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I live in a state where we are suddenly inundated with California’s refugees, fleeing the state now that they don’t have to physically live there. Reasonable ta

I live in a state where we are suddenly inundated with California’s refugees, fleeing the state now that they don’t have to physically live there. Reasonable taxes, a much less stressful work-life balance, bigger homes all make it very appealing to ditch the once0golden state. Our company has decided not to reopen a majority of it’s office space. Ironically, the Bay Area office is remaining open while other offices are being closed, but even there it will be a shadow of it’s former self I would like local and federal governments to come up with a plan for the inevitable bail out that transforms some of this space into more livable space, more community access, and more on-demand office space. Apple’s HQ has turned into the worlds largest set piece for a iPhone ad. San Fran is going to come out of COVID dramatically weaker. That’s been inevitable for a while, the pandemic just accelerated it.

nicktrocado 6y ago
Which state? I thinking of moving and would like to know good states to move into
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nwatson 6y ago
  North Carolina is decent. Made the move in 2013, been working for SF Bay Area companies since. Cost of living is very low, kids' education is decent (impacted by COVID-19 currently, of course).
  - bitcoinmoney 6y ago
    Did you maintain your salary ?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jacobolus 6y ago
The “reasonable taxes” in many places depend on large-scale transfers at the state/federal level from places like SF. But this pandemic is going to be crushing state and municipal budgets across the country, and many of the worst-hit places will be rural and exurban.
- nimish 6y ago
  Nah, the spending power of the federal government, and the tax collection of the federal government are not linked. So long as the fed can print money the federal government can spend. It cares not about the states or how much income tax flows in. Hence, it can run up structural deficits until faith is lost in the $ (inflation). State governments, on the other hand, cannot print money. They must operate in a zero-sum mode.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    Yes, the federal government could bail out state and local governments (and indeed that’s some of what the Heroes Act does – passed by the House in May). But the GOP Senate intransigently refuses to act or even negotiate, and so state/local governments are getting crushed.
    - nimish 6y ago
      Well good? The federal government has no obligation to bail out the states That's a political decision and the gop has decided to let the states that need bailouts diy it. I don't think it's wise, but it sure is within gop policy aims
- flurben 6y ago
  You seriously think that everywhere in America with reasonable tax rates is just getting fiscal transfers from SF?
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    Personally I don’t think “low taxes” are “reasonable”. We live in a complicated society and we all benefit when we collectively pay people to do a huge variety of important jobs which are hard to fit into a pure-profit system. Cutting funding for those exposes us to a wide variety of risks and eliminates many future opportunities, in the long term harming us all. The Covid pandemic is a perfect case study in the way that e.g. public health infrastructure, expertise, and political support can save hundreds of thousands of lives. (While we are talking about San Francisco here, it’s worth noting that SF and the Bay Area has done by far the best of any US city / metro area at containing Covid and preventing needless deaths of residents, despite some failure especially early to properly target testing resources toward poor/minority areas full of “essential workers”.) But infectious diseases are only one of the many risks that individual people cannot adequately understand and protect against on a personal basis, for which it helps to have collectively funded public institutions. Instead of income or property taxes, some places raise money via sales taxes instead, or other regressive schemes. Some places raise money by questionable fines on their own residents. Some places make money off the back of wanton environmental destruction. Some just accept shoddy local services. (When you compare the US to other wealthy nations, it’s really shocking how poor our basic infrastructure and public services are, even in the richest US states and cities.) But most low-tax areas of the US are substantially supported by federal-level transfers, for example from federal highway budget, from military bases and defense contracting located there, from federal agriculture subsidies, from federal welfare and healthcare funding, from social security payments to people who retired somewhere different than they lived while actively working, ...
digitaltrees 6y ago
It takes some time to get a feel of the culture of a new place, but trust me as someone that has lived in a few other states, it eventually makes a big difference. California has dramatically out performed other states, and is more expensive because it was working, in part because of the culture that is unique to California.
- jelling 6y ago
  I live in NYC and lots of friends have left town for upstate New York or similar places. But I'm waiting to see how great they think these places are after they have eaten at the same 5 restaurants for a year. And once live culture returns to NYC and other places, how will they feel then? Of course, the other way to look at the de-campers is that they were going to move to the burbs inevitably. Which good for them, but cities are injured, not dead.
  - meddlepal 6y ago
    I feel like comments like this often lack perspective. Upstate NY, especially Buffalo and Rochester have plenty of things to do in them and far more than five restaurants. It strikes a nerve with me because in Massachusetts a similar sentiment is expressed by Boston-Cambridge folks about Lowell, Worcester, and other periphery cities. Its simply mot true that these places are devoid of culture snd cuisine and in the age of Yelp and Google Maps it takes almost no time to find it.
    - mattj 6y ago
      I think the grandparent is probably referring to upstate in the Hudson Valley sense of the phrase. Plenty of cute towns, but Hudson / Woodstock / Kingston are definitely in the O(tens) of great restaurant options, comparable to a slice of any single Manhattan / Brooklyn neighborhood most tech people live in.
    - Swizec 6y ago
      As someone who moved from a large small city (300k residents, 100k students, 300k daily commuters) to San Francisco ... yeah the density is totally worth it. Back home we had restaurants and cuisine and all that. It wasn’t a wasteland. But SF has more high quality restaurants within a 20min walk of my apartment than my hometown had in total. Average restaurant quality is higher too. Just because there’s more competition. Another fun example: in SF we have 5 grocery stores within a 10min walk. Back home the nearest grocery store was a 3min walk away, great. But the next one after that was 10min. To get to a proper supermarket size grocery store ... that’s a car trip. In SF it’s a 15min walk. Density is wonderful. There’s economies of scale that you get at 18,400 people per square mile that you just can’t pull off at 4,500. The ultimate test for a city is this: Do you have 5 “asian restaurants” or do you have 5 south vietnamese, 3 north vietnamese, 10 cantonese, 5 ramen, 6 japanese grill, 3 sushi, 4 dimsum, etc For example back home we had the mexican restaurant, here you have 10 for each type of mexican food.
jayd16 6y ago
I can't help but think this take is projecting a bit too much. Inundated? How so? What are you seeing? Tax benefits, work-life balance and bigger homes? Really, you can see these changes in the last 6 months of a pandemic? I could be wrong but I don't think the majority of employers are letting employees change states (and state taxes). WFH does not mean work from anywhere, especially tax-wise. This all sounds plausible longer term but to say you're inundated seems like it must be hyperbolic.
- Ninjinka 6y ago
  Not OP, but I know three different families who are actively visiting other states to decide where to live next because they so loathe Newsom and the California governance writ large. They never liked it, but the wildfires, pandemic response, and ability to work elsewhere pushed them over the edge.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Yea, I would leave the Bay Area in a millisecond, but only if I could still keep access to the Bay Area job market as a remote employee. There are plenty of great places in the USA without the crushing taxes, endless commutes, and one-sided politics of CA. I would gladly accept a "cost-of-living adjustment" to my salary if I could work from home in NV or FL or something.
- paul_f 6y ago
  A majority of tech workers in California are from somewhere else, who came to California for the opportunity. They know what it's like back home. And yes, especially the 30-somethings with kids, they're leaving
  - jayd16 6y ago
    I'm not saying there isn't some desire among employees but most companies do not want to pay taxes in 50 states. I don't think the vast majority of workers can simply move without changing employers.
dmode 6y ago
California refugees is a weird point to make (I know you are trying to make a political point here). But in my 13 years of living here, I have met only a handful of “native” Californians. Everyone is from somewhere else. And that’s what make this special. I have lived all over the world, and consider CA to be the best place in the world to live for me

