'Companies Are Fleeing California. Blame Bad Government.' (bloomberg.com) 497
Bloomberg Editorial Board: Amid raging wildfires, rolling blackouts and a worsening coronavirus outbreak, it has not been a great year for California. Unfortunately, the state is also reeling from a manmade disaster: an exodus of thriving companies to other states. In just the past few months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it was leaving for Houston. Oracle said it would decamp for Austin. Palantir, Charles Schwab and McKesson are all bound for greener pastures. No less an information-age avatar than Elon Musk has had enough. He thinks regulators have grown "complacent" and "entitled" about the state's world-class tech companies. No doubt, he has a point. Silicon Valley's high-tech cluster has been the envy of the world for decades, but there's nothing inevitable about its success. As many cities have found in recent years, building such agglomerations is exceedingly hard, as much art as science. Low taxes, modest regulation, sound infrastructure and good education systems all help, but aren't always sufficient. Once squandered, moreover, such dynamism can't easily be revived. With competition rising across the U.S., the area's policy makers need to recognize the dangers ahead.
In recent years, San Francisco has seemed to be begging for companies to leave. In addition to familiar failures of governance -- widespread homelessness, inadequate transit, soaring property crime -- it has also imposed more idiosyncratic hindrances. Far from welcoming experimentation, it has sought to undermine or stamp out home-rental services, food-delivery apps, ride-hailing firms, electric-scooter companies, facial-recognition technology, delivery robots and more, even as the pioneers in each of those fields attempted to set up shop in the city. It tried to ban corporate cafeterias -- a major tech-industry perk -- on the not-so-sound theory that this would protect local restaurants. It created an "Office of Emerging Technology" that will only grant permission to test new products if they're deemed, in a city bureaucrat's view, to provide a "net common good." Whatever the merits of such meddling, it's hardly a formula for unbounded inventiveness.
These two traits -- poor governance and animosity toward business -- have collided calamitously with respect to the city's housing market. Even as officials offered tax breaks for tech companies to headquarter themselves downtown, they mostly refused to lift residential height limits, modify zoning rules or allow significant new construction to accommodate the influx of new workers. They then expressed shock that rents and home prices were soaring -- and blamed the tech companies. California's legislature has only made matters worse. A bill it enacted in 2019, ostensibly intended to protect gig workers, threatened to undo the business models of some of the state's biggest tech companies until voters granted them a reprieve in a November referendum. A new privacy law has imposed immense compliance burdens -- amounting to as much as 1.8% of state output in 2018 -- while conferring almost no consumer benefits. An 8.8% state corporate tax rate and 13.3% top income-tax rate (the nation's highest) haven't helped.
In recent years, San Francisco has seemed to be begging for companies to leave. In addition to familiar failures of governance -- widespread homelessness, inadequate transit, soaring property crime -- it has also imposed more idiosyncratic hindrances. Far from welcoming experimentation, it has sought to undermine or stamp out home-rental services, food-delivery apps, ride-hailing firms, electric-scooter companies, facial-recognition technology, delivery robots and more, even as the pioneers in each of those fields attempted to set up shop in the city. It tried to ban corporate cafeterias -- a major tech-industry perk -- on the not-so-sound theory that this would protect local restaurants. It created an "Office of Emerging Technology" that will only grant permission to test new products if they're deemed, in a city bureaucrat's view, to provide a "net common good." Whatever the merits of such meddling, it's hardly a formula for unbounded inventiveness.
These two traits -- poor governance and animosity toward business -- have collided calamitously with respect to the city's housing market. Even as officials offered tax breaks for tech companies to headquarter themselves downtown, they mostly refused to lift residential height limits, modify zoning rules or allow significant new construction to accommodate the influx of new workers. They then expressed shock that rents and home prices were soaring -- and blamed the tech companies. California's legislature has only made matters worse. A bill it enacted in 2019, ostensibly intended to protect gig workers, threatened to undo the business models of some of the state's biggest tech companies until voters granted them a reprieve in a November referendum. A new privacy law has imposed immense compliance burdens -- amounting to as much as 1.8% of state output in 2018 -- while conferring almost no consumer benefits. An 8.8% state corporate tax rate and 13.3% top income-tax rate (the nation's highest) haven't helped.
Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Interesting)
And look at the list of companies name dropped:
HPE: a shambling zombie with the name of a once great organisation. A very tainted name, shrinking revenues, and very enterprisey.
Oracle: it's like evil personified as Larry Ellison. Managed to raise the ire of he entire tech industry by trying to destroy it with lawsuits.
Companies with such a pisspoor reputation in a tech hub are going to have a real job attracting good employees. No wonder they want to move somewhere cheaper. That will surely help them be less crap.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:3)
And let's not forget Palantir.
The lovechild of all totalitarian governments.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Bloomberg is one of the reasonably solid news agencies. They have the odd few political pieces in there to keep readers to the left or right happy, but when it comes to business, they're usually fairly impartial and quite insightful.
I've got friends who've moved out of the Bay Area and taken their businesses with them due to exactly the issues mentioned, and they moved in some very interesting circles.. So while it's not a "smoking gun", I'm reading this as strongly correlated to what I'm hearing from people directly involved with the matter, so it definitely has the goods..
