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CEOs say California worst place to do business, Texas best
- sosuke 15y agoSo would it be safe to say that California is probably the best for employees and Texas the worst?
- ronnier 15y agoI wouldn't say that at all. Last January I moved from Dallas, Texas to take a job with Amazon in Seattle. Texas is a great place to work. Plus houses are affordable, and new, and large.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- bugsy 15y agoYes.
- Turing_Machine 15y agoIf you're the type of employee who views his employer as an adversary, perhaps.
- bluedanieru 15y agoYou don't have to view your employer as an adversary to support labor protection, the same way you don't have to think your neighbor is a criminal to support your local police department. Stop it with the false dilemmas.
- Turing_Machine 15y agoThe "false dilemma" was on the part the original poster, who claimed that "good for company" == "bad for employee". That's absurd on its face.
- bluedanieru 15y agoThat is absurd I agree. I don't think that's what the OP was getting at though. Rather that higher taxes and labor protection CEOs tend to reflexively dislike (regardless of whether they are good or bad for business interests in the long term). It could be "actually good for company in the long term but the boss doesn't agree because he doesn't know what he's talking about" == "good for employee".
- sc68cal 15y agoIt's not a matter of viewing them as an adversary, it's a matter of balancing your interests with the interests of the company. A company attempts to maximize profits while reducing labor costs. An employee attempts to maxamize profit from their labor, which is a fairly static quantity. New tools can come out that enhance productivity, but that only sets the baseline productivity that much higher. Wages rarely increase to match a jump in productivity.
- Turing_Machine 15y agoIt's in the interest of both the employer and the employee to make a lot of money. If the employer doesn't make money, neither does the employee. "Wages rarely increase to match a jump in productivity." That's why we're all still working 80 hours a week to pay for a daily bowl of gruel and an unheated shack, right?
- bluedanieru 15y agoWe're not, but that's doesn't address his statement. Does it match the increase in productivity?
- dantheman 15y agoDoes the increase in productivity actually come from the employee or the infrastructure around the employee, developed and paid for - at financial risk, by the employer? If it's the latter, shouldn't the employer and the investors who took the risk on achieving the productivity gains receive the reward?
- sc68cal 15y agoHere's a fairly recent NYT article that discusses this, although most of it is within the context of the then "current happenings" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html For most of the last century, wages and productivity — the key measure of the economy’s efficiency — have risen together, increasing rapidly through the 1950’s and 60’s and far more slowly in the 1970’s and 80’s. So in this regard, Turing_Machine is indeed correct that wages have historically followed increases in productivity. My remarks were imprecise, the word rarely should have had an asterisk to a footnote that states that rarely means within the last decade or so. But in recent years, the productivity gains have continued while the pay increases have not kept up. Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent, according to Labor Department statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. Benefits accounted for most of the increase. The BBC had an excellent graph that displays the trend over time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5303590.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5303590.stm The authors of the EPI report argue that low minimum wages, weakened union power, and the loss of both blue and white-collar jobs to off shoring do much to explain the jobs picture. Which leads us back to why Texas is popular right now. Most of the news articles are from the viewpoint of workers, discussing it in a negative connotation. I'm sure you can find other publications from the other viewpoint, that labor is getting cheaper and profits are going through the roof. Surely someone in the WSJ or The Economist has noticed.
- zbowling 15y agoI worked in both places. Texas isn't bad. No income tax and cost of living is a ton lower. My salary is 30% higher but my living expenses (with less SQ feet) is a ton more and I have income tax here so proportionally I make less.
- mikiem 15y agoNo. Absolutely not. Not financially anyway. CA has a very high state income tax and very high cost of living.
- arturo111 15y agoFrom my observations I would say so. Moved to Texas for job and find even senior Tech people are treated fairly poorly by management. And contractors even more so. That is what prompted me to post this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2525345 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2525345
- bugsy 15y agoAnd yet all the really cool stuff is designed in California and Texas makes cotton and corn and most of the state is an inhospitable desert.