nicktrocado 6y ago

Which state? I thinking of moving and would like to know good states to move into

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nwatson 6y ago
North Carolina is decent. Made the move in 2013, been working for SF Bay Area companies since. Cost of living is very low, kids' education is decent (impacted by COVID-19 currently, of course).
- bitcoinmoney 6y ago
  Did you maintain your salary ?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

jacobolus 6y ago

The “reasonable taxes” in many places depend on large-scale transfers at the state/federal level from places like SF. But this pandemic is going to be crushing state and municipal budgets across the country, and many of the worst-hit places will be rural and exurban.

nimish 6y ago
Nah, the spending power of the federal government, and the tax collection of the federal government are not linked. So long as the fed can print money the federal government can spend. It cares not about the states or how much income tax flows in. Hence, it can run up structural deficits until faith is lost in the $ (inflation). State governments, on the other hand, cannot print money. They must operate in a zero-sum mode.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  Yes, the federal government could bail out state and local governments (and indeed that’s some of what the Heroes Act does – passed by the House in May). But the GOP Senate intransigently refuses to act or even negotiate, and so state/local governments are getting crushed.
  - nimish 6y ago
    Well good? The federal government has no obligation to bail out the states That's a political decision and the gop has decided to let the states that need bailouts diy it. I don't think it's wise, but it sure is within gop policy aims
flurben 6y ago
You seriously think that everywhere in America with reasonable tax rates is just getting fiscal transfers from SF?
- jacobolus 6y ago
  Personally I don’t think “low taxes” are “reasonable”. We live in a complicated society and we all benefit when we collectively pay people to do a huge variety of important jobs which are hard to fit into a pure-profit system. Cutting funding for those exposes us to a wide variety of risks and eliminates many future opportunities, in the long term harming us all. The Covid pandemic is a perfect case study in the way that e.g. public health infrastructure, expertise, and political support can save hundreds of thousands of lives. (While we are talking about San Francisco here, it’s worth noting that SF and the Bay Area has done by far the best of any US city / metro area at containing Covid and preventing needless deaths of residents, despite some failure especially early to properly target testing resources toward poor/minority areas full of “essential workers”.) But infectious diseases are only one of the many risks that individual people cannot adequately understand and protect against on a personal basis, for which it helps to have collectively funded public institutions. Instead of income or property taxes, some places raise money via sales taxes instead, or other regressive schemes. Some places raise money by questionable fines on their own residents. Some places make money off the back of wanton environmental destruction. Some just accept shoddy local services. (When you compare the US to other wealthy nations, it’s really shocking how poor our basic infrastructure and public services are, even in the richest US states and cities.) But most low-tax areas of the US are substantially supported by federal-level transfers, for example from federal highway budget, from military bases and defense contracting located there, from federal agriculture subsidies, from federal welfare and healthcare funding, from social security payments to people who retired somewhere different than they lived while actively working, ...