You've not said what evidence you have for disagreeing; being the 5th largest economy isn't evidence of anything apart from it currently being the 5th largest economy. That can change fast is the ecosystem is not conducive to working well. CA clamps down on when it perceives something adversely affecting the population. This is a subjective lens, not an objective one in the large part these days, so what it clamps down on, in many cases isn't actually adverse.
As with all things, there's a point where people have just "Had enough" and will actually take the effort to do something to remedy a situation they find problematic (that's part of the art of governing; you're not there to be popular, you're there to be sensible enough that though people may grumble at you, they see sense in what you're doing, so grudgingly admit you've got a point, or you've not done something stupid enough to warrant great effort on the part of populace to fix, or get out of situations created; California governance seems to have stepped across a few lines in the last few years).
It doesn't necessarily mean that CA has big problems now (or even in the future). It has the potential to be very bad if not addressed, and the local/State government carry on believing they know best and everyone else is wrong. Most things that work are a compromise. If CA is not going to compromise, then it stands a small chance of actually ending up as some kind of utopia, and a large chance of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
Currently, it fits with what I'm seeing, but as to where it will eventually lead, there are way too many variables to predict. It is, however, a bit of a wake up call to those in Government, and a reminder that they do need to address practicalities as well as blue sky ideas.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
I think reality tells a different story:
As noted above, CA is the 5th biggest economy in the WORLD at this point. If you went back 50 years and asked anyone in politics then if they thought CA would be where it is now, they'd have probably laughed.
And unfortunately, that's the sort of time-frame you need in order to plan for massive growth. You can't retroactively build public transportation very easily. You can't easily re-zone and order businesses or families to move.
I agree that CA could have done a bit better, but I don't think they could have really understood how fast the state would grow, and how large it would get. And even if some people had seen that vision, it's doubtful that the majority of politicians or even the public would have supported the radical changes and massive up-front investments that the state would have needed to prevent all the current issues.
They would have needed to be building subways and light rail lines out into the boonies where nobody lived. Lots of people would look at that and scream waste and fraud, even if 20-30 years later it turned out to be exactly what the area needed.
They would have needed to design cities with a vision for them to rapidly expend and essentially merge. That means city-to-city transportation hubs built before there's a demand, because once you fill in the space between the cities with suburbs, building infrastructure becomes nearly impossible.
Hindsight is always 20-20, and urban planning is not easy. I think far more cities around the world have struggled with growing pains than have grown into a well designed, functional, mature existence.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, as long as the real world works like a Sim City game.
Just hope you have the Godzilla mode turned off.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that's not obvious to the general populace. They see their taxes being spent on nothing that will benefit them, while lots of things that would benefit them remain unfunded. It's not like there is infinite money - when you prioritize building infrastructure out into the boonies, you're neglecting to do something closer to home for the people currently paying taxes, and who's votes you need to stay in office.
Elected officials are only elected officials as long as they don't piss off too many of their constituents.
WW2 and the Cold War (Score:3)
The Cold War was also enormously profitable for CA.
Steve Blank's "The Secret History of Silicon Valley" lecture is very informative and interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It also explains why some other efforts to replicate the Silicon Valley somewhere else have not succeeded on the same scale.
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Personally, I lost a LOT of respect for Bloomberg when they published that claptrap about Supermicro boards having Chinese spy hardware on them, complete with generic photos of a plain old resistor pack meant to convince the less knowledgeable. Funny thing, nobody could verify any of it in spite of claims that would definitely leave physical evidence.
As for the rest, clearly there are problems in CA. I'm sure various governments have done some bone-headed things because all governments at least occasionally
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It's because California is the gateway between the Asian export markets and the US consumer market, and because California is big. California is the 5th largest economy because of where it sits and how much land it has. The New York City Metropolitan area alone is $1.6T compared to the entire state of California's $3T economy. Combine two nearby cities to New York, Philadelphia ($500B) and Boston ($500B), and those 3 cities alone nearly equal the entire State of California's economy, and that doesn't count the dozens of smaller cities around. So it's a false equivalency to say California's economy is so big; you can't compare New York State, a much smaller state, to California's economy, but when you group equivalent land and population from the East Coast across several states to make rough equivalency to California, then California's economy is not that big by comparison.
So California is now the 5th largest economy only because of the drawing of State lines. And then it's because it's on the West Coast, across the Pacific from Asia, which has 1) Japan, a larger economy than California and primarily an export market, 2) South Korea, a vast manufacturing hub, 3) China, the world's 2nd largest national economy, 4) Taiwan, the source of the majority of semiconductor chips among many other things, and 5) Southeast Asia, 16 nations who all have growing economies looking to do sell to the US markets. So by virtue of where California just happens to sit, it is naturally the point of engagement of all of Asia for the US economy, and thus has a large economy.
California is the 5th largest economy despite what the California government does. It's more likely that it'd be a lot bigger and better if California was governed better.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, California is huge. 39 million people, it has the largest population of any US state. So naturally a giant chunk of the US economy comes from California. It is a net exporter of tax dollars, giving more to the feds in taxes than it gets back, thus helping prop up the poorer states. It has a wide variety of industries, it's not just Hollywood and Silicon Valley, it's is also a major agricultural region, a major tourist destination, it has manufacturing large and small, world class universities, major science labs, defense contractors, and so forth.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
You're forgetting the biggest element: Education.
