25 ms·

Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

338 points by john_cogs 4y ago

dougmwne 4y ago
This is pretty silly because governments do compete for residents. Having jobs is a major part of attracting new residents unless you are a (sub)tropical paradise. A business that doesn’t employ anyone or consume any inputs from other state businesses is not going to be a particularly interesting business to incentivize.
- LLcolD 4y ago
  Maybe this is like a chicken and the egg problem? I see it in my country. Investors would like to come and build a factory, but there is no work force. So they go elsewhere.
- helen___keller 4y ago
  And a lot of issues in (sub)tropical paradises are also caused by lack of jobs, or at least ones well paying enough to afford housing in a market that’s valuable by virtue of being paradise. Case in point, Honolulu has a cost of living on par with (or exceeding) New York, SF, etc, but with wages on par with an average mid sized midwestern city. What this means is people who were born and raised on the island either live with parents or move to the mainland
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  It's not just jobs, it's stuff like housing, government services - and then there's this phenomenon along the NY-PA state line, when New Yorkers sell up once their children are out of school and move to Pennsylvania. Local taxes are lower in PA, but schools are worse, too.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  When corporations are people, competing for businesses is literally the same thing as competing for people.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  > Having jobs is a major part of attracting new residents unless you are a (sub)tropical paradise. The theory is that for a whole range of lucrative jobs, “everywhere with Internet” can offer residents those jobs through remote work. So a neighborhood doesn’t need to compete to attract a big office building. Personally I think that remains to be seen… we’re clearly still in the hangover from the pandemic. Society might look very different 10 years from now, and 10 years is a reasonable horizon for major civic planning. Most of the things that attracted Amazon to Crystal City were put in years or decades prior to their little competition. > A business that doesn’t employ anyone or consume any inputs from other state businesses is not going to be a particularly interesting business to incentivize. Exactly, that’s the whole point of the piece. If all the most lucrative jobs for your residents are remote, then maybe your civic planning will need to revolve around attracting people rather than incentivizing businesses. Again, remains to be seen IMO. One big downside, from the perspective of local governments, is that taxes on individuals will have to go up. Quite a lot of local tax revenue passes through businesses, hidden in prices. You can’t hide on a W2 or property tax bill though.
  - mdgrech23 4y ago
    Also local individuals aren't providing campaign donations but sure can bet corporations are.
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    The thing is that Florida and a few other top destinations seem to have a monopoly on attracting remote workers. No state income tax helps a lot, but that’s not going to make Wisconsin a major destination for remote workers. If the place hasn’t already been attracting retirees for years, it’s probably not going to ever get on the remote worker radar.
    - NineStarPoint 4y ago
      For me while State Income tax was an interesting part of the decision, ultimately it was easily consumed by the massive difference in house prices (and as such rent) between different locations. Which is probably part of the retiree question as well, but I wouldn’t say most of the places that ended up on my list with a combination of “place I’d want to live” and “reasonable rent prices” were retiree destinations.
- thex10 4y ago
  > This is pretty silly because governments do compete for residents. I agree, but I also think many places compete poorly. I recently moved to a fast-growing (read: developer-friendly) region of the USA that often claims to be a "top place to live". And I might just leave, for many reasons: * The water tastes terrible. But I bought a filter so whatever... * The schools are bad. But I can try to lottery into the magnet school, okay.. * The services suck because they are not made to keep up with demand. Worse yet this is "normalized", seen as completely okay by the culture. * Can't make a DMV appointment yet, next appointments available in three months * None of the post offices accessible to me have passport appointments available. The only walk in service available is in another county * I can't drive, transit exists but is too infrequent to be a good option to get to that other county for a very specific appointment That's just a small slice of government-enabled things which happen to affect me. But what of it? No one in power gives a shit. So f--k me for having high expectations, I guess.
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    Yeah, I think you’ve got it. Poor competitors lose the competition. Sounds like you are better off somewhere else, especially if you want public transit.
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      It sounds like they have no option other than public transport until the 3 month wait for the DMV appointment is done.
      - notch898a 4y ago
        Fun fact, in Arizona you can legally operate a motorized gas powered bicycle without license / registration. It's all the rage with alcoholics and people that didn't think out having a valid driver's license before they moved to a new state (because if they did, they wouldn't need an appointment and the new one could be issued on the spot 24/7). It's actually one of the few places you can walk into a (private contractor) and get a state license at 3am on a Sunday.
  - 4y ago
cyclecount 4y ago
This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. A border exists often for workers only, but is mostly a legal fiction that corporations can easily navigate. The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) while allowing the auto manufacturing companies to treat all of North America as one market. Toyota can move their plants around the region somewhat freely; can someone in Mexico freely move to the midwest?
- indymike 4y ago
  > central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Every deceased Emperor, Chief, King, Earl, Duke, Lord and other ruler of lands and holder of fiefdoms would disagree with this.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  For a migratory species it is literally inhuman to erect a border. Borders should be jurisdictional boundaries but should be permeable like the states in the US. The rest of the tribalism BS is just that.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago. You probably don't want criminals to freely move into your country. You probably want a country that gets funded by taxes (both short term and long term). No country in the world maintains open borders. Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster. Platitudes only work on paper.
    - candiddevmike 4y ago
      All of that already happens without open borders, it just costs us more money to maintain.
ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
https://archive.is/OiagC https://archive.is/OiagC
gtop3 4y ago
