain that made them wealthy. Obvious examples include Bill Gates advancing world health, Mark Zuckerberg funding Freedom of Expression initiatives, and Soros' Open Society Foundations.
These initiatives can be impactful simply based on the resources supporting them. For example, LinkedIn reports 1,100 people currently working for Open Society Foundations. That number would require an annual budget in the realm of $200,000,000. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shows 2,500 people working. Both Soros and Gates could easily fund those workforces out of their passive income.
Certainly, we've had relatively super-wealthy persons in the past. What's new is the reach that these current oligarchs can leverage. Their wealth is drawn from a global revenue, their workforces can easily travel globally, and they can promote their message globally using the Internet and Web, which have supplanted both the print and radio media that earlier oligarchs were confined to.
Whether or not you see this as a threat, my take is that I did not vote for Gates as world health oligarch or Soros as societal transformation oligarch, but they have taken those mantles on themselves. Whether for better or worse, I didn't have a say, but they can impose their initiatives on me. That bothers me.
As long as you have a properly functioning government that’s resistant to bribery and corruption, these initiatives can’t hurt you. The phrase “world health oligarch” sounds scary but what that looks like is Gates paying people to research sanitation and disease prevention. It’s not like he’s taking over the NHS.
> SV political hostility towards technology companies and employees is frustrating. I wish the government was more aligned with helping these companies grow
Did you check how well those companies actually grew, dominated markets and made their employees millionaires?
Sure, not everything is perfect and aligned to their liking, but calling a place that still actively creating biggest tech companies in the world a hostile place for them is a stretch at best.
It’s a mixed bag - a lot of stuff is really great (non-competes are illegal, at will employment, etc.)
The political rhetoric of the area is hostile to technology companies and employees though. A lot of blame is put on the tech industry for whatever problem is being discussed.
For example employees and tech companies are blamed for high housing costs because new jobs lead to more people living here (rather than blaming policy that restricts supply).
AB5 is hostile to ride sharing companies and was written mostly to target them.
This kind of blame comes up for pretty much everything.
As I said, not everything is perfect, but let’s keep things in a perspective. It’s still the place that’s generating multiple billion dollars companies year, and turns lots of people into millionaires.
It’s hard to find anywhere else in the world, where sum of all things is so friendly towards tech. Of course, a lot of that isn’t because of government (or even, despite their actions) but complaining how horrible it’s for tech companies in SV is so detached from reality like billionaires complaining that they need to pay extra few % in taxes.
It’s possible you read my initial comment as more extreme than I intended.
I just think there’s more opportunity for collaboration - the stance I often see/hear/read about is combative. Tech companies vs. local politics. Local politicians vs. tech companies, etc. It’d be nice if there was less of this and more working towards shared goals.
"Elon has built incredible companies doing incredible things. He's also made some stupid comments re: covid."
I hope you see theres an issue with statements like this. Its hard for someone to be so competent in terms of founding multiple billion+ companies, and then be completely wrong on covid.
It’s not that hard - people are wildly inconsistent in views and accuracy.
Someone can be contrarian and correct in one area and contrarian and wrong in another.
In fact I’d bet if you are more independently minded then you’re more likely to be very wrong in some categories since you’ve succeeded mostly by ignoring convention and thinking independently.
Most of the time this works, but sometimes you’re wrong and the consensus is right.
Not really. This kind of thinking is an attempt to tear down and discredit people who are capable of challenging a brainwashed narrative. Clearly elon musk has an incredibly strong grasp on reality. Just because his political leanings go against yours doesn't mean you can discredit him.
Quote: "With a net worth of $134.7B, Musk recently surpassed Bill Gates as the second-richest person in the world, and he's on track to earn more than $50 billion in stock options. If he remained in California, he’d be facing income taxes on the profits when he exercises them. In Texas, there is no income tax. "
Rest is blah blah, this right there is the real reason for such a move. Can't blame the man either, I'll do the same in his shoes.
He benefits from government policies like the one for EV credit, and the one where companies have to buy carbon credits. Then when its time to contribute back its time to move.
Being worth $120B Vs $150B isn't a material difference. At that level, I would say "California was good to me, I leveraged the ecosystem there and the state's generous tax subsidies for my product. I'm ok paying them what I owe."
Two kids talking. "If you had 1 million, would you give me half? Yes. If you had a bicycle, would you let me ride it from time to time? Yes. If you had an apple, would you share it with me? No. But why? Because I do have an apple."
It really is when you're the kind of person who routinely builds multi-billion dollar companies. You're talking about capital for several more moonshots.
I would think being a billionaire, there isn't significant difference in quality of life living in California vs. Texas either. The "I'm ok paying them what I owe" also overlooks the public spats on Twitter and with re-opening the Fremont factory which got shutdown because of covid.
but why? I personally like Texas as a state more than California (terrain, weather, urban areas) but if I had that much money I wouldn't care if it was 80billion or 100 billion for God sakes how greedy can you be?
If I had to guess, he doesn't view the wealth as an end in and of itself. Rather, wealth is a means to achieve his stated goals: 1) to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy and 2) to make humans an interplanetary species. It's not too hard to imagine how these pursuits could benefit from an infusion of $xx billion.
Yep I was going to add this. It sounds like he doesn't care if he has 10 huge houses or not and renting works just fine for him. Although he should thinking about hedging with some real estate, but I guess he probably already does that :)
For maybe 99% of Californians the decision to move or stay is tied to two factors: increasing cost of living and decreasing quality of life. I lived in the Bay Area from 2010 to 2020 and both factors worsened considerably in that time.
While Musk’s move may be an indicator of a kind it reflects on largely different factors than those weighed by most people. Most people don’t strain against state bureaucracies to develop innovative products and services.
