7 ms·

I agree with Elon here, many California policies are over the top and it seems more laws, taxes, and other restrictions are constantly popping up. The bay area

I agree with Elon here, many California policies are over the top and it seems more laws, taxes, and other restrictions are constantly popping up. The bay area has always been a hotspot for radical activism. I lived in CA for awhile and couldn’t take it, so I left.

dr_dshiv 6y ago
Couldn't handle the freedom, I'm guessing? Edit: Americans think they have a lot of freedom. It's funny. You'd think the fact you can't drink a beer on a park bench would indicate otherwise, but hey.
- dang 6y ago
  Please keep nationalistic flamebait off HN. We have enough problems with thread quality without that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dr_dshiv 6y ago
    Agree and apologies. Thank you.
seibelj 6y ago
I live in Massachusetts, and we actually have fairly low taxes given the level of progressive politics, plus a Republican governor. There are active and organized groups that oppose the wacky "tax and regulate everything to death" types. Maybe California will become so unworkable and impossible to business in that it is forced to reform.
- jedberg 6y ago
  California had republican governors for a long time as well as a strong republican minority in the state legislature. But now the Dems have a supermajority in the legislature and a democratic governor so there is no longer a check on the wackiest policies. Plus the fact that we’ve always had state propositions that come direct from the people, a system now being efficiently abused by special interests. The number of ridiculous propositions has gone way up, and most people vote just based on the title. It’ll be interesting to see if there is a course correction in the next few elections.
- lsllc 6y ago
  You are right, taxes in MA are not terrible. I'm not exactly sure I'd call Baker a Republican -- he's further left than many Democrats. He is apparently what they call a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Like CA, Mass. also has a super-majority of Democrats at the state level, in fact there are many state & local offices that don't even have more than 1 candidate running for them.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  Wait for Californians to move there and vote for the same politics that made them leave California. It's happening all over the country.
GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
Let’s be frank, he’s moving to TX/NV for more lax workers regulations. They were caught suppressing their workers injury reports.
- randyrand 6y ago
  *less overbearing worker regulations.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mlindner 6y ago
  They were never caught, they were alleged to have been caught. There's never been any legal action for such media reports. People forget that almost any media you hear about Tesla is backed by people with a lot of money to make by either seeing Tesla fail or seeing Tesla succeed.
  - GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
    Sure, if you're having trouble taking the worker's word for it. They had 3x the OSHA violations of the top 10 auto manufacturers combined in 2019. https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-many-osha-violations-as-the-10-largest-us-plants-combined https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-man... Occam's Razor, is there a giant media conspiracy against a single company (whose continued existence creates content for their company) or workers rights are being infringed upon for profit.
    - mlindner 6y ago
      CALOSHA is not OSHA. You can't compare apples and oranges. > Occam's Razor, is there a giant media conspiracy against a single company (whose continued existence creates content for their company) or workers rights are being infringed upon for profit. I'd say Occam's Razor says that a company making headlines makes more money for those companies so any kind of dirt that can be found will be found no matter how insignificant.
city41 6y ago
I've lived in the Bay area for the past 5 years and am leaving in a week. But one reason for leaving is because business is so wildly successful here that it's very crowded, stressful, and income disparity is massive. Which seems like the opposite of what you're implying.
- benjohnson 6y ago
  From what I've seen - income disparity and burdensome regulations go hand in hand. Being rich, I can afford the regulations. A new immigrant? Not so much. And if my poorer immigrant competition starts climbing up the ladder by ignoring the regulations, I can report them and have them shut down.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Can you bring that around to the topic? We're discussing a billionaire, born into great wealth, who is whining that the jurisdiction representing his workforce won't permit him to expose ten thousand people to an infectious disease. Who is burdened here, and why?
    - DuskStar 6y ago
      > won't permit him to expose ten thousand people to an infectious disease. How low of an IFR would it take before you accepted that exposure? Would incidentally exposing them to the common cold be ok? It's not the infections that matter - it's the deaths. And, with Tesla's 10k factory workers and the assumption that they're heathy people between 20 and 60, you'd see somewhere between 1 and 50 deaths. (Assuming that Italy's health care worker CFR is representative) Is this worth it? I don't know. But there's a point where it would be.
      - samcday 6y ago
        Take a moment to consider what you seem to be saying here. You’re essentially pondering if it should be okay for a billionaire industrialist to willingly sacrifice the lives of between 1-50 people. > How low of an IFR would it take before you accepted that exposure? If we lived in a sane world that valued EVERY individual human life above the self-serving dreams of an egotistical, arrogant sociopath, the answer would be zero. > Would incidentally exposing them to the common cold be ok? Such a question screams for a sarcastic answer: in case you haven’t noticed, Covid-19 is not the common cold.
adrr 6y ago
California regulation and taxes promotes innovation. Electric car incentives helped Tesla. Ban on non-competes allows employees to start competing businesses. Taxes allow the funding of the best higher education system in the nation.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  To be fair, California doesn't have the highest tax burden in the nation, although it is up there. It also taxes consumption more than assets, which I'm a fan of. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494/ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur...
  - npunt 6y ago
    Looks like there's a decent overlap between state tax burden and whether they're 'donor' states in terms of federal dollars. Those that have higher tax burden tend to be sending more $ to the federal government than they receive back. CA historically has been this way, though recently it is about breakeven. https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/donor-states/ https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/donor-states/
- apta 6y ago
  The absurd income and sales taxes definitely do not promote innovation. Correlation is not causation.
- tenpies 6y ago
  Yes, just imagine Tesla if there were zero government grants, the regulatory credits vanished, and they removed all incentives. Tesla would have gone bankrupt like 10 years ago. I mean just last quarter Tesla barely made a "profit" and it was due to selling credits to other auto-makers and posting incredibly suspicious financials (e.g. doubling the number of factories while posting no change in their OpEx). For someone who has built all of his companies thanks to government funding, Elon sure has been biting at the hand that feeds him.
raverbashing 6y ago
And still, most of the successful tech companies are headquartered there, and people keep fighting to start up companies and open offices there. Though I agree, the best thing to do if you disagree with the policies is to walk out, and it will probably help with the craziness (and not only with the governmental craziness)