What are the best strategies to attract remote workers to a location? * Utilities such as roads, water, high speed internet feel like table stakes now. Fiber internet is quickly spreading in rural areas, and I know people with septic tanks and a fiber line. Ten years ago Google Fiber was a major selling point for Kansas City. * Governments have little control over climate, nearby geographic features, time zone, and a million other details. They can highlight their strengths in marketing campaigns. * Cost of living only works for so long. We've seen areas in the last decades that have an influx of population and they usually see a corresponding increase in COL. There are approaches governments can take to slow down the growth of COL, but it seems inevitable. * Taxes and local regulations might help attract some workers. Cannabis consumers might be more inclined to move somewhere they can gain access legally. High income workers might be attracted to places without state income tax. Women might migrate to a state that aligns with their abortion politics. Motorcyclists might prefer places with lane splitting. * Large projects such as professional sports teams, well connected airports, large hospitals or ski lodges might play a role. Governments can attract these types of projects.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  > * Cost of living only works for so long. We've seen areas in the last decades that have an influx of population and they usually see a corresponding increase in COL. There are approaches governments can take to slow down the growth of COL, but it seems inevitable. This IMO is the big issue though. Governments need to be aware of long-term population trends as stay ahead of them when it comes to planning. I consistently feel like local governments find themselves surprised at demographic changes that have been obvious for several years.
  - chasd00 4y ago
    yeah get behind on population growth and you'll never get caught up. This happened to Austin, the city just put its head in the sand and wanted to stay a small town forever. Now they're hopelessly behind building out the infrastructure to support a population growing at an ever faster rate.
- ErikVandeWater 4y ago
nhchris 4y ago
The article is valid in speaking specifically about US states competing, but otherwise I find the idea of treating governments, and countries, as mere economic platforms, that compete like a business would, disturbing. They are representatives of their nations, and their duty is to their people, to whom they are guardians, of said people and their homelands. They should not be 'competing' for more residents just as families shouldn't compete to attract other's children.
- ErikVandeWater 4y ago
  Whether something is disturbing or not doesn't say much about whether it's a good idea, just that it is different from the conventional. Around the world, governments act like abusive parents. If people could migrate freely (creating a competition for residents), much more people would live without the abuse of authoritarian governments.
  - nhchris 4y ago
    Governments don't come from the geography, but the people. Living in a small country myself, a place such as China, India, Indonesia, or Nigeria could send (and they would gladly come) enough people to outvote us on any issue 3x over, without even noticing they're missing anyone. We would simply cease to exist first as a sovereign people, and soon after as a distinct people at all, without any territory to call our own.
    - lolinder 4y ago
      This is a perspective that's really hard for someone in the US to understand. When people here make the exact same arguments that you're making, it sounds xenophobic and dangerous. It's the stuff of Trumpism and MAGA. However, in the context of a true nation state, the exact same words can mean something very different. When we in the United States try to claim that immigration would hurt our sovereignty as a people, we're referring to an almost fictional nation that's supposedly being overrun—we have always been an eclectic group of immigrants from many places, and the people who have deep ancestral ties to the land are generally marginalized already. But when people in a true nation state express the same concerns, we in the US should understand that the context is very different. This isn't the case of third generation Americans trying to claim that this land is theirs and no one else should be able to come here—instead we're talking about people whose families have been there literally since time immemorial. I'm not writing this to take a stand on immigration in Europe or anywhere else, but it's important for us in the US to not project our own sensibilities into a completely different context. A good article on this topic: https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-nation/ https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...
hermannj314 4y ago
I've owned houses in two cities in my life. One called itself "A developer-friendly community" and the other "A healthy community" The cities were organized around their taglines. One was 300 years old and focused on parks, trails, conservancy, and community centers. The other a younger city focused on growth and sprawl, tax abatements, and new businesses. You should live where the government aligns with your phase of life and personal goals and be free to choose a new government later. Also, democracies can shift over time but generally it is easier to move somewhere new than to feel entitled to change a municpal culture simply because you got older.
- revlolz 4y ago
  How do you find out what kind of city a place is? This might seem downright stupid to say, but I don't even know what types to even be looking for.
  - hermannj314 4y ago
    Visit and take a walk around. Look at the minutes of the city council, see what they are focusing on. There are endless rhetorical questions to ask yourself: Where are you in your life and how do you define yourself? Do you prefer cafes or clubs; care about schools and parks? Safety or autonomy? How do you want to commute? Do you want small shops or shopping centers? Small town monoculture or big city diversity? Do you want to your city to attract tourists or be hostile to them? A city government has a lot of levers to pull to build a city around each of these things, and some do it poorly and some it well. Don't move to Moline, Illinois or Cupertino, CA and not expect to find a city that bends to the will of John Deere/ Apple respectively. Some cities exist to serve a large corporation above all else (since the entire population works for them). Others exist to serve the local University or the tourist board, and others the soccer moms. None are wrong, they are all trying to find a local maximum to serve the people that live there.
- xxpor 4y ago
  The problem is when the "healthy community" is close to the central city and has good transit. Metro areas are networks, nothing happens in isolation.
sologoub 4y ago
There already are programs to attract residents that can boost a country’s tax base and add investments to economy. Media likes to call them “golden visas” and have derided them all the same. Sure there are issues like risks of ill-gotten funds getting laundered or criminals getting a new start without facing consequences of their crimes, but the same can be said about companies that are used as fronts for the same individuals. In the end, very large sums of money seem to open most doors, whether it is for individuals or companies.
slackdog 4y ago
Residents need jobs. Alaska is one of the most beautiful states in the country, but there are relatively few opportunities for work. If there were more jobs, more people would consider moving to Alaska. We got a taste of this effect when remote working became common. A lot of people moved to other states and cities they wouldn't or couldn't live in before when they were expected to live near the office. But of course remote working isn't possible for many industries, particularly for blue collar labor, so if you want those people to move into your area, you need to have job opportunities to offer them.
- chasd00 4y ago
  One thing to consider is jobs isn't the only thing that attracts residents. If i could double my salary by moving my family to Alaska I still wouldn't go. It's too cold.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > If there were more jobs, more people would consider moving to Alaska. I wouldn't bet on a surge of people. Even in Anchorage, the sun comes up mid-morning and sets mid-afternoon in the winter. And about half the year the high temperature struggles to get above freezing. A typical summer temperature tops out in the mid 60s, and summer is short. Sure, some people will still move there, but it's not just jobs that makes Alaska a tough sell.
bell-cot 4y ago
Wow. Is Bloomberg actually a credible business publication? Barring a serious housing surplus, or similar major economic problems, there are ~no upsides for political leaders who actually work to attract more residents to an area. (Attracting more & higher bidders, for the limited housing stock, is a different story.) Vs. "attracting new business"? That attracts plenty of favorable press, bragging rights, etc. And for local governments - which live on property taxes and have to fund the schools & local services - every dollar worth of business properties is a money farm, and every dollar worth of residential housing is a money pit.