Regulatory burden does reach Main Street, though. Ask anyone who’s ever run a restaurant in San Francisco or needed to get a state-issued license for, e.g., working in a nail salon if they think the government made it easier or harder for them to do business. Does this make the regulations wrong? No. Could they be easier to follow? Definitely.
This is SF small business regulation in a nutshell: a business person who wanted to start an ice cream shop in the Mission neighborhood has spent $100k+ and 16 months dealing with regulatory headaches.
Quality of life is high and cost of living is low. We had a huge variety of housing choices at many price points. Groceries, gas, and utilities are much cheaper. People are friendly.
The culture is different. More people here are religious [0]. Alcohol is strictly controlled [1] and the driving BAC limit is .05, lower than the typical .08. Cannabis is not legal. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormon Church, and its adherents are a big part of the culture here, especially their orientation towards family and service.
I lived in SLC for a few months and really loved it. The area is quite nice. The winter inversions, once upon a time, made the air quality a real concern, but the bay area has now topped that with the very frequent smoke days.
But .. are you mormon? Otherwise, how are you finding the social isolation? SLC itself is now 50% mormon, but the surrounding areas are still mormon-dominated. I like mormons, but they are definitely tribal.
My partner and I are Jewish and gay. Salt Lake has a small, tight-knit community of the former and a large, diffuse community of the latter; though we haven't been socializing because of the pandemic. The Latter-day Saints we've met have been unfailingly kind and welcoming to us, which is surprising given how they were characterized to us before we moved. Do I expect the more observant of them to welcome us in? Not really. But they've been the best neighbors. A group of them recently volunteered time and money to help landscape Salt Lake's synagogue [0].
Thanks. Yes, housing is getting a little more expensive now that so many people are moving to the Wasatch Front. It’s not as bad as Boise or Denver, though, at least not yet.
We’re unsure if we’ll stay long term and buy or not. We want kids and a religious community for them to grow up in. That would’ve been kind of tough even in the Bay Area, though.
CA is just terrible value for most people currently. I'm not American and neither is Musk, it's not like he's going to make such decision for ideological allegiances. He just gets better value for his money elsewhere. Currently CA seems pretty broken between rural, poor and underinvested areas; and super-expensive, badly mismanaged urban areas. I don't think he's going to move to the desert, he'll probably move to urban TX and it's rather liberal there.
> CA is the most negative State in net domestic migration
Sure, but mostly that's actually good for the state economically since while there is net domestic outmigration, its more than made up for by international immigration, and the gross domestic outmigration is lower on the economic scale than the gross domestic inmigration.
This article conveniently leaves the fact that he'll pay millions more in taxes in California due to TX not having any income tax until the very end. Also, his two biggest current projects (Giga Texas and Starship) are currently in Texas. This makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint and will just continue the flight from California.
I suspect that once they have the Giga Texas built and delivering vehicles that TX lawmakers will quickly change their tune since TX is the biggest market in the US for trucks.
Simply moving his official address from CA to TX does not mean he won't have to pay CA income taxes. CA still taxes income from work in CA even if you don't live there, and for part-time residents, CA still taxes all income even if the work happened in Texas.
Musk surely has some good accountants to figure all this out, but it's not as clear cut as your first sentence makes it sound.
That depends on reciprocal tax agreements. [1] He will have to file in both states, but what he pays will depend on several factors. He will likely get tax credits in California, but I am not a tax attorney or a CPA. Elon could probably give some indication on how much he is saving if he is saving anything at all.
It's even trickier than that. The company I work for is HQ in California, but we have employees based in another state. They pay taxes to that state, not California and there are no reciprocal agreements with that state.
I understand what you are saying, but it really does not conflict with what I am saying. Our employees in that other state are not working on physical things in that state. They ssh to servers in the U.S. and E.U. and do Zoom calls with people in other states and countries.
In my mind, this is exactly what Elon would be doing from Texas. Zoom calls with people in other states and countries. So how are the two things different and why would he be paying CA taxes on his personal income?
The two things aren't different if Musk actually doesn't set foot in California, just like the employees of your company.
I'd imagine the commenter that said he'd still have to pay income tax in California assumed that Musk would still need to be in California, to manage his companies there, and would have to pay California tax on a corresponding proportion of his income.
Even set foot might be ok. Our employees sometimes visit CA for a day or two. That said, we have had employees that were in NY for a month and NY did require them to file. This actually prompted an interesting internal conversation on slack and I learned a lot today.
>State personal income taxes are based on your legal domicile
Not in CA. The determination of your residency status for CA tax purposes is based on much more than just your legal home address. And even if you are classed as a nonresident, you still pay CA taxes on any income earned due to work in CA.
Texas and CA do not have any reciprocal tax agreements.
Source: live in Texas, travel for work a lot all over the country, including many months spent in CA, have had to file many income tax returns and determine residency status with the state of CA for exactly this purpose.
> you still pay CA taxes on any income earned due to work in CA
I do exactly this. I earn income from a CA company, but live elsewhere. But I wouldn't characterize it as "paying".
Paychex withholds my CA taxes, which then get (nearly) fully refunded a week after filing. It's not exactly "paying" - rather, you're giving a zero-interest loan to the State of California with an average maturity of 6-7 months.
That's one situation, but when I said "earned due to work in CA" I meant work that is physically done in CA, not just work for a CA-based company.
For example, let's say I live in Texas and work for a Texas based company at a salary of $100k/yr. I spend most of my time in Texas, but I travel a lot for work and for 12 weeks of the year, I spend Monday through Friday in California.
Since I am a resident of Texas, I pay taxes on all of that $100k to Texas (but since TX has no income tax, it's moot).