CA invested a shitload of money into education, including free in-state tuition to state universities for decades (until Reagan ended it). That resulted in a much higher concentration of world-class universities than you would typically find in a state.
On example of how that education investment paid off is education caused Silicon Valley to exist. It was the concentration of highly-educated workers caused by Stanford, UC Berkley and several other universities in the area that caused companies like XEROX to open campuses there, and the confluence of those research- and research-oriented companies and the universities is what made Silicon Valley.
All the people looking at taxes and housing prices and stop there are ignoring the big thing that made it all work. As a result, most of them have been failing for decades to create a mini-Silicon Valley in their states. The only successful ones have been places like RTP that made education a huge part of the effort.
So by virtue of where California just happens to sit, it is naturally the point of engagement of all of Asia for the US economy, and thus has a large economy.
The "GDP" isn't booked where the goods enter the US. Plus OR and WA have ports too.
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Real estate and government services (all totaled about 50%)
Who knew that 12 and 17 added up to 50. Or did you mean to provide a different link that actually backed up your claim?
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IT seems those in charge in CA are trying to void that status as hard as they can.
Bad policies, in conjunction with the pandemic and their forced shutdown of business, many of which will not survive to come back....will likely start to take it's toll on said economy.
I just hope with all the folks moving from CA to TX....those folks remember WHY they left and don't come to TX and other states and ruin them too by voting in failed policies they left
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. They're effectively a "country" partly funded and supported by the other 300 million taxpayers living in the rest of the actual country.
California currently contributes nearly exactly as much in federal taxes as it receives in federal expenditures, ie roughly break-even. This is a very recent development and was driven more by federal tax policy (eg the massive Trump-era tax cuts) than anything to do with California specifically. Historically, CA has been a massive net contributor to the Federal coffers, while eg Kentucky gets back more than 2.5x what they pay in.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
You are mistaken. [businessinsider.com]
California's balance of payments is -$13.7 billion. This means California residents get less in return than they pay for. However, Iowa has a balance of payments of $2.5 billion, meaning Iowa residents receive $2.5 billion more in federal services than what they pay in taxes.
It might vary a little by year. California isn't screwed as bad per capita as places like New York, Massachusetts, and a bunch of other "blue" states. In general, "red" states get more income from federal spending than they lose through federal taxes, yet they tend to have the politicians that complain the loudest about "blue" states.
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CA's water comes from CA.
AZ built an aqueduct to the Colorado River decades ago, upstream from CA's aqueduct. Phoenix now takes most of that water, leaving Southern CA to get most of its water from Northern CA.
As for electricity: First I'm sure operators outside of CA would like to continue to receive money from CA. Who else they gonna sell to?
Second, CA actually has tons of empty space. None of it is on the coast, so very few people live there. But if CA suddenly found itself needing electricity genera
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
People take the best option that the system in place presents to them.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Every one of them has built their business on shady practices. Uber did it by undermining taxis who were required to follow a set of regulations which increased their cost; Uber just didn't follow them and kept the cost low. On top of that, Uber cannot profit even with the very low prices they have, so they are doing their best to turn to autonomous cars so they can eliminate the gig worker and keep all of the ride revenue. Door dash couldn't justify a higher price for their delivery service and couldn't turn a profit on their lower end, so they dipped into the tip jar of their drivers.
Not a single one of these companies is profitable nor do they ahve a path to profitability unless they eliminate the "sharing" in their sharing economy model. So ultimately they are exploiting workers with sub-standard labor practices (the contractor vs. employee debate) until they can automate their way to eliminating them and dumping them on the street. There is nothing innovative about these companies, and they are nothing but exploitative.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
"The other option is to get a full time job doing what you've studied to do, and gained either years of experience or solid qualifications in, join the rat-race and put effort into that. "
Few talk about this, but what about the dumb people. Not special needs people. Just people who are plain dumb. Not everyone is capable of learning a complex skill, spend years studying, or able to get experience in many fields. Some also have criminal records that prevents them from most "rat-race" jobs. All those people need something productive to do, or they will find something unproductive to do.
I'm all for educating the population. The more educated a population is, the more likely they get skills that allows them to get decent jobs, not create havoc, and not resort to crime. That said, some just aren't cut out to work those jobs. And if we don't find a place for them, they will and we likely won't like what they end up with.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everyone is capable of learning a complex skill, spend years studying, or able to get experience in many fields.
My yard dude makes over $25 an hour, which isn't a fortune but it's a decent and very honest living. The work isn't particularly demanding physically, and he didn't need a 4 year degree of any kind. I know people that make a decent living cleaning businesses in the evenings. For all those types of work, one does have to commit to and keep a schedule without exception.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
That "yard dude" is easily displaced by illegal labor. That is the irony of the politicians from these states being so lenient on illegal immigration and the citizenry who don't appear to care and keep voting them in. Those jobs that require little formal education or training are precisely those that these "dumb" citizens will be crowded out of. And given the seemingly endless supply of illegals, those salaries are in a race to the bottom. The illegals will take what they can get while those "dumb" folks that you mention above will wind up on the dole or take up a life of crime.
Simple supply and demand.