dr_dshiv 6y ago

Couldn't handle the freedom, I'm guessing? Edit: Americans think they have a lot of freedom. It's funny. You'd think the fact you can't drink a beer on a park bench would indicate otherwise, but hey.

dang 6y ago
Please keep nationalistic flamebait off HN. We have enough problems with thread quality without that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  Agree and apologies. Thank you.

seibelj 6y ago

I live in Massachusetts, and we actually have fairly low taxes given the level of progressive politics, plus a Republican governor. There are active and organized groups that oppose the wacky "tax and regulate everything to death" types. Maybe California will become so unworkable and impossible to business in that it is forced to reform.

jedberg 6y ago
California had republican governors for a long time as well as a strong republican minority in the state legislature. But now the Dems have a supermajority in the legislature and a democratic governor so there is no longer a check on the wackiest policies. Plus the fact that we’ve always had state propositions that come direct from the people, a system now being efficiently abused by special interests. The number of ridiculous propositions has gone way up, and most people vote just based on the title. It’ll be interesting to see if there is a course correction in the next few elections.
lsllc 6y ago
You are right, taxes in MA are not terrible. I'm not exactly sure I'd call Baker a Republican -- he's further left than many Democrats. He is apparently what they call a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Like CA, Mass. also has a super-majority of Democrats at the state level, in fact there are many state & local offices that don't even have more than 1 candidate running for them.
deathgrips 6y ago
Wait for Californians to move there and vote for the same politics that made them leave California. It's happening all over the country.