However, I spent 12 weeks of that work in California, making me a nonresident worker in California. I owe CA income tax on $100k * (12 weeks spent in CA / 52 total weeks in a year) = ~$23k. If I have enough deductions in CA to offset that, I might end up owing nothing and any paid taxes might all get refunded to me. But if I don't have enough deductions, I might owe CA some tax money.
Thankyou for the clarification. In that case, Elon would need to move his businesses from California to Texas as well. In the mean time, I'm trying to figure out how are non California employees are not paying CA taxes. I suspect that he won't be paying CA taxes on his personal income.
I am from Texas and currently live in Austin, but I also had the opportunity to live in many places in the world (Bay Area, China, Singapore, and Norway) spread out over a decade.
As much as I have admired and enjoyed many of those places, I always knew I would come back to Austin. The quality of life you get here, all things considered, simply cannot be beat.
After I graduated from school in the Bay Area (circa 2005), I recommended to many friends in high-tech to move to Austin. Most said no, for many reasons. Fast forward to today, and many of those individuals have made the move or are thinking to do so at this point. It is for the same reasons: cost of living, raising a family, space to build, etc. I welcome their arrival and hope they take the time to learn about the city and what makes it special.
"As of Thursday, Austin has officially had its 19th day of triple-digit temperatures. This means we have tied the third-longest stretch of 100-plus degree days recorded at Camp Mabry.
Not to mention, every single day this month has been above average. Our average temperature at this time of the year should be 97 degrees."
On the flip side, winters are great! The best time of year is Mar/Apr and Oct/Nov. Absolutely gorgeous. There's a reason why SXSW and ACL are scheduled at those times...
Elon moving has little to do with California vs Texas. This is totally expected from Elon, who likes to oversee new operations personally and whip everyone into shape.
His "dislike" of California has little to do with it, but he's definitely going to milk it for all it's worth. I thought at least HNers would see through this easily.
> This is totally expected from Elon, who likes to oversee new operations personally and whip everyone into shape.
So why is he not moving from Shanghai to Austin? And from Austin to Berlin?
I think people should really look into where Elon actually spends his time. Tesla is his clearly on the back burner as far as his personal attention is concerned. He checks in, but he's very successfully sold the "I sleep under my desk" narrative, while only dropping by every few weeks. It was like when Fremont ignored the lockdown orders and said "I'll be there, if anyone is arrested let it be me" and he was actually in a completely other state when they re-opened.
His primary concern based on physical presence is Space-X at this time.
Not that we can verify, but his interview states he is and further intends to spend material time in admin. He represented having been heavily involved in GigaBerlin up to this point.
Reminder that the only state in the US that does not recognize non-competes is California [1].
If you are starting a business California is still a place competition exists.
Non-competes are the most anti-business, anti-worker, anti-innovation and anti-American thing you can think of.
Non-competes are like fixed authoritarian markets that appear open but are actually nearly mafia state controlled by the existing players.
Sure once you get big you might want to lock down the gains, but while growing and disrupting the lack of non-compete recognition is a huge things for both workers and businesses.
The ban on non-competes should be nationwide and California has always had that pro-worker, pro-business, pro-market policy in place [1]. When the AG of a state is calling for that to be nationwide, you know you are in a place that values value creation without limitation or blocking competition.
IMO people are overreacting, both people who like and dislike California. Musk is an American citizen and as such can live wherever he likes within US borders. California will be fine without Musk. They've still got nice weather which will attract people willing to pay their high taxes and if they have some tax base loss it's not the end of the world. Maybe they'll have to cut some fat out of their budget but there is plenty of fat.
It was a good comment, but should have some context wrt the tweet, otherwise people will assume you're echoing the sentiment. Politicians like that are going to be really bad for California in the long run. California is already one of the more expensive places to own and operate a business, but when you have politicians who are outright anti-business, it doesn't bode well for new investment.
I'm not sure if you're sharing this to echo the sentiment, but it's plausibly worth sharing to note that this politician is transparently working to drive Tesla operations out of her jurisdiction.
I am just linking the historical background for Musk's move. Not sure why I'm getting downvoted- it's a factual tweet from a politician from where he lived.
I think it's because people don't know the connection between this Tweet and Musk's move, and it comes off as though you are simply echoing someone else's edgy Internet comment. I think if you were clear that you were sharing a historical connection for those who may not have known about it, you wouldn't have received as many downvotes.
> And, the deaths from Covid-19 in California are disproportionately Latino. Our communities have been the hardest hit. By far. Maybe that’s why we take the public health officials’ warning and directions so seriously.
Does that follow? Wouldn't it seem more likely that California latinos statistically disregard health officials advice if they're being most impacted by a disease which doesn't care about ethnicity?
"Wouldn't it seem more likely that California latinos statistically disregard health officials advice" - No. For example: a lot of communities have intergenerational families living in close proximity due to lack of affordable housing, jobs, redlining, etc. Having many people living closer together explains being "most impacted" as well as (obviously better than but hey I'm being magnanimous) your thesis that people are choosing to "disregard advice". Just... no.
So is this just that poor people are disproportionately affected by covid?
I could say "Alaskans are disproportionately affected by testicular cancer", because their per capita rate of it is higher than any other state. But it has nothing to do with being Alaskan - they have a totally normal rate of testicular cancer - it is just because a higher percentage of men live there than anywhere else in the US.
And, her next tweet in that thread is her celebrating keeping playgrounds open. Yes, children need to play - but maybe they can spread covid there?