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The illegals will take what they can get while those "dumb" folks that you mention above will wind up on the dole or take up a life of crime. That is the irony of the politicians from these states being so lenient on illegal immigration and the citizenry who don't appear to care and keep voting them in. Those jobs that require little formal education or training are precisely those that these "dumb" citizens will be crowded out of. And given the seemingly endless supply of illegals, those salaries are in a race to the bottom.
"Dumb" is your word not theirs or mine, and excluding immigrants doesn't fix the underlying problem. You just want to blame another group of people instead of dealing with decreasing demand for unskilled labor and social programs to help.
West Virginia and Maine have among the lowest numbers of illegal immigrants, and they aren't getting coal mine and paper mill jobs back.
Take a list of states by GDP sorted low to high, and a list of states by number of immigrants low to high, looks similar don't it? So co
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That may work in some places, but if you take a look at rent in the SF area, that would put him in the working homeless category.
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My yard dude makes over $25 an hour, which isn't a fortune but it's a decent and very honest living.
Not in Southern California it's not. Shit, I live in Houston where real estate is DIRT cheap, and $50k/yr would let you rent a house in an iffy neighborhood at best.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:3)
That thought immediately came to mind, the GP is stupid for offering that as a reason to not build up. Japan has taller buildings than anything you'll find in California, plus worse earthquakes, and yet they still manage to have a more reliable infrastructure and power grid. Really Japan doesn't have any special engineering capability not found in California, rather it's more a case of California's politics getting in the way, especially the NIMBYs.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:3)
No, it needs people to operate ditch digging machinery, which requires skills and qualifications that the dumb people we're talking about don't have.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of options. The Gig economy is often take by people who want the flexibility to do what they want for a large segment of the year, and have something to come back to and earn their keep when they're "home".
It was never intended to provide a career, or offer advancement (because by its very nature, it's a transient job with a skillset that can be immediately picked up and put down at a moment's notice).
The other option is to get a full time job doing what you've studied to do, and gained either years of experience or solid qualifications in, join the rat-race and put effort into that. It's a reasonably inflexible option, and misses the advantages of the gig economy, but does provide a much higher stability and predictability for those that choose it.
Many people choose what they think is best for them. This doesn't mean it necessarily is for arbitrary time frames, but it's what they choose.
The article, and many posters here, overlook the fact many take a gig due to lack of viable alternatives. The gig economy has managed to destroy a good-sized segment of the traditional job market, especially at the entry-level. Where once a "starter" job was an introduction to employment, a means of building experience, and the start of a resume, the gig economy is very much a dead-end, at least at present. It has not been around long enough to grow the required structures that would make a "gig" an acceptable and recognized stepping stone when apply for other employment options.
LIkely gig is part of the transition from tradtional work to whatever the "new" work reality is becoming. It is succeeding right now because the best and most attractive advantages to gig work, from an employer prospective, are much lower costs, and far fewer legal obligations, compared to tradtional employment models.
Gig work is first and foremost explotive, hiding behind a myth of "innovation".
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
With the forced shut downs....most all starter jobs, which are usually in food service or other service industry....are going to be gone for a long time.
Lockdowns killed jobs for people like this.
They could have come up with better and more civil ways to allow businesses to open much earlier, but no...now these businesses are gone, many for good.
Funny how they didn't try to enforce laws against mass gatherings during the riots and "peaceful protests" for BLM and Antifa...yet, they put people in jail for merely trying to open their hair salons where they were all masked, etc.
They never explained this...why it was safe to "peacefully protest", but not open your business using full safety protocols?
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes complete sense if the end game is to increase your "base" of a helpless underclass that's completely dependent on the largesse of the government. They'll vote for whoever will claim to keep food on their table while resenting the gig economy hipsters driving around in their Teslas that pay for all of it though income tax, property tax, sales tax. The flight of people and capital from California is the result of those that are taxed to pay for this largesse getting tired of being on the merry-go-round and leaving. It's only a matter of time before the fit hits the shan. The violence in the streets you've been seeing lately is just the beginning.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Interesting)
With the forced shut downs....most all starter jobs, which are usually in food service or other service industry....are going to be gone for a long time.
Lockdowns killed jobs for people like this.
Not inherently, though. It takes more people to run a fast food restaurant serving people exclusively through the drive-through line as it does to serve them inside the store.
For a great example, go to a Chick-Fil-A some time. Before the coronavirus pandemic, I think they usually had only about six people doing order taking — four inside and two at the drive-through. Now, they have four people per drive-through lane (at least on high-volume days), with two people taking orders and two people taking payment, plus all the people working inside, plus people running back and forth to the second drive-through lane with food, plus at least one or two people directing traffic. Added up, that's at least fourteen workers, not counting the people doing the cooking, i.e. more than twice as many.
What you're actually seeing is that restaurants are choosing to outsource to GrubHub et al rather than spending the effort required to maintain similar levels of service during the pandemic on their own. If they did the work themselves, they would be staffing up, not down. And I would argue that those businesses likely would have outsourced more and more and cut staff more and more over time anyway; the pandemic likely just accelerated things.
Basically, you can tell the difference between companies that care about their workers and companies that are run by sociopaths who care only about profits by looking at which businesses have more employees now than a year ago, rather than fewer. If you want to encourage the former behavior, it's really easy. Just frequent the businesses that didn't do what you're describing. They exist.