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago

Let’s be frank, he’s moving to TX/NV for more lax workers regulations. They were caught suppressing their workers injury reports.

randyrand 6y ago
*less overbearing worker regulations.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mlindner 6y ago
They were never caught, they were alleged to have been caught. There's never been any legal action for such media reports. People forget that almost any media you hear about Tesla is backed by people with a lot of money to make by either seeing Tesla fail or seeing Tesla succeed.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  Sure, if you're having trouble taking the worker's word for it. They had 3x the OSHA violations of the top 10 auto manufacturers combined in 2019. https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-many-osha-violations-as-the-10-largest-us-plants-combined https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-man... Occam's Razor, is there a giant media conspiracy against a single company (whose continued existence creates content for their company) or workers rights are being infringed upon for profit.
  - mlindner 6y ago
    CALOSHA is not OSHA. You can't compare apples and oranges. > Occam's Razor, is there a giant media conspiracy against a single company (whose continued existence creates content for their company) or workers rights are being infringed upon for profit. I'd say Occam's Razor says that a company making headlines makes more money for those companies so any kind of dirt that can be found will be found no matter how insignificant.

city41 6y ago

I've lived in the Bay area for the past 5 years and am leaving in a week. But one reason for leaving is because business is so wildly successful here that it's very crowded, stressful, and income disparity is massive. Which seems like the opposite of what you're implying.

benjohnson 6y ago
From what I've seen - income disparity and burdensome regulations go hand in hand. Being rich, I can afford the regulations. A new immigrant? Not so much. And if my poorer immigrant competition starts climbing up the ladder by ignoring the regulations, I can report them and have them shut down.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Can you bring that around to the topic? We're discussing a billionaire, born into great wealth, who is whining that the jurisdiction representing his workforce won't permit him to expose ten thousand people to an infectious disease. Who is burdened here, and why?
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    > won't permit him to expose ten thousand people to an infectious disease. How low of an IFR would it take before you accepted that exposure? Would incidentally exposing them to the common cold be ok? It's not the infections that matter - it's the deaths. And, with Tesla's 10k factory workers and the assumption that they're heathy people between 20 and 60, you'd see somewhere between 1 and 50 deaths. (Assuming that Italy's health care worker CFR is representative) Is this worth it? I don't know. But there's a point where it would be.
    - samcday 6y ago
      Take a moment to consider what you seem to be saying here. You’re essentially pondering if it should be okay for a billionaire industrialist to willingly sacrifice the lives of between 1-50 people. > How low of an IFR would it take before you accepted that exposure? If we lived in a sane world that valued EVERY individual human life above the self-serving dreams of an egotistical, arrogant sociopath, the answer would be zero. > Would incidentally exposing them to the common cold be ok? Such a question screams for a sarcastic answer: in case you haven’t noticed, Covid-19 is not the common cold.

adrr 6y ago

California regulation and taxes promotes innovation. Electric car incentives helped Tesla. Ban on non-competes allows employees to start competing businesses. Taxes allow the funding of the best higher education system in the nation.

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
To be fair, California doesn't have the highest tax burden in the nation, although it is up there. It also taxes consumption more than assets, which I'm a fan of. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494/ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur...
- npunt 6y ago
  Looks like there's a decent overlap between state tax burden and whether they're 'donor' states in terms of federal dollars. Those that have higher tax burden tend to be sending more $ to the federal government than they receive back. CA historically has been this way, though recently it is about breakeven. https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/donor-states/ https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/donor-states/
apta 6y ago
The absurd income and sales taxes definitely do not promote innovation. Correlation is not causation.
tenpies 6y ago
Yes, just imagine Tesla if there were zero government grants, the regulatory credits vanished, and they removed all incentives. Tesla would have gone bankrupt like 10 years ago. I mean just last quarter Tesla barely made a "profit" and it was due to selling credits to other auto-makers and posting incredibly suspicious financials (e.g. doubling the number of factories while posting no change in their OpEx). For someone who has built all of his companies thanks to government funding, Elon sure has been biting at the hand that feeds him.

raverbashing 6y ago

And still, most of the successful tech companies are headquartered there, and people keep fighting to start up companies and open offices there. Though I agree, the best thing to do if you disagree with the policies is to walk out, and it will probably help with the craziness (and not only with the governmental craziness)