- amyesheplear1 15y agoMethinks you've not seen much of Texas. Piney woods, hill country, the gulf coast, the list goes on. Just google a pic of caddo lake for one example of an extreme definitely non-desert environment. Also, i've not seen much corn nor cotton here, just an observation. So far as business goes, it should stop surprising people already, large companies which relocate from NY and CA are the norm here, have been for the two decades I've resided in Texas.
- giardini 15y agoHush! Don't tell them! Every time a post like yours goes out another company relocates to Texas. Please emphasize the Great Texas Desert, the skyrocketing cost of hay (for feeding your horse, of course), and the dangers of rattlesnakes, wild indians, and 200-pound snapping turtles (in the few places in Texas where there is water). Gotta go clean the horseshit off my driveway now. Later, Dude! P.S. Texas does produce a lot of cotton and is an important state agriculturally. But it isn't particularly telling in comparison: CA produces lots of fruits!
- bugsy 15y agoIf you've not seen much corn or cotton then I'm pretty sure I've seen much more of Texas than you have.
- BasilAwad 15y agoyou forgot oil&gas. but hey, we have sxsw.
- wattsbaat 15y agoThere's plenty of desert in California.
- sc68cal 15y agoTexas was followed, in order, by North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Georgia. Ranking 46th through 49th in the rankings were Michigan, New Jersey, Illinois and New York, respectively. I would attribute this to the amount of local taxes and labor laws that these states have. The "Worst" rankings are for states that have taxes and robust labor laws/strong unions. Let's face it, they don't like Texas for their education systems. They like it because their overhead is much cheaper. Plus, East Texas is patent troll paradise. Not that there is anything wrong with those motives, but it is useful to keep in mind.
- bluedanieru 15y agoI think this 'study' presents more useful information about the CEOs polled than anything else. Namely, that their insight into the health of an economy doesn't go much further than 'low taxes and corrupt government good, labor protection and regulation, bad'. Honestly, Tennessee is a better place to do business than New York? Moreover, it's one of the best while New York is one of the worst? So why does New York have a substantially larger economy? That is just a ludicrous statement, and it is empirically false. This is little more than another exhibit to show how little American CEOs do to earn their ridiculous salaries.
- Duff 15y agoNew York in many ways is living off of past glories. There are two New Yorks... NYC and the rest of the state. The rest of New York is more like West Virginia. Read about places like Utica, Amsterdam, Jamestown and Binghamton. Buffalo is like Detriot -- 75% decline from its peak population. Even much-vaunted New York City is not as strong as it might appear at first glance. NYC in 2011 is a single-industry town... finance IS NYC. Even the feature that defined NY for centuries -- New York Harbor -- contributes almost nothing to the state, as the freight terminals fled overegulation to New Jersey (of all places) in the 1970's. 30-40 years ago, the city had a diversified mix of finance, manufacturing and service industries. There were over 10,000 manufacturing firms in the city in 1970. Now both the NY state and city are living off of a sole benefactor -- Wall St.
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- pauldino 15y agoOriginal story, with full rankings and more detail: http://chiefexecutive.net/best-worst-states-for-business http://chiefexecutive.net/best-worst-states-for-business
- qq66 15y agoFor being the worst place to do business, this state sure has a lot of businesses.
- raheemm 15y agoSo what does that say about this poll? Its like the cat is dead and alive.
- jbooth 15y ago"More than 500 U.S. CEOs polled by Greenwich, Conn.-based Chief Executive magazine based their opinions on numerous factors..." It says that it's a poll of 500 assholes who read Chief Executive magazine. I bet at least 250 of these guys own monogrammed towels.
- natrius 15y agoTell that to the millions of your fellow citizens who are unemployed. California can be a great place to start a tech or entertainment company while being a miserable place to run any other type of business. Inertia is the only reason it's still good for those sectors. That state's current trajectory is unsustainable, so something will have to change for it to still be a great place to start a tech business in twenty years.