They made that comment after Elon Musk blatantly flouted coronavirus regulations and reopened his factory in Fremont. Shortly afterward, there was a CoVID-19 outbreak at the factory.[1]
I was rather startled when I saw the first e-mail from a new colleague, when either our e-mail system thought ASCII was good enough for everyone or, (more likely in this case) the accent got lost earlier due to migration and someone's indifference to ancestral heritage.
I would be intrigued to learn the actual story, but it's not the kind of question to ask casually of slight acquaintances, I think.
Latin America refers to the countries in Central and and South American that were colonized by Spain and Portugal. It has nothing to do with the Latin language.
I don't think I know a single latino who accents their Spanish and their name consistently. If I texted my dad asking where the accents in my name are, he might not actually know, lol.
First of all, most of latinos are hispanic. Being Brazilians the largest group of latinos that are not hispanic but ibero-americans.
Second. They were not forced. Isabel of Castille prohibited slavery 500 ago and made marriages between Spanish people and natives legal. Most of the people that went there were men and their kids would inherit their last name.
Thid. There are a lot of latinos that emigrated from Spain and lived there for centuries and they keep their last name.
If they don't want to use accents, that's their decision, but stop making up stuff.
At the same time, what is "latino" what is "hispanic?"
Are they a real identity, or were they created for the US census as a form of red lining?
What is "hailing" from anymore, someone whose born to a south american family, whose an indingious south american family?
But I would say I don't write my name in proper accents and I don't know anyone else that do, but I dont' care about accents, the question of the labeling and who created the label is more interesting.
Elon's was quoted saying "you have a forest of redwoods and the little trees cant grow." While pointing his finger at California, I can't help but think this really reflects back on him.
Elon Musk's success and several others began as the result of PayPal.
To my knowledge none of Elon's companies since have produced a group like the PayPal mafia. The PayPal folks are smart people, but the bay area is full to the gills of smart visionaries lacking capital to take on ambitious visions. Many have worked at Elon's companies. To really see little trees grow people like Elon would need to change their equity structures to let the next group of innovators thrive.
Cool - benefit from all CA / Silicon Valley has to offer to establish yourself beyond anyone's wildest dreams then leave. Are there problems with CA? Of course! They're obvious and don't have any easy solutions. But he's actually in a position, if nothing else than his tax contribution, to make a difference.
With regards to regulation, yea, when you have to comply with regulations that seem onerous, I get it, but it's not like his companies are without influence. He could advocate for smaller companies if it was actually important to him.
But I guess he got his, so... bye business Kanye..
People love San Francisco - the culture, the energy, the people, the beauty, the opportunity, the freedom, the openness - that's why the cost of living is so high there. The more who leave, the more affordable it is for entrepreneurs and other dreamers who want to do something wonderful. I want to live someplace filled with those people; I want to meet them at the cafe and in my workplace.
Cities have been the great engines of modern culture and economies for awhile now. Nothing has changed. Coronavirus is a brief interruption. Remove work doesn't change it - Covid didn't teach SV about remote work (many SV companies tried large-scale remote work several years ago, then brought many back to the office). There's a reason businesses try to create great office environments - dynamic, exciting, fun, social - it's highly creative and productive. Now you think people will be just as creative and productive sitting by themselves at their desk at home?
Taxes are a major part of that - taxes are how we invest in our communities. To treat them only as an expense is ignorant, sometimes willfully so. California and the Bay Area have been taxing and investing for generations, and look what it turned out. The infrastructure of the Bay Area, U CA Berkley, and Stanford (which at least receives research money and massive tax benefits in tax breaks, I assume) are just three examples. The Golden Gate Bridge is another. Next time you are in a city, look around at all the things that the people got together, democratically, and built, funded, and operate. I believe in democracy, a fundamentally American belief.
In the end, it's a reactionary political statement. The reactionaries have been targeting cities for many years because they are powerbases for Democrats, progressives, are populated by many non-white people, and they are cultural threats (merely by the fact of their existence and success: their diversity and integration, their cultural leadership, and in business and economics: what great, innovative industry comes from reactionary parts of the country?). You'll note who made the big statements about leaving - Thiel and Musk, possibly the leading reactionaries in SV.
Reactionary politics is fundamentally corrupt - a lie about the world, in every aspect, to protect and accumulate their own power and assets. They're right - they don't fit well in SV. Reactionary is anti-progress, anti-optimism, it's anti-. SV is doing well if the reactionaries don't stay and stagnate, but leave and create more space and opportunity for the newcomers, the next generation. I believe in those newcomers much more than in Thiel and Musk.
I moved from the Bay Area to Houston 6 months back for work. In virtually every environmental way, this is a downgrade. Worse weather (except for fire season), more pollution, less zoning, etc. However, housing is cheap because over here they just BUILD.
Given that the Starship / SuperHeavy project is entering the most exciting phase (flights! explosions! first reaching of the orbit! first return in one piece!) and that most, if not all of those exciting things are happening in Boca Chica, TX, I suspect it is not just about taxes.
After all, I am a humble HN user from half the world away and I still spend time on live streams from Boca Chica. If I were Musk, I would move there.
I wonder if the wealthy leaving California to avoid state income taxes now that the federal government penalizes states collecting it will finally be the impetus it needs to reform it's terrible property tax system.
And make make no mistake, if there's a large outflow of the moderately well off and up out of Califonia in recent years, it's probably because our last Congress capped the state tax deductions they could take.[1] Effectively making Bluer states pay for the most recent nationwide tax break.
Kind of a moonshot, but it's nice to imagine states leaving income taxes to the federal government because of this and just switching to land value taxes.
Some kind of fairer sales tax like a VATS are another alternative, but I hear too much about the trouble people have with them (added bureaucracy, carousel fraud) to actually like the idea.