- comte7092 4y ago
  Even in the era of remote work, businesses are attracted to places with strong (as in a well developed & highly skilled workforce) labor markets. Workers who have high career capital are mobile and can generally choose where they want to live. Nothing about this is unserious just because it doesn’t fit your worldview.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    That depends. Factory work is often attracted to a dieing town in the middle of nowhere they can scoup up cheap labor that is just skilled enough. You can only get your factory so large doing this though, but there are towns of 5-10k people that fit the bill just fine for manufacturing cheap in the US.
    - comte7092 4y ago
      Yes indeed, however that isn’t really an economic development model most would want to hold up as an ideal.
      - bluGill 4y ago
        Those small towns won't get anything better and know it do they consider it their best possible model.
vonnik 4y ago
This piece is an op-ed, not straight reporting. Tyler Cowen, its author, is a noted economist (with libertarian leanings), and he favors competition in many forms. Anyone curious about him and his views should read his blog Marginal Revolution and listen to his podcast. They're both smart: https://marginalrevolution.com/ https://marginalrevolution.com/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/ Tyler has written extensively about stagnation in the American economy. Part of that stagnation is the decreasing mobility of Americans. I very much agree with him that governments should compete for residents, especially the right kind of residents. It takes hard work to build a successful city. If we look at San Francisco, we see a city that has done everything it can to drive away many residents, and in so doing, destroyed its tax base, leading to a budget crisis. A great lesson in what not to do! Why should there not be a market for talent, where the towns and cities of America compete to make themselves more livable, better centers of serendipity, better providers of public services? That sounds great to me. In an earlier America, some cities took this mandate very seriously. For anyone curious, Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus tells the story of about the leaders of Dallas deliberately made it attractive to early residents in order to build their town. His biographical book is called "Minding the Store."
- m0llusk 4y ago
  The situation in San Francisco is more complex than that. It is pretty clear that heavy handed taxes drove some away, but the bulk of office workers were not in that elite club. The transition to remote work drained San Francisco of its office workers. Even with that more than half of the existing office space stock is still rented and used.
  - vonnik 4y ago
    It's not a whole lot more complex. In the last few years, the city government could have adopted very different policies toward policing, homelessness, COVID, housing and education, all of which would have made it more competitive than it is. SF's commercial leases, while underperforming on a national level, are a whole different issue to the one Tyler is addressing, which is about competing for residents, not businesses.
abvdasker 4y ago
It's worth remembering that New York-based opposition to subsidies for Amazon's construction of "HQ2" in Long Island City was widely vilified and disparaged in mainstream media outlets across the political spectrum. This latest development looks like a pretty strong vindication of those who were outspoken against these tax handouts to Amazon.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > latest development looks like a pretty strong vindication of those who were outspoken against these tax handouts to Amazon How so? I was in west Manhattan when that happened. We got the jobs and capital, not Queens.
  - draw_down 4y ago
    [dead]
  - abvdasker 4y ago
    Amazon very publicly decided not to build "HQ2" in Long Island City as a result of the local opposition. Amazon's significant Manhattan presence predates any of this discussion and is largely unsubsidized. It's also a little goofy to assume that the people working for Amazon in Manhattan don't live in Queens but otherwise would if the office was physically located there (especially given their proximity to the 7 train lol).
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > Amazon's significant Manhattan presence predates any of this discussion and is largely unsubsidized It’s unsubsidised. But there was a hiring boom originally planned for Queens—I know people who were planning on living in Queens who had to about turn to Chelsea. You’re correct that Queens lost because of opposition, not subsidies per se, but a lot of that opposition was churned by anti-subsidy politics.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  The specific tax incentives offered to Amazon (above and beyond the programs that the city offers broadly) were all linked to job creation. Create no jobs; get no tax breaks. With that in mind, to what extent do you consider this a "vindication"?
supriyo-biswas 4y ago
https://archive.ph/lvwNo https://archive.ph/lvwNo
alexfromapex 4y ago
The only way to make it happen is to incentivize it monetarily. That means the government’s budget would have to be heavily controlled by how many residents there are. But just residency is too narrow of a lens to make any conclusions from, in my opinion.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Not necessarily. Making it easier to build housing or creating temporary tax abatements for renovations is a tired and true strategy that doesn't really cost a city anything. Attracting new residents to rehab and move into formerly run down housing will actually increase tax receipts in the medium term.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  >That means the government’s budget would have to be heavily controlled by how many residents there are. ... aren't we there already?
lampshades 4y ago
They should do both.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
somewhereoutth 4y ago
With falling birthrates in developed countries, competing for residents will be exactly what they will be doing. Making a success of large scale immigration will be essential to the future prospects of those nations/communities.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  Is this really all that challenging? Plenty of Indians who are willing to move anywhere developed.
- nhchris 4y ago
  Successful mass immigration will allow them to persist in the systems that are causing those falling birthrates, ensuring their people dwindle towards nothing. Stopping immigration would force them to change to something sustainable.
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    > persist in the systems that are causing those falling birthrates Care to specify which systems are causing the falling birthrates?
    - nhchris 4y ago
      "Systems" as in those countries' social and economical systems. I don't know exactly what about those systems kills birthrates, but they are doubtless to blame, as other countries, and even those same countries some time in the past, had higher birthrates. Those systems caused that change.
      - nobody9999 4y ago
        >"Systems" as in those countries' social and economical systems. I don't know exactly what about those systems kills birthrates, but they are doubtless to blame, as other countries, and even those same countries some time in the past, had higher birthrates. Those systems caused that change. I'd say that falling birthrates have much more to do with modern medicine (antibiotics and effective contraception anyone?) and better sanitation systems, as well as industrialization, than with government policies (China's failed "one child" policy notwithstanding). If you're a farmer, more kids means more (relatively free) help on the farm. When almost half[0] of the children born died before the age of five, more kids were conceived, since many wouldn't survive to adulthood. That's not government policy, that's technology. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al...