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Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the last option left to them to keep them from homelessness and starvation / living in the woods like the Unabomber. So much free choice!
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:3)
It's ok, now there won't be jobs at all.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the last option left to them to keep them from homelessness and starvation
Homelessness by state [statista.com]
Homelessness is worst in blue states: DC, New York, California, Oregon, Massachusetts.
The states with the least are red: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama.
Nanny states don't prevent homelessness. They cause it.
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This could be true if homeless people were prevented from leaving their state. I know California would like that!
The notion that after people become homeless they migrate to California is a myth. It's something Californians tell themselves so they don't have to take responsibility for a problem of their own making.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Informative)
California certainly has a sizable homegrown homelessness problem, but a decent fraction of their homeless people either became homeless within a few years of moving there, or moved there after becoming homeless:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/1... [nytimes.com]
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Informative)
Did you look at page 24 of that same presentation? It shows that a full fifth of California's homeless population came from outside the state, and that an eighth of those who became homeless from within the state had been living there for less than a year.
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It shows that a full fifth of California's homeless population came from outside the state
Half of California's non-homeless population came from outside the state.
an eighth of those who became homeless from within the state had been living there for less than a year.
Why do people become homeless after moving to California?
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Oh, a silly word game. Well who's to say that all the people who reported that they lived in California before becoming homeless didn't move to another state, and then become homeless, and then move back to California? Checkmate!
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The LAHSA uses this wording in their reports every year. Place of residence before becoming homeless refers to the last home the person lived in. That's straightforward and logical. Stop being obtuse.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Blue states are more apt to report homelessness
The homelessness rate is not based on government self-reporting. The data is collected by independent researchers.
Red states have fewer barriers to employment, fewer barriers to housing construction, and fewer barriers to cheap ad hoc housing.
Want to put a camper trailer in your backyard for your unemployed brother-in-law? No problem in Mississippi. Illegal in California.
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Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Not in the summertime, you wouldn't.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Red states also have fewer cities and lower population density, which is what people need to survive if they're going to be homeless, whether it be through panhandling or shelters and other support structures. Not many homeless people can survive in the Rockies. It's not about red government vs. blue government, it's about urban environments being blue and so more urban environment means you are a "blue state."
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in the end, they are worse off. of course
No they aren't. Here is a list US States by Income Inequality [wikipedia.org]. Blue states are the most unequal. DC and New York are the worst. California is also near the bottom. The most equal states are red.
Anti-business doesn't mean pro-citizen. Quite the opposite. Thriving businesses build homes and employ people.
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Actually, lots of homeless people end up transitioning to democratic-leaning states because they offer handouts and protections
This assertion is not supported by evidence.
Where Does California’s Homeless Population Come From? [nytimes.com]
Homeless people are no more likely to be from out-of-state than the general population.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
If people are working for sub-livable wages, then they're just acting as a middleman in an unorganized corporate welfare scheme, and your Protestant work ethic feels have no value to society. I say it's better to eliminate their job and pay them welfare in a direct and organized way in that case.
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're correct, then this economy requires almost literal wage slaves supported through informal channels be provided to corporations in order to function, does that sound healthy and ethical to you?
Re: Says bloomberg (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nobody forces people to work for the gig economy. Gig workers know what they are signing up for."
Nobody forces people to send their children to work in the textile mills. Parents/guardians know what they are signing their children up for. Child labor laws are unconscionable interference by the State in private economic transactions.
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Re: Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
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If it was just capitalism at work, as you claim, then no laws would be required.
Laws were required. And were passed while child labor was still extremely common. And those laws did actually starve a lot of extremely poor children, leading to people ignoring those child labor laws for quite a long time.
Re:Says bloomberg (Score:5, Informative)
Crowded and expensive are two signs that people want to live there.
But California isn't crowded at all. Even "crowded" San Francisco's density (6,632 per sq km) is well below London (10,374), Barcelona (15,926), etc.
Re:Says bloomberg (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you're going to have an office with 5,000 people in it, you cannot have a population density that draws the entire population of a 10km x 10 km (6mi x 6 mi) grid. The commutes are unbearable.
Re:Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
But what California has going for it are certain industries that thrive there based in part on the strength of the local universities, and finance/banking. You just don’t have that everywhere.
Re:Says bloomberg (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that a business utopia is a human dystopia, for all the humans who aren't in upper management at those companies. To almost all of the people who live in SF, these companies leaving may not be a bug, but a feature. And overall this reduction in geographic income concentration will be good for the US.
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EXACTLY.
Businesses have only one mandate: create value for shareholders.
They aren't tasked with treating their employees humanely; they aren't tasked with keeping the environment habitable; they aren't tasked with ensuring that any part of the world other than their profitability, improves over time.
An environment where businesses are happy, will be an environment where people are miserable and exploited.
This is why government exists. Ideally it's su
Re: (Score:3)
bears repeating:
"An environment where businesses are happy, will be an environment where people are miserable and exploited."
those are very true words. they needed to be repeated.
this is how it is in the US. if you coddle to 'companies' you have, by definition, slighted your employees.
you have to choose which side you are on.
[almanac-singers]
I know which side I am on.