Boca chica is in Texas. It’s favorable to SpaceX. It’s favorable for his taxes. It makes total sense and is legal. Good on him. Would bring more tech workers to Texas. Good for Texas.
I too moved to a less onerous tax state so I can't fault Mr. Musk. I so enjoy living in a country where that is possible, and that, if you have the means, you can follow the jobs from state to state, or if you will, follow the capital. Capital moves where it feels comfortable and so do people. It's not much of a story really, except for Mr. Musk's celebrity.
I moved to PA from MD. At the close my career, I chose to move to PA as they do not tax income from retirement accounts like IRA, 401k etc, nor pension accounts. It's quite a bundle. Retired, now in PA I pay no state tax.
Honestly my tax arguments with MD were furious and frustrating. It's difficult, once you start paying MD, to escape their claims on you. Even while working out of country for multiple years running, MD will claim you owe them taxes, unless you have changed domicile in the manner they demand.
An ignorant question for American readers. This article quotes a tweet from somebody who presumably has something to do with promoting Texas. He writes:
> Texas is the best state for business. Texas has no state income tax, while California’s is the highest in the country. It just got better because Texas made an income tax unconstitutional.
Can you explain what he means by that last sentence?
I'm not asking for a political exegesis, unless there's no way to explain it without. I'm just curious for a technical explanation of what he's referring to. I suppose part of what I don't understand (as a non-American who knows little) is how a state can rule anything unconstitutional in the first place - isn't the constitution a federal affair?
Short answer: States have constitutions as well. The Constitution is the overall guiding document for the Federal government; state constitutions are foundational/guiding documents for the components that make up the United States.
A good way to think about the US is as a more federalized EU, after several centuries and a civil war to figure out how power devolves between the Federal and State governments. The individual states were originally sovereign entities, bound together through a very weak system called the Articles of Confederation. After this was shown to not work very well, a group of legislators committed treason against the government outlined in the Articles, and convened to write the US Constitution, which the sovereign states decide to adopt after furious debate.
In Washington's case, the Washington supreme court considered income tax inconstitutional as it would be double taxation as you were already taxed on property.
Typically the States each also have their own State Constitution. In this case, Texas could have amended their own State Constitution to say something akin to 'The State of Texas shall not impose a tax on the incomes of its residents'.
In the interview, the main reason he gave is the commute: He's spending all his time recently getting Gigatexas and Boca Chica up and running. He's not gonna live in California if for the next year or so he's gonna be spending a majority of his time at installations in Texas.
I mean, Musk is opening up a Gigafactory in Germany near Berlin, a place that culturally and regulatory, out-California's California in terms of politics.
People really really want to turn this into an anti-California story and sell conservative politics. I'm sure Musk will enjoy lower taxes, but if you listen to the same interview, he rakes MBAs and bean counters over the coals.
I don't think Musk cares about profits or money as much are libertarians fetishize, he cares about what he can accomplish. He's more concerned with his goals and how much stands in his way, not whether or not he can get a tax cut.
If anything, environmental and labor regulations that slow down his rate of building are more important to him.
How can people listen to the audio of this WSJ interview, where he claims corporate boards, and power points, and financial meetings, are all bullshit and a waste of time. This is a guy who doesn't want to take investor Q&A during earnings calls. He routine tells people not to buy Tesla stock! He tells people people to sell Tesla stock if they don't like his answers to Q&A. He literally gives two fucks about the kind of stuff hyper-libertarians on Seeking Alpha care about. He's also tired of the games, the constant bullshitting and trying to short the stock.
He doesn't care about the money as much as he cares about making cool shit and getting yo' ass to Mars.
Yeah, Musk might be able get away with this, since I expect many key employees will be attracted by much lower housing costs out of state. Texas has high real estate taxes, but not high enough to offset savings on house prices.
You just can’t move a whole company, lots of people have roots, family, kids have friends, school, etc I doubt more than 10% of people would just relocate on a dime. Studies show overall Americans are not willing to move where jobs are once they’ve settled.
Much is made of a tiny percentage of people leaving. The vast majority won’t and will be forced to see another job if he were to close the CA offices which will be massively disruptive.
I’m betting he won’t, that the CA offices won’t move, and the people who are writing the code that lands his rockets will remain.
It’s too much of a risk to replace those people and break up teams.
To add to this, there are two active automotive manufacturing plants that exist in Texas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Motor_vehicle_assembl.... What this means is there is already a presence of skilled labor in this field that Tesla can pull from.
It's all about the tax evasion: "If he remained in California, he’d be facing income taxes on the profits when he exercises (stock options). In Texas, there is no income tax."
The thing about the exodus is that it is a harbinger of an online community that resembles SF. The pandemic and the fires accelerated the idea of moving out, ofcourse many people in the past including Elon Musk, Palmer Lucky, etc wanted to be out. In this scenario , exit is becoming more than voice. Most of the things that make SF great are being uploaded to the cloud through various programs like Reforge, SUS, Pioneer, OnDeck. It is becoming more interesting to build in the cloud.
What's weird with all the vaguely partisan/culture-war outrage going on here about California is that from the perspective of partisan divide a transfer of tech industry employment from CA to TX (which is absolutely happening, and has been for some time) is objectively a good thing for the "left". TX is likely to follow VA and CO into blue state status sometime in the next decade because of it.
This move is about lowering his tax bill and nothing more.
"With a net worth of $134.7B, Musk recently surpassed Bill Gates as the second-richest person in the world, and he's on track to earn more than $50 billion in stock options. If he remained in California, he’d be facing income taxes on the profits when he exercises them. In Texas, there is no income tax."
I'll never understand why people look up to him. I have friends that are totally extreme communists, who hate everything capitalist and they idolize him. He's still a billionaire and a shitty person, just because he has interests in helping the planet (with his great business ventures) doesn't make him a swell fellow. He's still trash, like most billionaires.