legitster 4y ago
> Overall, there may be less competition to attract corporations. At the same time, political competition for residents may become more intense, because more people will be able to choose where to live regardless of where they work. This competition could lead to improvements in schools and parks. I am as capitalist as they come, but I don't disagree with this assessment at all. I find it bizarre how some cities almost became hostile to their own citizens and got away with it because of a monopoly on the good jobs.
londons_explore 4y ago
There are a few countries who compete for residents. For example, The Netherlands has a 30% tax advantage for all immigrants, for 5 years. Thats huuuuuge. [1]: https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/live-work-study/living/official-procedures/30-tax-ruling https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/live-work-study/living/officia...
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > From a tax perspective, the salary agreed upon between you and your employer will be reduced by 30%. In return, you receive a 30% allowance as reimbursement for expenses. This is not at all a 30% tax advantage lol.
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Imagine you and a local are both are paid €100k. The local gets €60,675.16 after tax. The immigrant gets €77,281.98 annually after tax. Thats 27% more money in your bank account for the same work done. And there is another huge benefit for those moving from the USA... Any income from shares or overseas income are taxed at the USA tax rate rather than the dutch tax rate.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    Isn't it saying that if you earn 100K, you will only be taxed as someone who earns 70K? That 30K is then an untaxed "allowance".
    - necovek 4y ago
      > Thats 27% more money in your bank account for the same work done. A nitpick, but that's not "for the same work done", but for the same gross salary. The benefit is in recognition of the extra home-making costs (and work) a highly skilled immigrant would have upon moving there. A local would usually have local support system (friends, family, inheritance, knowledge of language...).
  - techstrategist 4y ago
chasd00 4y ago
It's not one or the other, governments ( US state governments ) compete for both. Companies want to be where the workers are at and workers want to be where the jobs are at. A state needs qualified residents to attract businesses and they also need good jobs to attract residents. The articles says WFH is changing that but I don't see WFH ever being on a wide enough scale to have much influence.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Workers want to be comfortably near jobs. Not so close you breath the fumes. Not so far you commute by plane. Ideally with good schools if you want kids, and other activities besides walking on concrete.
- kodah 4y ago
  I would rather that the incentive system be geared towards balancing quality of life with affordability. Clustering businesses together is how we go to paying for "Cost of Labor" which systemically advantages already very rich people becoming richer while marginalizing geographies that don't exist to cater to businesses with dense, high income people. My hypothesis is the more average the experience is across a nation the more peaceful and enjoyable life becomes.
  - vanjajaja1 4y ago
    For some people, yes, for others, no. There's plenty of countries in the world that prioritise creating an average and peaceful experience. As far as I can tell the US was never one of those countries.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  I think the sentiment is more that we should optimize for the wellbeing of people; i.e. the wellbeing of companies should only optimized to the degree that it contributes to the wellbeing of people.
chewz 4y ago
That was true until end of XIX century. Especially so in XIX century. For a person a move was quite simple, sometimes just few miles over the border. But moving a business, brick-and-mortar business like coal-mine or brewery was hard. That kept personal taxes low and business taxes high. But XX century changed that.
- mannerheim 4y ago
  People forget that modern nation states are a very recent, post-democratic construct, and in the past, states competed for people all the time; the fact that these people spoke a different language and had a different ethnicity mattered little to a monarch who themselves might not have belonged to the ethnicity of the country they ruled. Hence the Prussians bringing Poles to work on the farms in Silesia abandoned by Germans for the factories in the Ruhr, the Russians bringing Mennonites to settle the Volga (of course, it helped that the imperial family was German), the Austrians encouraging Serbs to exchange Ottoman for Habsburg rule, and many more such cases.
  - chewz 4y ago
    Also Germans moving from say Kassel to Hanover or Silesia to Ruhr, or Vienna to Berlin. Very low threshold - same language, culture but lower taxes or better opportunities. Or Poles moving from Galicia (now Western Ukraine) to Argentina or Chicago. At the time it wasn't possible to keep citizens tied within borders so higher personal taxes were impractical.
    - mannerheim 4y ago
      Yes, but I used these examples because these were migrations within Europe where the ethnicity of the migrants were different than where they moved to.
hintymad 4y ago
How does Bay Area fit in the narrative? From my personal point of view, Bay Area, where I live, offers very little to its residents: public schools have super low standards and low teaching qualities. Many of the schools use seemingly run-down portables while public schools in other states, such as WA, have amazing buildings and facilities. More than 1/3 of the families in the Bay Area choose private schools, the highest ratio in the US. The housing price has been through the roof. The average commute time is north of an hour. California also has higher taxes for income and business than most of the other states. Yet, people have been flocking to California (except last year) and tech companies still choose the Bay Area for their headquarters.
- gpm 4y ago
  Great weather. A virtuous cycle of good people attracting businesses willing to pay a premium for good people attracting good people.
- ikiris 4y ago
  ... so why do you live there? You choose it same as everyone else that's there now. Sounds like they compete well enough for you?
  - gretch 4y ago
    People often live here _despite_ the government, not because of it. Great weather. 4 hours away from skiing. 1 hour away from the beach. These things aren't attributable to the quality of the govt (except I will say that govt does do a decent job of preserving natural ecosystems)
    - slg 4y ago
      >Great weather. 4 hours away from skiing. 1 hour away from the beach. Why not move to Los Angeles, better weather, closer to skiing, and closer to the beach? Seems to me that there is still something the government is doing to keep you in the Bay Area.
rhuru 4y ago
I think the real problem is some cities have grown far too large. Larger the city harder for businesses and people to move out of it. Let the city residents through their elected council chose the path they want to pursue, with enough diversity people can prefer to move in and out of a city with very little impact on their day to day life. I have moved in and out of Sunnyvale/Mountain View/San Jose few times.
kube-system 4y ago
theyre-the-same-picture.jpg The #1 reason people move is for employment opportunities. Although, promising some companies tax breaks doesn't guarantee you're going to meaningfully create jobs. But the same goes the other way around, giving residents low taxes or other incentives also doesn't guarantee they'll move there, if they can't get a job.
SergeAx 4y ago
Businesses are paying more taxes than people do, so the article's title is eeconomically infeasible. Also I suspect that businesses are creating more jobs, so 2:0.
cyanydeez 4y ago
Who needs to compete when places like Florida are actively engaged in secondclass citizen warfare. But yeah, the right coupling of business and government is as unhealthy as religion.
black_13 4y ago
[dead]