- impendia 15y agoTech is very different from most other businesses. Say you manufacture toilet paper. Then you probably do want to locate your business in some state with friendly tax policies, and where you will find a ready supply of workers who will be quite happy to work for $12 an hour. But for economic reasons, good tech people have the ability to be picky. They can move anywhere, and most of them prefer to live in beautiful places with a lot of diversity and culture. Hence places like the Bay Area. True, you can't buy a house here for a sane amount of money, but that doesn't matter either to the very rich, or to the very ambitious (who are happy to cram into some tiny apartment in their twenties). Meanwhile, the successful and ambitious will draw many others who wisely choose to follow the action. California has a dysfunctional government, but it has a lot of things going for it. Silicon Valley isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
- vaksel 15y agoi have a feeling, that these same CEOs would pick Nigeria as a better place to do business than United States...just because they get to pay a few bucks less in taxes
- he778 15y agoThat's quite a straw man. Economic freedom and property rights are more important than how much taxes you pay.
- j_baker 15y agoExactly. CEOs need the economic freedom to treat people as property.
- he778 15y agoThis is just completely absurd, and does not belong on HN.
- he778 15y agoCountries with the highest economic freedom scores in the world have the highest GDP per capitas in the world. That's factual proof that friendlier economic environments make better businesses, which benefit workers who receive the highest incomes in the world. Hong Kong and Singapore are great examples.
- earl 15y agoPlease, read some econ besides at heritage or cato. The correlation is not that strong, see [1] and specifically [2] [3] and [4]. [2] demolishes your argument -- look at the horizontal spread in the developed countries. These indicators are hard to measure, too; for an alternate measure, look at [3]: examine the vertical distance between Portugal and Australia. Or, if you prefer, in the middle of the graph between Ja/UK and Ireland. Or on the right side between NZ and the US. It's safe to say that economic freedom doesn't correlate all that well with GDP, not to mention that correlation neq causation. Not to mention for every Singapore there's an Ireland to match. [1] http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-gross-domestic-product-correlations/#4 http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/sta... [2] http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/economic-freedom-and-income.jpg http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/economic-fr... [3] http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/economic-freedom-and-gdp-correlation.jpg http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/economic-fr...
- iamelgringo 15y agoIf that's the case, then why are so many founders flocking to the Valley? Why does the state of California have the 8th largest GDP in the world? Why does the Market Cap of all the companies within a 1 mile radius of highway 101 between SF and SJ top $500B? Methinks that study is missing something. I suspect the regulations make starting a certain type of businesses (manufacturing, mining, logging) pretty miserable here. But those regulations also force executives to focus on starting a certain type of high risk/high reward type of business like software, bio tech, entertainment business's essential in the state.
- andrewvc 15y agoWell, I'm in Los Angeles, and tech / startups are booming down here. I'd say there's something more than inertia at work.
- dantheman 15y agoThere are many, many, many reasons I'd like to live in CA, specifically san diego, la, or sf. None of them have anything to do with the government, in fact the government & its costs are a significant downside. Why do industries concentrate in any area? It's called preferential selection and has strong historical/inertial ties. This can be seen in all sorts of other areas, for instance in NYC when building a new bridge back in the day it replaced the ferry dock, because that was where the roads already led to and it could handle the traffic. California is one of the most resource rich, and beautiful places to live in the entire country. It's easier to kill off industries than people think, and the advantages of being in a hub are getting less and less as technology improves.
- he778 15y agoI can assure you that SV executives flock to SV because of talent, in spite of California's tax system and business policies. We'd flock to Wyoming if Wyoming had more talent.
- nostrademons 15y agoI suspect the survey's polling a large variety of industries, many of which wouldn't do well in California at all. If you limit it to the music, movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery that America does best, California's a much more appealing place.
- Aloisius 15y agoFeel free to move guys. I'd be happy to pick up your ex-employees.
- sachinag 15y agoThere's a huge difference in the needs of CEOs of large enterprises, where a 1% reduction in taxes can make a significant and material difference, and the needs of startup CEOs, who need access to risk capital and risk-tolerant employees.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- forkandwait 15y agoAnd a pool of highly trained / smart employees -- you just can't find lisp hacker in Winemucca, though you might be able find money, low taxes, and plenty of risk-tolerant warm bodies.