[/almanac-singers]
Re:Says bloomberg (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it doesn't bear repeating because that is just a idiotic generality as saying all people in a communist country are fools because apparently they support communism. I believe that most business's actually try to do the right thing, it is the asinine companies like Oracle that get all the bad press. I am sorry that you apparently can't pick a good company to work for, but just because you can't seem to find them doesn't mean they don't exist. Hell, I have been doing this for 25+ years and worked for several different organizations and all but one were good to their people and looked out for the general welfare of the geo-location around them. Am I single data point, nope. All of my friends are the same.
Re:Says bloomberg (Score:4, Insightful)
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My point isn't about business but personal freedom.
The left have taken over and are destroying the state and anyone that dares to not vocally agree with their radical social agenda.
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Let's not forget the riots too...and poor response (Score:3, Insightful)
That combined with COVID and all....seems a good time to leave to greener, cheaper pastures.
If this keeps up, the larger cities like this will have trouble comning back and may be Detroit like for at least awhile, where the only ones left in the city, are those that are too poor to afford to leave.
Regulation has two sides (Score:3, Insightful)
It should be noted if it wasn't for Californias "draconian regulation" the city would still be covered in a shroud of carbon monoxide and smog.
There are two sides to this. There's a quality of life thing, and there's a corporations-need-to-make-as-much-profit-as-possible thing.
Who in their right mind wants to live in Houston? It's it's own kind of shithole that in no way is an improvement over California.
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Re:Regulation has two sides (Score:5, Interesting)
How much time do you have? I lived there. I also lived in Dallas and numerous other cities.
It's nothing more than a hollow, flat piece of dusty ground (with no real natural beauty) where corporations drop their headquarters in order to avoid corporate income tax, and even in that scenario, they still go out of their way to hide their money.
The whole region is full of turnpikes and toll roads. Because the city can't afford to maintain the highways because they aren't collecting enough taxes, so they've privatized this stuff and contrary to what people think, privatization costs a lot more than public handling of streets.
Everywhere you look, the area is just a large swath of vapid strip malls and urban sprawl. At least twice a day the traffic is virtually impossible. Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc... they're so spread out there are people who live in the same city, that can't visit each other without an hour car ride, and thus even though they live in the same area, they might as well be on other sides of the country. The weather is shitty and boring. There are water problems. There's a huge homeless population in Texas as well. It's just a splat of condo & apartment complexes and pseudo-upscale homes each with their own Hitler-esque HOA. Texas has its own gang problems too.
And on the weekends, all these Texans drive out of their state to find someplace nice they can fuck up. Nowadays they're aggressively shitting on Arkansas, causing the Covid rate to spike.
Re:Regulation has two sides (Score:4, Informative)
How much time do you have? I lived there. I also lived in Dallas and numerous other cities.
It's nothing more than a hollow, flat piece of dusty ground (with no real natural beauty) where corporations drop their headquarters in order to avoid corporate income tax, and even in that scenario, they still go out of their way to hide their money.
If you think the ground is dusty in Houston, you clearly have not lived there.
The whole region is full of turnpikes and toll roads. Because the city can't afford to maintain the highways because they aren't collecting enough taxes, so they've privatized this stuff and contrary to what people think, privatization costs a lot more than public handling of streets.
Cities in Texas do not pay for or maintain highways. That's done by the state or federal government. Houston has not privatized the building or maintenance of city streets.
Everywhere you look, the area is just a large swath of vapid strip malls and urban sprawl. At least twice a day the traffic is virtually impossible. Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc... they're so spread out there are people who live in the same city, that can't visit each other without an hour car ride, and thus even though they live in the same area, they might as well be on other sides of the country.
Dallas and Houston are the 4th and 5th largest metros in the US, so of course there's traffic and sprawl. The question is whether it's worse than LA or the bay area. The fact is, commute times in both Houston and Dallas are slightly shorter than in LA or the bay area. [businessinsider.com]
There's a huge homeless population in Texas as well.
There is indeed a homeless problem in Texas, but it is utterly dwarfed by the homeless problem in California. [usich.gov]
Texas has its own gang problems too.
California's violent crime rate is 9% higher than Texas. [usatoday.com]
And on the weekends, all these Texans drive out of their state to find someplace nice they can fuck up. Nowadays they're aggressively shitting on Arkansas, causing the Covid rate to spike.
LOL, sure. Whatever you say.
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Those "draconian regulations" were done many decades ago.
What you are seeing now is the result of "draconian regulations" not stopping at the sensible stuff, and now going full out retard mode.
Re:Regulation has two sides (Score:5, Informative)
Who in their right mind wants to live in Houston?
If you read TFS, the third sentence says HP Enterprise wants to live in Houston.
It's it's own kind of shithole that in no way is an improvement over California.
Houston's cost of living is 52% lower than San Francisco and 35% lower than LA.
Houston has about 4K homeless, the Bay Area has 7 times that, and LA county has 16 times that.
Houston has better air quality than either LA or San Francisco.
The median price of a home in Houston is about $250K, the median home price in San Francisco is over 5 times that.
The average size of a home in Houston is ~50% larger than a home in San Francisco.
Taxes in Houston and in Texas are significantly lower than in California.
You may not think these things are an improvement over California, but pretty much everyone else does.
What "shithole" city do you live in? How does it compare to Houston?