338 points by john_cogs 4y ago

This is pretty silly because governments do compete for residents. Having jobs is a major part of attracting new residents unless you are a (sub)tropical paradise. A business that doesn’t employ anyone or consume any inputs from other state businesses is not going to be a particularly interesting business to incentivize.

LLcolD 4y ago
Maybe this is like a chicken and the egg problem? I see it in my country. Investors would like to come and build a factory, but there is no work force. So they go elsewhere.
helen___keller 4y ago
And a lot of issues in (sub)tropical paradises are also caused by lack of jobs, or at least ones well paying enough to afford housing in a market that’s valuable by virtue of being paradise. Case in point, Honolulu has a cost of living on par with (or exceeding) New York, SF, etc, but with wages on par with an average mid sized midwestern city. What this means is people who were born and raised on the island either live with parents or move to the mainland
HarryHirsch 4y ago
It's not just jobs, it's stuff like housing, government services - and then there's this phenomenon along the NY-PA state line, when New Yorkers sell up once their children are out of school and move to Pennsylvania. Local taxes are lower in PA, but schools are worse, too.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
When corporations are people, competing for businesses is literally the same thing as competing for people.
snowwrestler 4y ago
> Having jobs is a major part of attracting new residents unless you are a (sub)tropical paradise. The theory is that for a whole range of lucrative jobs, “everywhere with Internet” can offer residents those jobs through remote work. So a neighborhood doesn’t need to compete to attract a big office building. Personally I think that remains to be seen… we’re clearly still in the hangover from the pandemic. Society might look very different 10 years from now, and 10 years is a reasonable horizon for major civic planning. Most of the things that attracted Amazon to Crystal City were put in years or decades prior to their little competition. > A business that doesn’t employ anyone or consume any inputs from other state businesses is not going to be a particularly interesting business to incentivize. Exactly, that’s the whole point of the piece. If all the most lucrative jobs for your residents are remote, then maybe your civic planning will need to revolve around attracting people rather than incentivizing businesses. Again, remains to be seen IMO. One big downside, from the perspective of local governments, is that taxes on individuals will have to go up. Quite a lot of local tax revenue passes through businesses, hidden in prices. You can’t hide on a W2 or property tax bill though.
- mdgrech23 4y ago
  Also local individuals aren't providing campaign donations but sure can bet corporations are.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  The thing is that Florida and a few other top destinations seem to have a monopoly on attracting remote workers. No state income tax helps a lot, but that’s not going to make Wisconsin a major destination for remote workers. If the place hasn’t already been attracting retirees for years, it’s probably not going to ever get on the remote worker radar.
  - NineStarPoint 4y ago
    For me while State Income tax was an interesting part of the decision, ultimately it was easily consumed by the massive difference in house prices (and as such rent) between different locations. Which is probably part of the retiree question as well, but I wouldn’t say most of the places that ended up on my list with a combination of “place I’d want to live” and “reasonable rent prices” were retiree destinations.
thex10 4y ago
> This is pretty silly because governments do compete for residents. I agree, but I also think many places compete poorly. I recently moved to a fast-growing (read: developer-friendly) region of the USA that often claims to be a "top place to live". And I might just leave, for many reasons: * The water tastes terrible. But I bought a filter so whatever... * The schools are bad. But I can try to lottery into the magnet school, okay.. * The services suck because they are not made to keep up with demand. Worse yet this is "normalized", seen as completely okay by the culture. * Can't make a DMV appointment yet, next appointments available in three months * None of the post offices accessible to me have passport appointments available. The only walk in service available is in another county * I can't drive, transit exists but is too infrequent to be a good option to get to that other county for a very specific appointment That's just a small slice of government-enabled things which happen to affect me. But what of it? No one in power gives a shit. So f--k me for having high expectations, I guess.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  Yeah, I think you’ve got it. Poor competitors lose the competition. Sounds like you are better off somewhere else, especially if you want public transit.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    It sounds like they have no option other than public transport until the 3 month wait for the DMV appointment is done.
    - notch898a 4y ago
      Fun fact, in Arizona you can legally operate a motorized gas powered bicycle without license / registration. It's all the rage with alcoholics and people that didn't think out having a valid driver's license before they moved to a new state (because if they did, they wouldn't need an appointment and the new one could be issued on the spot 24/7). It's actually one of the few places you can walk into a (private contractor) and get a state license at 3am on a Sunday.
- 4y ago

cyclecount 4y ago

This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. A border exists often for workers only, but is mostly a legal fiction that corporations can easily navigate. The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) while allowing the auto manufacturing companies to treat all of North America as one market. Toyota can move their plants around the region somewhat freely; can someone in Mexico freely move to the midwest?

indymike 4y ago
> central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Every deceased Emperor, Chief, King, Earl, Duke, Lord and other ruler of lands and holder of fiefdoms would disagree with this.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
For a migratory species it is literally inhuman to erect a border. Borders should be jurisdictional boundaries but should be permeable like the states in the US. The rest of the tribalism BS is just that.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago. You probably don't want criminals to freely move into your country. You probably want a country that gets funded by taxes (both short term and long term). No country in the world maintains open borders. Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster. Platitudes only work on paper.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    All of that already happens without open borders, it just costs us more money to maintain.