digitaltrees 6y ago

It takes some time to get a feel of the culture of a new place, but trust me as someone that has lived in a few other states, it eventually makes a big difference. California has dramatically out performed other states, and is more expensive because it was working, in part because of the culture that is unique to California.

jelling 6y ago
I live in NYC and lots of friends have left town for upstate New York or similar places. But I'm waiting to see how great they think these places are after they have eaten at the same 5 restaurants for a year. And once live culture returns to NYC and other places, how will they feel then? Of course, the other way to look at the de-campers is that they were going to move to the burbs inevitably. Which good for them, but cities are injured, not dead.
- meddlepal 6y ago
  I feel like comments like this often lack perspective. Upstate NY, especially Buffalo and Rochester have plenty of things to do in them and far more than five restaurants. It strikes a nerve with me because in Massachusetts a similar sentiment is expressed by Boston-Cambridge folks about Lowell, Worcester, and other periphery cities. Its simply mot true that these places are devoid of culture snd cuisine and in the age of Yelp and Google Maps it takes almost no time to find it.
  - mattj 6y ago
    I think the grandparent is probably referring to upstate in the Hudson Valley sense of the phrase. Plenty of cute towns, but Hudson / Woodstock / Kingston are definitely in the O(tens) of great restaurant options, comparable to a slice of any single Manhattan / Brooklyn neighborhood most tech people live in.
  - Swizec 6y ago
    As someone who moved from a large small city (300k residents, 100k students, 300k daily commuters) to San Francisco ... yeah the density is totally worth it. Back home we had restaurants and cuisine and all that. It wasn’t a wasteland. But SF has more high quality restaurants within a 20min walk of my apartment than my hometown had in total. Average restaurant quality is higher too. Just because there’s more competition. Another fun example: in SF we have 5 grocery stores within a 10min walk. Back home the nearest grocery store was a 3min walk away, great. But the next one after that was 10min. To get to a proper supermarket size grocery store ... that’s a car trip. In SF it’s a 15min walk. Density is wonderful. There’s economies of scale that you get at 18,400 people per square mile that you just can’t pull off at 4,500. The ultimate test for a city is this: Do you have 5 “asian restaurants” or do you have 5 south vietnamese, 3 north vietnamese, 10 cantonese, 5 ramen, 6 japanese grill, 3 sushi, 4 dimsum, etc For example back home we had the mexican restaurant, here you have 10 for each type of mexican food.

jayd16 6y ago

I can't help but think this take is projecting a bit too much. Inundated? How so? What are you seeing? Tax benefits, work-life balance and bigger homes? Really, you can see these changes in the last 6 months of a pandemic? I could be wrong but I don't think the majority of employers are letting employees change states (and state taxes). WFH does not mean work from anywhere, especially tax-wise. This all sounds plausible longer term but to say you're inundated seems like it must be hyperbolic.

Ninjinka 6y ago
Not OP, but I know three different families who are actively visiting other states to decide where to live next because they so loathe Newsom and the California governance writ large. They never liked it, but the wildfires, pandemic response, and ability to work elsewhere pushed them over the edge.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Yea, I would leave the Bay Area in a millisecond, but only if I could still keep access to the Bay Area job market as a remote employee. There are plenty of great places in the USA without the crushing taxes, endless commutes, and one-sided politics of CA. I would gladly accept a "cost-of-living adjustment" to my salary if I could work from home in NV or FL or something.
paul_f 6y ago
A majority of tech workers in California are from somewhere else, who came to California for the opportunity. They know what it's like back home. And yes, especially the 30-somethings with kids, they're leaving
- jayd16 6y ago
  I'm not saying there isn't some desire among employees but most companies do not want to pay taxes in 50 states. I don't think the vast majority of workers can simply move without changing employers.

dmode 6y ago

California refugees is a weird point to make (I know you are trying to make a political point here). But in my 13 years of living here, I have met only a handful of “native” Californians. Everyone is from somewhere else. And that’s what make this special. I have lived all over the world, and consider CA to be the best place in the world to live for me