Oh no (Score:3)
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
Not fearing for long term health is how you eventually end up near the bottom and sitting around wondering what happened. Not fearing for long term health is why we have so many problems in this state right now.
Re:Oh no (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world is just terrified.
Everything works until it doesn't. Detroit in the early 60s had nothing to worry about ...
Meddling or some much-needed regulation? (Score:2)
It created an "Office of Emerging Technology" that will only grant permission to test new products if they're deemed, in a city bureaucrat's view, to provide a "net common good"
Wow... that sounds like something straight out of Atlas Shrugged. Is it really that bad though? First off, this only applies to testing things in and around public areas. They review things like impact, safety, mostly to ensure that there's no chaos like the e-scooter trials. 2 things that I would worry about: first, the mandatory public hearings, which usually are pointless whine-fests, and exactly the thing you don't want during the trial stage. By all means get public opinion afterwards though. Sec
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Yes, it's really that bad. It presupposes that a city bureaucrat would know the uses technology would adapt to, and what people would eventually use it for (it's not always obvious even to the people that create the tools).
There are already safety departments and the like, so anything being created would already have to meet the criteria for those aspects. And California is hideously risk averse (try getting anything without a "May cause cancer" warning or some such).
I have a friend who was well connected
They'll be replaced (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't last. As the Californians flood into Texas and run into the same problems California had with rampant employee abuse they'll turn the state blue.
Progress is a slow and steady but it does happen and ultimately you can't stop it. As for further outsourcing have no fear, if they could've done that they wouldn't be moving the jobs to Texas in the first place.
Meme pumping (Score:3)
40 years of constantly pumping the "government is broken... government is the problem... we must destroy government" meme has resulted in a sorting into areas which bought into that malicious falsehood and those that didn't. By every measure of human progress those that resisted the Reaganaut siren song have done far better than those that bought into it - so now the meme pumper are starting a second round attempting to tear down the successful areas.
"Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded." - attributed to Yogi Berra
" “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.
Shocked, I asked him what he meant.
“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press." - Steve Bannon, Republican Party strategist [thedailybeast.com]
these look like 'alternative fact' based stmnts (Score:3, Insightful)
These two traits -- poor governance and animosity toward business
its 100% the opposite. we are not (I live here, fwiw) 'making things hard' for business - unless you mean to say that following simple human rights, compassion and courtesy is 'making things hard'.
do you mean you want the right to pollute? to force people back to work in covid conditions? to muck with their benefit? to slow things down? how about we talk voter suppression?
all those are calif things? really? those are red state things, generally.
cali is employee friendly, in terms of it being SAFER to work here than most places that are run by red-controlled political parties. if you call that 'anti business', I guess you can - but its not an intellectually honest position to take and it speaks poorly of you if you sincerely believe that crap.
I want to be able to sue my employer if they really do bad things. just as one example. call me crazy, if you must, to have those requirements on the place that I live and work. if that's 'crazy' to you, yup, we're all crazy here ;)
Re:these look like 'alternative fact' based stmnts (Score:5, Insightful)
Good grief, this isn't about safety. Its just plain numbers. Why would any company want to pay, way more in taxes, when they could simply go to another state? It simple business. I'm assuming by your response, you've never owned your own business. Believe it or not most business owners don't want to pollute, and such.
I have no idea what the hell you're talking about voter suppression.
How did you make this a red/blue state thing? Take off your colored glasses and see the world for how it is. We are all people, and some of use have different viewpoints, that's all. But, you know what, this is the perfect example of what is happening. Politicians manipulate citizens into FUD all the time. Don't be manipulated. But you can't argue with the facts: Businesses are leaving, and big ones. Is this what you would tell people who lost their job because they company they worked for left? There has to be balance. Maybe so much taxes isn't a good idea. Turns out some people would rather have a job than lose it, and no that doesn't mean they are slaves/oppressed/unsafe.
Re:these look like 'alternative fact' based stmnts (Score:4, Insightful)
Good grief, this isn't about safety. Its just plain numbers. Why would any company want to pay, way more in taxes, when they could simply go to another state?
Because taxes aren't just a cost. Those taxes pay for government services that your company and employees get to use.
For example, I lived in upstate NY, in a dying rust-belt area. Their government's big plan was to slash taxes and hand out tax credits because that would totally cause companies to move there. They believed, as you do, that taxes are only a cost to businesses.
It's failed miserably. Because the low taxes mean things like the school system is abysmal. Which means hiring is extremely difficult, and getting anyone with kids or wanting kids someday to move there is damn near impossible.
Then there's the infrastructure that's collapsing due to lack of maintenance, and the shutting down of any 'quality of life' services like parks. Both of which also drive people, and thus businesses, away.
But you can sure get a big tax credit!
But you can't argue with the facts: Businesses are leaving, and big ones
And one important fact would be "are these businesses moving away causing an economic problem". And it turns out, nope, they aren't. HPE and Oracle are declining companies. They're laying people off in the next 5-10 years whether or not they move.
Tesla's moving a very small fraction of the company, and setting up a new production line in TX. They aren't closing the CA production lines. Again, not a huge problem for the state.
Despite the conservative narrative, there isn't a mass exodus from CA going on right now. So demanding change to fight the mass exodus would be arguing with facts.