Deep down a lot of people know they're not a crab that will be leaving the bucket so they'd prefer nobody left the bucket so that they don't have to be reminded it's possible.
Of course, most of us are. This isn't crab mentality though, I just dislike the man's politics and personality. I have no problem with him being a good person, making billions, and creating cool cars/rockets; it's the workers rights stuff I'm upset about.
Doing a few things that better society while growing your wealth and influence doesn't make you a good person. I don't like most billionaires because they invariably have huge egos and think they're gods great gift to capitalism. When you're using your power to promote business practices that hurt people who aren't receiving lavish compensation, it isn't a benign thing.
I was just musing about how strange it is that people love him despite his sketchy business practices. The OP was about him forcing a plant open and having a bad record on workers rights. That's what I objected to, not all the money he's making.
I do understand my comment didn't really explain that, so I understand the downvotes. I guess I thought it was clear from the context, why I had a problem with him.
Pull the lever and destroy the economy, put the government in debt, destroy businesses, send millions into poverty, hurt individuals futures, increase infant mortality, increase drug use/overdoses, hurt artists and destroy museums, increase suicides, and more.
Don't pull the lever and kill a .01 percent of people above the age of 55 who won't stay quarantined.
I think he thinks pulling the lever is the wrong decision, and he's moving to a place with like minded thinkers.
But these two options seems to be the choices that are being discussed by the media and government.
You're either pro Covid restrictions or you're a granny killer.
I personally think we should quarantine the age 55+ crowd and let the people under 55 go about their business.
The under age 55 group is like 80% of the population who have only 20,000 covid fatalities which is less than car accident fatalities so why are they being locked up?
How do you propose to isolate the > 55 age group when no one younger is isolating? Nurses, doctors, people they live with will be a vector and pass it to them. And the under 55 age group (at .11% IFR) is still not going to want out and blindly get infected as that is still hundreds of thousands of deaths - leading to them avoiding being out in sizable numbers and still causing economic problems.
Most people don't spend money on things/do stuff when they are afraid of dying while doing so. Hundreds of thousands of deaths due to uncontrolled population spread, randomly (nearly) amongst the population is going to cause the economy to crater - and even the possibility of it already did before any lockdowns happened.
The lockdowns just stopped the 25% (guess) of the population that is going to YOLO anyway from causing even more damage. The businesses were still going to get a huge hit regardless.
It's actually a trolley problem within a trolley problem!
The decision whether to ban or approve the vaccines as they were developed was another example. The status quo is to ban vaccines until they meet criteria.
Ban a vaccine for those over 65, avoid the possibility of a side effect 100x than ever experienced (there has never been a vaccine entering phase 1 trials with over 1 in 100,000 expected risk of death).
Allow high risk people to voluntarily take the vaccine, most will work (about 85% of vaccines tested for efficacy succeed).
Society chose to ban the vaccine, killing hundreds of thousands of lives that could have been prevented. This pandemic is effectively solely a problem caused by this decision.
your take is one of the nuttier ones i've seen during the pandemic
"Society chose to ban the vaccine, killing hundreds of thousands of lives that could have been prevented. This pandemic is effectively solely a problem caused by this decision."
you say this of literally the fastest development of a vaccine in the history of our planet. vaccines only work if people take them. people only take them if its safe. (and even when they are safe, anti-vax crowd actively works against uptake).
so your proposal is to give an untested vaccine to the entire planet, because the harms of doing that would be fewer in number in the short term while completely destroying the ability for society to deliver any vaccine in the future.
scenario plan for this: the next pandemic is 10x worse than this one and you blew all of society's goodwill on an untested vaccine this time around. nobody takes vaccine. everyone dies.
Who cares if Musk leaves. Business people hate paying taxes, and they will always where go taxes are lower. They've done this for the last century, and will continue playing the victim despite getting massive bailouts.
Things like this shouldn't new news and/or posted here. It has no relevance.
So when someone leaves an area of low tax/education to high tax/education, seeking economic gain, it's called brain drain. What is it called in this case when it's reversed?
I don't see what's all this fuss about, it's just simple tax "planning" as exercised by the wealthy. I guess the extra billions will make him happier, but it's weird we get attached to such things as money when you have already amassed it so much it doesn't really make a difference.
Elon acknowledges market externalities in that interview to justify government intrusion in the free market to price in the cost of carbon and pollution.
But he doesn’t seem to realize there are other externalities to price in: worker health, education, etc
One of the reasons CA developed as a hot bed of activity was the college system here which provided a ready supply of educated skilled workforce. That’s been supplemented in recent years with people moving here but the genesis started with the great colleges.
Once you admit there are negative externalities that the government has to force companies to “price in” to meet human goals (eg slowing climate change) you can’t just turn around and be a hyper libertarian on every other issue.
Musk is smart enough to extend his reasoning from the environment to other factors.
Indeed environmental regulations are slowing down Gigaberlin, if he were to whine about government required environmental impact reports, he’d be a hypocrite for example.
This is interesting, considering California is the biggest market for electric car in the US. Half of all electric cars sold in the US were sold in California.
Elon doing things like this makes his brand more appealing to conservatives, and thus makes Tesla’s products more appealing to conservatives.
This is important, because for electric trucks to succeed, they have to be appealing to people who are willing to modify their truck engines to burn more gas, for no reason other than to “own the libs.”
By culturally ingratiating himself with conservatives, he’s helping create a bigger market for electric cars than would otherwise exist. I find it obnoxious, but it’s not worth caring about in the context of the dire need to electrify America’s vehicle fleet in a hurry.