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago

https://archive.is/OiagC https://archive.is/OiagC

gtop3 4y ago

What are the best strategies to attract remote workers to a location? * Utilities such as roads, water, high speed internet feel like table stakes now. Fiber internet is quickly spreading in rural areas, and I know people with septic tanks and a fiber line. Ten years ago Google Fiber was a major selling point for Kansas City. * Governments have little control over climate, nearby geographic features, time zone, and a million other details. They can highlight their strengths in marketing campaigns. * Cost of living only works for so long. We've seen areas in the last decades that have an influx of population and they usually see a corresponding increase in COL. There are approaches governments can take to slow down the growth of COL, but it seems inevitable. * Taxes and local regulations might help attract some workers. Cannabis consumers might be more inclined to move somewhere they can gain access legally. High income workers might be attracted to places without state income tax. Women might migrate to a state that aligns with their abortion politics. Motorcyclists might prefer places with lane splitting. * Large projects such as professional sports teams, well connected airports, large hospitals or ski lodges might play a role. Governments can attract these types of projects.

nerdponx 4y ago
> * Cost of living only works for so long. We've seen areas in the last decades that have an influx of population and they usually see a corresponding increase in COL. There are approaches governments can take to slow down the growth of COL, but it seems inevitable. This IMO is the big issue though. Governments need to be aware of long-term population trends as stay ahead of them when it comes to planning. I consistently feel like local governments find themselves surprised at demographic changes that have been obvious for several years.
- chasd00 4y ago
  yeah get behind on population growth and you'll never get caught up. This happened to Austin, the city just put its head in the sand and wanted to stay a small town forever. Now they're hopelessly behind building out the infrastructure to support a population growing at an ever faster rate.
ErikVandeWater 4y ago

nhchris 4y ago

The article is valid in speaking specifically about US states competing, but otherwise I find the idea of treating governments, and countries, as mere economic platforms, that compete like a business would, disturbing. They are representatives of their nations, and their duty is to their people, to whom they are guardians, of said people and their homelands. They should not be 'competing' for more residents just as families shouldn't compete to attract other's children.

ErikVandeWater 4y ago
Whether something is disturbing or not doesn't say much about whether it's a good idea, just that it is different from the conventional. Around the world, governments act like abusive parents. If people could migrate freely (creating a competition for residents), much more people would live without the abuse of authoritarian governments.
- nhchris 4y ago
  Governments don't come from the geography, but the people. Living in a small country myself, a place such as China, India, Indonesia, or Nigeria could send (and they would gladly come) enough people to outvote us on any issue 3x over, without even noticing they're missing anyone. We would simply cease to exist first as a sovereign people, and soon after as a distinct people at all, without any territory to call our own.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    This is a perspective that's really hard for someone in the US to understand. When people here make the exact same arguments that you're making, it sounds xenophobic and dangerous. It's the stuff of Trumpism and MAGA. However, in the context of a true nation state, the exact same words can mean something very different. When we in the United States try to claim that immigration would hurt our sovereignty as a people, we're referring to an almost fictional nation that's supposedly being overrun—we have always been an eclectic group of immigrants from many places, and the people who have deep ancestral ties to the land are generally marginalized already. But when people in a true nation state express the same concerns, we in the US should understand that the context is very different. This isn't the case of third generation Americans trying to claim that this land is theirs and no one else should be able to come here—instead we're talking about people whose families have been there literally since time immemorial. I'm not writing this to take a stand on immigration in Europe or anywhere else, but it's important for us in the US to not project our own sensibilities into a completely different context. A good article on this topic: https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-nation/ https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...

hermannj314 4y ago

I've owned houses in two cities in my life. One called itself "A developer-friendly community" and the other "A healthy community" The cities were organized around their taglines. One was 300 years old and focused on parks, trails, conservancy, and community centers. The other a younger city focused on growth and sprawl, tax abatements, and new businesses. You should live where the government aligns with your phase of life and personal goals and be free to choose a new government later. Also, democracies can shift over time but generally it is easier to move somewhere new than to feel entitled to change a municpal culture simply because you got older.

revlolz 4y ago
How do you find out what kind of city a place is? This might seem downright stupid to say, but I don't even know what types to even be looking for.
- hermannj314 4y ago
  Visit and take a walk around. Look at the minutes of the city council, see what they are focusing on. There are endless rhetorical questions to ask yourself: Where are you in your life and how do you define yourself? Do you prefer cafes or clubs; care about schools and parks? Safety or autonomy? How do you want to commute? Do you want small shops or shopping centers? Small town monoculture or big city diversity? Do you want to your city to attract tourists or be hostile to them? A city government has a lot of levers to pull to build a city around each of these things, and some do it poorly and some it well. Don't move to Moline, Illinois or Cupertino, CA and not expect to find a city that bends to the will of John Deere/ Apple respectively. Some cities exist to serve a large corporation above all else (since the entire population works for them). Others exist to serve the local University or the tourist board, and others the soccer moms. None are wrong, they are all trying to find a local maximum to serve the people that live there.
xxpor 4y ago
The problem is when the "healthy community" is close to the central city and has good transit. Metro areas are networks, nothing happens in isolation.

sologoub 4y ago

There already are programs to attract residents that can boost a country’s tax base and add investments to economy. Media likes to call them “golden visas” and have derided them all the same. Sure there are issues like risks of ill-gotten funds getting laundered or criminals getting a new start without facing consequences of their crimes, but the same can be said about companies that are used as fronts for the same individuals. In the end, very large sums of money seem to open most doors, whether it is for individuals or companies.

slackdog 4y ago

Residents need jobs. Alaska is one of the most beautiful states in the country, but there are relatively few opportunities for work. If there were more jobs, more people would consider moving to Alaska. We got a taste of this effect when remote working became common. A lot of people moved to other states and cities they wouldn't or couldn't live in before when they were expected to live near the office. But of course remote working isn't possible for many industries, particularly for blue collar labor, so if you want those people to move into your area, you need to have job opportunities to offer them.

chasd00 4y ago
One thing to consider is jobs isn't the only thing that attracts residents. If i could double my salary by moving my family to Alaska I still wouldn't go. It's too cold.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> If there were more jobs, more people would consider moving to Alaska. I wouldn't bet on a surge of people. Even in Anchorage, the sun comes up mid-morning and sets mid-afternoon in the winter. And about half the year the high temperature struggles to get above freezing. A typical summer temperature tops out in the mid 60s, and summer is short. Sure, some people will still move there, but it's not just jobs that makes Alaska a tough sell.

bell-cot 4y ago

Wow. Is Bloomberg actually a credible business publication? Barring a serious housing surplus, or similar major economic problems, there are ~no upsides for political leaders who actually work to attract more residents to an area. (Attracting more & higher bidders, for the limited housing stock, is a different story.) Vs. "attracting new business"? That attracts plenty of favorable press, bragging rights, etc. And for local governments - which live on property taxes and have to fund the schools & local services - every dollar worth of business properties is a money farm, and every dollar worth of residential housing is a money pit.