Re:these look like 'alternative fact' based stmnts (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a... [wsj.com]
https://californiaglobe.com/se... [californiaglobe.com]
This is the problem with California. The fact the legislature is seriously considering this stupidity is not only insane, it likely violates international law by taxing wealth worldwide and is imposed on any person spending more than 60 days in California, is retroactive several years, and applies to residents of other states meaning it likely violates the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution too.
I'm a wealthy Saudi prince who summers in Orange County (more common than you'd think), but if I'm in California for 60 days, I have to pay 1% of my net worth for 10 years even on money that isn't in California!?! Screw that, the beaches in Morocco are just as good.
I'm a wealthy Chinese industrialist sending my kid to Berkley on a student Visa. Unfortunately I die and my kid inherits my wealth. Wait, what? My kid has to pay 1% of the value of my business in China to the State of California because she goes to Berkely? Screw that, I'll send her to school in Europe.
The government of this state has their collective heads up each other's rectums.
No company leaves because of 'bad' government. (Score:3, Interesting)
They love bad government, it is easy to bribe.
Companies are all about the $$$. If it is cheap to run a business there, they stay. If it is expensive, they leave.
Note, this concept is flexible and often it is cheaper to stay in an expensive state because good employees like the services.
The main reason tech companies come to Texas is Austin. You don't see tech companies going to El Paso, which means it is not 'bad government' of California driving people away. Austin is a nice enough place and still cheap enough that it makes up for having to live in Texas.
The race to the bottom (Score:3)
What would be far better is to have fairly universal bottom lines on each category across the US so as to ameliorate the difference between any two locations and create a more level playing field thus returning some balance toward the workers and residents. In California, this could result in some Tech companies leaving but with living conditions improving overall. This makes even more sense as corporations push to have more remote work positions and the physical locations of them could easily become even more consolidated.
DMV basically forced me out of the state (Score:3, Interesting)
By this time, my license has expired... so I just said fuck it, sold my truck, and biked it for 2 years. At that point I needed to buy a car for my wife, and couldn't buy one without a license. Now the appointment wait is 12 weeks in my location, but I found a small town 300 miles away that could get me one in 2 weeks. So off I go, only wait an hour for my 'appointment', pass my test, and get a temporary license and a promise that they'll send the real one.
2 months pass, no license. 3 months pass, no license. I hit the website and request a replacement, nothing. Then Covid hits. I figure the license will show up eventually, and buy a new truck. Trying to get insurance on the truck, the company comes back and tells me that my license is expired... DMV never issued a permanent. So now I have 30 days before my insurance goes away. Found out that DMV is not accepting walk ins, not taking appointments, and when you call you get a message that basically says, fuck off, we're busy, call back later.
Now the clock's ticking, my job has transitioned to remote, so I decided to get the fuck out of this snotty socal shithole. Moved to a state with no income tax... boom, 30k that I get and Cali doesn't. All because they can't issue a fucking driver's license.
I imagine the other state agencies are in equally shitty shape. They have gotten by providing shitty service because people had to live here for the big money jobs. Well that's over fuckos. Enjoy watching your tax base pack the fuck up and leave.
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I'll bet that if you wanted to get into a free injection site there would be no wait.
Re:DMV basically forced me out of the state (Score:5, Insightful)
The illegals don't need any fancy licenses or insurance. Why even bother?
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California, the only place in the world where living there illegally is better than living there as a legal, law abiding citizen.
Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
OPINION PIECE, manages to get posted here, yet a study on the effects of GOP policies on on lifespan (decline) from a leading peer-reviewed healthcare journal that included multiple correlating articles including ones from the CDC is removed from the firehose by... someone... who apparently doesn't think reality is news, while apparently partisan opinion is.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]
Policy Points
* Changes in US state policies since the 1970s, particularly after 2010, have played an important role in the stagnation and recent decline in US life expectancy.
* Some US state policies appear to be key levers for improving life expectancy, such as policies on tobacco, labor, immigration, civil rights, and the environment.
* US life expectancy is estimated to be 2.8 years longer among women and 2.1 years longer among men if all US states enjoyed the health advantages of states with more liberal policies, which would put US life expectancy on par with other highincome countries.
Rampant rampaging psychopath children ... (Score:3)
... complain they are not treated like kings anymore, and can ruin society only 99% as efficiently now.
Boo hoo.
That things like Palantir even exist and didn't get life sentences for treason, long ago ...
That Musk, the Wolf of Silicon Valley (all thaz's missing is that dwarf dart scene), is presented as the archetype, really says it all.
And HP... the company that played the suicidal long con on itself for how many decades now?
Yeah, ... no shedding a tear.
Let the lovecraftian abominations crawl out of the loins of Nyarlathotep.
Re:This article pre-supposes... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are assuming that the corporate exodus is the only exodus. The corporations are just following the people, who are also fleeing. And what does Californa do to protect its citizens, impose a exit tax if you want to leave
.
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I think you are assuming that the corporate exodus is the only exodus
Well, CA's population is growing. That would be a bit of a problem with claiming a mass exodus of the population.
Though pointing out West Virginia is the state losing the most population [worldpopul...review.com] does interfere with the "big gov'ment driving out all the people!!" narrative.
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I just want to see all the lefties heads explode when companies elect Caitlyn Jenner as a member of their boards.