The more I think about it - He's moving to Texas so that he can pay less taxes, pay less for employees, and put that money to work with Space X and his other investments. I think he's more interested in rockets than cars these days. I bet he's frustrated that he believes he is a better capital deployer than the state of CA - which is probably true if measured by returns on capital - however that isn't what government is for. Government is, ostensibly, to support the well being of entire populations over generations.
To answer some other questions why people like Elon but not other billionaires. He thinks about things more engineer like, doesn't accept things on face value, has a libertarian bent, doesn't seem to value traditional things that the wealthy are attributed to (read: expansive homes [anymore], yachts, fancy collectibles) and is an unbelievable producer.
It seems any capital he does accumulate he deploys directly into his next venture - which creates jobs, products and tax benefits for states.
I guess he just doesn't want to pay state income tax. Tim Ferriss moved from California to Texas before Uber went public. Joe Rogan moved from California to Texas before he started working with Spotify. Any other relatively well known people that have done the same?
It is my understanding that Michigan completely stopped production during the current crisis.
Looks like they're producing again.
So is Tesla.
You have to weigh a population's death risk vs increasing the net worth of Elon Musk.
I am certainly not a person who believes that because people depend on economic activity, that we should make a cold hard decision and keep production levels up to normal during the crisis.
COVID-19 infection and death rates are up all over the US, so I don't have a good answer for you.
I would be pretty angry if my SO or family worked in a Tesla factory and were forced to work somewhere they are in high danger of being infected, but I guess that's Capitalism.
why is this news? billionaires have been leaving high tax states to low/no tax states for decades. hedge fund managers from nyc would set up shop in florida.
According to Wikipedia, "Musk was severely bullied throughout his childhood and was once hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs."
I have very different perspective, Tesla is predominantly an EV manufacturer, which seems to be what Progressive states like California love and Red states hate. I think from last few months, his statements were always made in a way to please right wing crowd, for instance downplaying Covid and getting into fight with California over lockdown, he wants to appeal to right wing and increase the user base, am I very crazy to think like this?
this is nothing new and has been going on for decades, Texas vs CA is capitalism vs socialism, check who is winning these years. Don't forget CA has the best climate and seashores, otherwise people will flee like hell.
sadly for those liberals who moved to Texas they can wait for one second to make Texas more like CA, the socialism ideology is a life long brain damage with no cure.
What if the cool new thing to do is to set up charitable organizations to voluntarily solve social problems? Example: https://massliberation.net/
The old model of ever-increasing taxes and regulations only furthers the interests of large businesses. They have the scale and reach to use those things as tools to prevent fair competition at the expense of everyone else.
Florida funds itself mostly through tourism taxes, however we also spend much less than CA overall. Just like different people spend different amounts of money, different states do too and need to tax less because of it. CA mostly spends money by paying cops, bart workers, toll booth collectors, etc 100-400k per year whereas Florida pays its government employees market wages.
Relying on tourism tax is an "eggs all in one basket" problem, as I'm sure will be seen this year. Income tax is collecting income from a wide variety of sources (people with different jobs, even if the tourism industry is affected, others might not be).
FWIW, broadly speaking, I'd rather see wealth taxes and estate taxes than income taxes. Income taxes disincentivize work, whereas wealth taxes penalize idleness.
Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines so much that I think we have to ban this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
That story is disputed. Musk himself denies it, and it seems to come from his father, Errol, with whom he has a strained relationship. AFAIK no-one has properly established it it's true or false.
According to wikipedia, 2010 American sales were 256k, 2019 sales were 363k. The high was in 2012 with 438k. There was a dip down to 322k in 2016 (for obvious reasons I would think) and has been going up since. This doesn't seem like game over.
I know right? And you can forget about me buying a car from the country that bombed Pearl Harbor! I'm the sort of guy who holds multigenerational grudges you see. Who cares if all the men involved with that unpleasantness are long out of the picture? When I see a dope smoking hippie driving a Volkswagen Beetle I think to myself 'that car was designed by Hitler, that hippie must surely be a Nazi sympathizer!'
Konrad Zuse was one of the pioneers of computing. He was a German who worked under the Nazis. IBM did a lot of profitable business with the Nazis. You used a device based in part on work done by and for Nazis to post that message, if you posted it from the USA you'll have posted it "from stolen land" according to the more "progressive" elements in society. The clothes you're wearing are probably partly or wholly made through something close to slave labour. That iPhone of yours is made in an authoritarian state, it contains parts which have been made with raw materials from mines in dictatorial countries where children are put to work at a young age. Why would you wear those clothes, use that iPhone, use that computer, live on the "stolen land"?
your entire thesis is more or less: "it happened, get over it?" night doesn't become day in a single instant.
your long list mapping products you use to the horrors of their creation shows that you obviously grok the gravity of the situation.
choosing to be flippant about it just damns you even more.
you could definitely stop buying nazi cars, conflict diamonds, child labor iPhones... pay reparations or return stolen land. you're choosing not to and shouting your choice into the internet expecting everyone to give you kudos for it.
> shows that you obviously grok the gravity of the situation.
The situation is thus: humans are one mean species, capable of great deeds of kindness as well as atrociously horrible deeds of evil. Throughout history people have done both, places where horrible deeds were done - say during the rise of the Mogul empire in India or the Turkish genocides (yes, plural, the Armenian genocide was only the last in a row stretching over a period of almost 40 years) on Christians in the Ottoman empire, the atrocities of the GULAG system in the Soviet Union and probably even during the cultural revolution in Mao's China - also showed people risking their lives to save those who were being persecuted, usually putting those who tried to save people in dire risk themselves.