comte7092 4y ago
Even in the era of remote work, businesses are attracted to places with strong (as in a well developed & highly skilled workforce) labor markets. Workers who have high career capital are mobile and can generally choose where they want to live. Nothing about this is unserious just because it doesn’t fit your worldview.
- bluGill 4y ago
  That depends. Factory work is often attracted to a dieing town in the middle of nowhere they can scoup up cheap labor that is just skilled enough. You can only get your factory so large doing this though, but there are towns of 5-10k people that fit the bill just fine for manufacturing cheap in the US.
  - comte7092 4y ago
    Yes indeed, however that isn’t really an economic development model most would want to hold up as an ideal.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Those small towns won't get anything better and know it do they consider it their best possible model.

vonnik 4y ago

This piece is an op-ed, not straight reporting. Tyler Cowen, its author, is a noted economist (with libertarian leanings), and he favors competition in many forms. Anyone curious about him and his views should read his blog Marginal Revolution and listen to his podcast. They're both smart: https://marginalrevolution.com/ https://marginalrevolution.com/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/ Tyler has written extensively about stagnation in the American economy. Part of that stagnation is the decreasing mobility of Americans. I very much agree with him that governments should compete for residents, especially the right kind of residents. It takes hard work to build a successful city. If we look at San Francisco, we see a city that has done everything it can to drive away many residents, and in so doing, destroyed its tax base, leading to a budget crisis. A great lesson in what not to do! Why should there not be a market for talent, where the towns and cities of America compete to make themselves more livable, better centers of serendipity, better providers of public services? That sounds great to me. In an earlier America, some cities took this mandate very seriously. For anyone curious, Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus tells the story of about the leaders of Dallas deliberately made it attractive to early residents in order to build their town. His biographical book is called "Minding the Store."

m0llusk 4y ago
The situation in San Francisco is more complex than that. It is pretty clear that heavy handed taxes drove some away, but the bulk of office workers were not in that elite club. The transition to remote work drained San Francisco of its office workers. Even with that more than half of the existing office space stock is still rented and used.
- vonnik 4y ago
  It's not a whole lot more complex. In the last few years, the city government could have adopted very different policies toward policing, homelessness, COVID, housing and education, all of which would have made it more competitive than it is. SF's commercial leases, while underperforming on a national level, are a whole different issue to the one Tyler is addressing, which is about competing for residents, not businesses.

abvdasker 4y ago

It's worth remembering that New York-based opposition to subsidies for Amazon's construction of "HQ2" in Long Island City was widely vilified and disparaged in mainstream media outlets across the political spectrum. This latest development looks like a pretty strong vindication of those who were outspoken against these tax handouts to Amazon.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> latest development looks like a pretty strong vindication of those who were outspoken against these tax handouts to Amazon How so? I was in west Manhattan when that happened. We got the jobs and capital, not Queens.
- draw_down 4y ago
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- abvdasker 4y ago
  Amazon very publicly decided not to build "HQ2" in Long Island City as a result of the local opposition. Amazon's significant Manhattan presence predates any of this discussion and is largely unsubsidized. It's also a little goofy to assume that the people working for Amazon in Manhattan don't live in Queens but otherwise would if the office was physically located there (especially given their proximity to the 7 train lol).
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Amazon's significant Manhattan presence predates any of this discussion and is largely unsubsidized It’s unsubsidised. But there was a hiring boom originally planned for Queens—I know people who were planning on living in Queens who had to about turn to Chelsea. You’re correct that Queens lost because of opposition, not subsidies per se, but a lot of that opposition was churned by anti-subsidy politics.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
The specific tax incentives offered to Amazon (above and beyond the programs that the city offers broadly) were all linked to job creation. Create no jobs; get no tax breaks. With that in mind, to what extent do you consider this a "vindication"?

supriyo-biswas 4y ago

https://archive.ph/lvwNo https://archive.ph/lvwNo

alexfromapex 4y ago

The only way to make it happen is to incentivize it monetarily. That means the government’s budget would have to be heavily controlled by how many residents there are. But just residency is too narrow of a lens to make any conclusions from, in my opinion.

ch4s3 4y ago
Not necessarily. Making it easier to build housing or creating temporary tax abatements for renovations is a tired and true strategy that doesn't really cost a city anything. Attracting new residents to rehab and move into formerly run down housing will actually increase tax receipts in the medium term.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
>That means the government’s budget would have to be heavily controlled by how many residents there are. ... aren't we there already?

lampshades 4y ago

They should do both.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

somewhereoutth 4y ago

With falling birthrates in developed countries, competing for residents will be exactly what they will be doing. Making a success of large scale immigration will be essential to the future prospects of those nations/communities.

throwawaysleep 4y ago
Is this really all that challenging? Plenty of Indians who are willing to move anywhere developed.
nhchris 4y ago
Successful mass immigration will allow them to persist in the systems that are causing those falling birthrates, ensuring their people dwindle towards nothing. Stopping immigration would force them to change to something sustainable.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  > persist in the systems that are causing those falling birthrates Care to specify which systems are causing the falling birthrates?
  - nhchris 4y ago
    "Systems" as in those countries' social and economical systems. I don't know exactly what about those systems kills birthrates, but they are doubtless to blame, as other countries, and even those same countries some time in the past, had higher birthrates. Those systems caused that change.
    - nobody9999 4y ago
      >"Systems" as in those countries' social and economical systems. I don't know exactly what about those systems kills birthrates, but they are doubtless to blame, as other countries, and even those same countries some time in the past, had higher birthrates. Those systems caused that change. I'd say that falling birthrates have much more to do with modern medicine (antibiotics and effective contraception anyone?) and better sanitation systems, as well as industrialization, than with government policies (China's failed "one child" policy notwithstanding). If you're a farmer, more kids means more (relatively free) help on the farm. When almost half[0] of the children born died before the age of five, more kids were conceived, since many wouldn't survive to adulthood. That's not government policy, that's technology. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al...