- zbowling 15y agoAs a Texan that moved to work on a startup here in SF, Texas does have things a little more streamlined. Problem is talent, resources, and support is much better for tech here. If it was purely based on business economics, Texas is a lot cheaper.
- _delirium 15y agoI wonder what the correlation looks like between these rankings and an objective measure of business activity, like per-capita GDP of the states, or total business revenues. Eyeballing it, it looks like a negative correlation: their top-5 states are all poorer than the national average by per-capita GDP, while 4 of their 5 "worst" states are above the average (Michigan is the exception). So the CEOs are either predicting future changes, or mistaken in their analysis of what's good/bad for business. One way to distinguish those two cases would be to look at an older survey and see how the rankings fared as predictions of future state prosperity.
- abbasmehdi 15y agoCalifornia is lawsuit friendly, has high taxes, very expensive to live, has high cost of talent, is saturated with competitors for the same talent pool thanks to the SV, and has poor public transportation. I live here but if you just took a raw numbers, by simply moving your business to dallas you can improve your bottom line by about 30 percent. But then again who wants to live in Texas anyway? I'd do Florida though! :)
- giardini 15y agoFlorida's weather is a problem (hurricanes really _do_ disrupt business). Texas, north of Houston (which has extremely humid summers), is very nice. If you worry about the educational system then put your children in a private school. CA's educational standards (as well as other standards) cannot be maintained in the long run: the political system won't allow it. Within a few years we'll see significant downsizing of CA government and government services. For some this will be a lowering of standards but it is necessary.
- abbasmehdi 15y agoI'm biased - my fiancé wants us to live in Miami (her hometown). You can buy a place in Miami under $300k that does not suck – nice 3 bdr place in a nice neighbourhood or a 2 bdr ocean side condo (look it up, I was shocked), really! By Cali standards that’s l-o-w!! I was talking to a friend of mine a few days ago and we were talking about the best place to live in the US. We were thinking in terms of a) reasonable cost of living (a million dollars should buy a mansion not a house), b) good weather (all four seasons at worst - no harsh summer/winter), c) low crime rate, d) high average IQ (no 'steel towns'), e) not under the constant threat of natural disasters and f) race not an issue (I don’t back down from racists which makes my fiancé nervous and ruins my day a bit ;)). I have lived in the Pacific NW (rain sucks! I often joke I'd rather be in prison ;)), lived in So Cal (traffic sucks, homes cost way too much, the crowd is whack mostly, the air quality is bad, nothing is close etc.), short stint in Chicago (living there despite the weather is an act of arrogance against Mother Nature). Long story short we concluded the best spots are 1) Denver, 2) San Diego, 3) Atlanta, 4) Salt Lake City. If you have heart disease in your family (I do), don’t move to Denver. I’ve been told high altitudes are bad for heart patients (even future heart patients like myself.)
- BasilAwad 15y agoMakes me feel better about staying in Austin as opposed to moving to California. I know there is less talent and risk capital here but UT-Austin is a big school with some great talent. For example, there's a bunch of honors program students that choose UT over other schools for scholarships, proximity to home, and lifestyle. In terms of risk capital, if you can't find an investor in Texas then raise capital in California and come back to Austin :D
- Mrdev4 15y agoRed states are good, blue states are bad. Seeing how most CEO's are Republicans and most red states have no problem giving huge tax breaks, not surprised.Ask Jerry Jones,Texas is big on corporate welfare. http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20100908-Study-shows-majority-of-Texas-companies-7155.ece http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20100908-Stud...
- Sizlak 15y agoMaybe that's one of the reasons why I don't want to live in Texas.
- hammock 15y agoI would like to see methodology on this. If Calif. and Texas CEOs were merely asked "rate your tax policy environment, work force quality, quality of living etc in your home state on a 1 to 10 scale" and then the results were compared across states, then the study would be filled with bias based on the respondent's frame of reference (e.g. in their mind they could be comparing/weighing their own state against number of variable things that need to be controlled for). A study asking them to rate tax policy in each of 50 states would also be inadequate since the average CEO probably does not have enough knowledge to answer that question about all 50 states.