Many people have learned to live with the knowledge that back in time ranging from centuries to a few decades their ancestors were subjected to annihilation, torture, murder, eradication, extermination, marginalisation... the list goes on. Those people have not forgotten but they generally realise that those who committed the atrocities are long gone and that the currently living generation of their ancestors' persecutors are not to blame for their ancestor's crimes. Those who do not realise this end up in generation-spanning blood feuds and vendettas. Wars were started over such things, leading to even more atrocities, sowing the seeds for yet more wars.
So yes, you can buy a Volkswagen without feeling the need to call it a "Nazi car" just like you can buy a Mitsubishi without calling it a "Jap car", an IBM computer without labelling it a "racist computer", eat a south-African "Outspan" orange without referring to it as an "apartheid orange". You may want to leave that iPhone on the shelves to signal your discontent with the circumstances in which it was produced because that is a problem which is happening right now instead of centuries ago. It is, in other words, something which can be changed in the here and the now. The same goes for that example of conflict diamonds you gave, nobody should buy those or any product they are part of.
Calling Volkswagen a "Nazi car" does not achieve any purpose other than signalling to others that you consider yourself to be virtuous, "not a Nazi", in your own words expecting everyone to give you kudos for it. Most people consider themselves not to be Nazis without needing to call out Volkswagen, Agfa (does that still exist? It was a spin-off from IG-Farben), Mercedes or Thyssen-Krupp. That does not mean those people are not aware of the history of those companies, it just means they can separate the past from the present. It does not mean they condone the crimes committed by those companies, it just means they realise that Volkswagen in 2020 is run by different people, with different goals, different outlooks on life, staffed by different people than it was back when Hitler and Porsche came with the first "Volkswagen" (people's car).
It's easy to say "strict regulations that stunted opportunity for growth" when you are a billionaire and don't need the protections which are meant to protect normal working class people.
While I admire Elon's vision, I'm not a huge fan of how he's going about it. Kind of seems like he views other human beings as tools to be used and discarded when they've outlived their usefulness. You can see it when he makes comments about things like the US being "entitled" - yes Elon, US workers expect to be treated like humans... we shouldn't be striving to recreate the slave labor conditions of the industrial revolution...
No, I really do think people in the US are massively entitled. I've lived in 3rd world countries and the standard of living even for a minimum wage worker is so beyond that of a poor person in a third world country (like Tanzania or Kenya, for example). People in the US are lucky, and yet, all everyone does is complain and bitch all the time. I think most Americans lack perspective and are ungrateful for what they have.
Porque no los dos? (in keeping with the discussion about latinos above)
I posit that both are true:
1) US workers have shitty protections
2) Americans are ungrateful, lack perspective and are entitled. They don't understand when a pack of immigrants from wherever smuggle themselves in a container or coyote or what-have-you, and live for years together 10 people to an apartment to save up a little money to send home.
So we should be thankful to the 1 percent of the 1 percent for sharing bread crumbs from the proverbial money pie in this society? Genuinely dislike this sort of mindset. I’m a Kenyan who grew up and lives in the US as my parents immigrated here almost 25 years ago. Normal people work just as hard as Mr Musk if not harder — my immigrants parents worked near to death to provide for me and taught me the value of education and hard work. Normal people aren’t asking for handouts. Kenya has its good and bad but the US is an incredibly wealthy country. We can do a lot better.
Let me rephrase your comment. It says the exact same thing you do:
>"You have it better than poor people in third world countries, stop complaining about worker abuses you below the poverty line minimum wage people, you should be grateful. Yes since 1970 you're wealth has stagnated or decreased and the top earners have massively increased their share of the pie, but you should be grateful.!!"
I actually stopped reading after the statement "[minimum wage] Americans are ungrateful, lack perspective and are entitled". Because a statement like that is kinda toxic and doesn't help anyone but the top 1% who've hoarded all the gains over the last few decades. Reading the rest now, I'm actually even more displeased at the poster's take. While it's very true some minimum wage earning americans are not understanding or hostile to immigration, this person seems to be wanting to stir trouble among groups of people who have the least in america. Immigrants and minimum wage workers both get the short end of the stick.
Telling a minimum wage worker who likely can't afford rent and are probably below the poverty line, they should be grateful because there's "starving children in africa" sounds patronizing, entitled, lacking empathy, and does no help anyone. It does not help the minimum wage worker or people in the other countries.
In America, the top one percent holds over $25 trillion in wealth, exceeding the wealth of the bottom 80 percent. That other people have it worse than the bottom of the 80 percent is only to distract from that bigger issue.
Well, they shouldn't be. You don't just complain and bitch. You won't solve anything like that. And I'm not talking about Americans here, that applies to everybody.
Tantrums are OK when you're a kid, once you grow up you're expected to do better.
So your solution is we should move the US BACKWARDS instead of finding ways to bring EVERYONE forward? People in the US bitch for good reason - the income gap has increased exponentially. Wages have stagnated. Just because people in the US have it "better than the third world" doesn't mean the wealth collection at the very top is in any way justified or sustainable.
before trump we used to do this thing called try to cajole other countries into having labor laws. something the TPP would have helped with, for example. MAGA amirite?
No, you're not. When was TPP going to involve China, or the UAA? In fact, TPP could just as well be used to avoid other types of punitive tariff. foei also opposed TPP [0], does that mean they are oppose labour-law improvements too?
And why are you so confident TPP would help with labour laws anyway? What said, and what's done across international borders often differs a lot. Blaming Trump as if something was lost is pretending there where ever guarantees of success.
Claiming some complex legislation would "have helped with" poor foreign labour laws while actively benefitting them anyway is pretty weak.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359144&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359144&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359144&p=4
(This message will eventually self-destruct.)