legitster 4y ago

> Overall, there may be less competition to attract corporations. At the same time, political competition for residents may become more intense, because more people will be able to choose where to live regardless of where they work. This competition could lead to improvements in schools and parks. I am as capitalist as they come, but I don't disagree with this assessment at all. I find it bizarre how some cities almost became hostile to their own citizens and got away with it because of a monopoly on the good jobs.

londons_explore 4y ago

There are a few countries who compete for residents. For example, The Netherlands has a 30% tax advantage for all immigrants, for 5 years. Thats huuuuuge. [1]: https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/live-work-study/living/official-procedures/30-tax-ruling https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/live-work-study/living/officia...

iLoveOncall 4y ago
> From a tax perspective, the salary agreed upon between you and your employer will be reduced by 30%. In return, you receive a 30% allowance as reimbursement for expenses. This is not at all a 30% tax advantage lol.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Imagine you and a local are both are paid €100k. The local gets €60,675.16 after tax. The immigrant gets €77,281.98 annually after tax. Thats 27% more money in your bank account for the same work done. And there is another huge benefit for those moving from the USA... Any income from shares or overseas income are taxed at the USA tax rate rather than the dutch tax rate.
- pphysch 4y ago
  Isn't it saying that if you earn 100K, you will only be taxed as someone who earns 70K? That 30K is then an untaxed "allowance".
  - necovek 4y ago
    > Thats 27% more money in your bank account for the same work done. A nitpick, but that's not "for the same work done", but for the same gross salary. The benefit is in recognition of the extra home-making costs (and work) a highly skilled immigrant would have upon moving there. A local would usually have local support system (friends, family, inheritance, knowledge of language...).
- techstrategist 4y ago

chasd00 4y ago

It's not one or the other, governments ( US state governments ) compete for both. Companies want to be where the workers are at and workers want to be where the jobs are at. A state needs qualified residents to attract businesses and they also need good jobs to attract residents. The articles says WFH is changing that but I don't see WFH ever being on a wide enough scale to have much influence.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Workers want to be comfortably near jobs. Not so close you breath the fumes. Not so far you commute by plane. Ideally with good schools if you want kids, and other activities besides walking on concrete.
kodah 4y ago
I would rather that the incentive system be geared towards balancing quality of life with affordability. Clustering businesses together is how we go to paying for "Cost of Labor" which systemically advantages already very rich people becoming richer while marginalizing geographies that don't exist to cater to businesses with dense, high income people. My hypothesis is the more average the experience is across a nation the more peaceful and enjoyable life becomes.
- vanjajaja1 4y ago
  For some people, yes, for others, no. There's plenty of countries in the world that prioritise creating an average and peaceful experience. As far as I can tell the US was never one of those countries.
teawrecks 4y ago
I think the sentiment is more that we should optimize for the wellbeing of people; i.e. the wellbeing of companies should only optimized to the degree that it contributes to the wellbeing of people.

chewz 4y ago

That was true until end of XIX century. Especially so in XIX century. For a person a move was quite simple, sometimes just few miles over the border. But moving a business, brick-and-mortar business like coal-mine or brewery was hard. That kept personal taxes low and business taxes high. But XX century changed that.

mannerheim 4y ago
People forget that modern nation states are a very recent, post-democratic construct, and in the past, states competed for people all the time; the fact that these people spoke a different language and had a different ethnicity mattered little to a monarch who themselves might not have belonged to the ethnicity of the country they ruled. Hence the Prussians bringing Poles to work on the farms in Silesia abandoned by Germans for the factories in the Ruhr, the Russians bringing Mennonites to settle the Volga (of course, it helped that the imperial family was German), the Austrians encouraging Serbs to exchange Ottoman for Habsburg rule, and many more such cases.
- chewz 4y ago
  Also Germans moving from say Kassel to Hanover or Silesia to Ruhr, or Vienna to Berlin. Very low threshold - same language, culture but lower taxes or better opportunities. Or Poles moving from Galicia (now Western Ukraine) to Argentina or Chicago. At the time it wasn't possible to keep citizens tied within borders so higher personal taxes were impractical.
  - mannerheim 4y ago
    Yes, but I used these examples because these were migrations within Europe where the ethnicity of the migrants were different than where they moved to.

hintymad 4y ago

How does Bay Area fit in the narrative? From my personal point of view, Bay Area, where I live, offers very little to its residents: public schools have super low standards and low teaching qualities. Many of the schools use seemingly run-down portables while public schools in other states, such as WA, have amazing buildings and facilities. More than 1/3 of the families in the Bay Area choose private schools, the highest ratio in the US. The housing price has been through the roof. The average commute time is north of an hour. California also has higher taxes for income and business than most of the other states. Yet, people have been flocking to California (except last year) and tech companies still choose the Bay Area for their headquarters.

gpm 4y ago
Great weather. A virtuous cycle of good people attracting businesses willing to pay a premium for good people attracting good people.
ikiris 4y ago
... so why do you live there? You choose it same as everyone else that's there now. Sounds like they compete well enough for you?
- gretch 4y ago
  People often live here _despite_ the government, not because of it. Great weather. 4 hours away from skiing. 1 hour away from the beach. These things aren't attributable to the quality of the govt (except I will say that govt does do a decent job of preserving natural ecosystems)
  - slg 4y ago
    >Great weather. 4 hours away from skiing. 1 hour away from the beach. Why not move to Los Angeles, better weather, closer to skiing, and closer to the beach? Seems to me that there is still something the government is doing to keep you in the Bay Area.

rhuru 4y ago

I think the real problem is some cities have grown far too large. Larger the city harder for businesses and people to move out of it. Let the city residents through their elected council chose the path they want to pursue, with enough diversity people can prefer to move in and out of a city with very little impact on their day to day life. I have moved in and out of Sunnyvale/Mountain View/San Jose few times.

kube-system 4y ago

theyre-the-same-picture.jpg The #1 reason people move is for employment opportunities. Although, promising some companies tax breaks doesn't guarantee you're going to meaningfully create jobs. But the same goes the other way around, giving residents low taxes or other incentives also doesn't guarantee they'll move there, if they can't get a job.

SergeAx 4y ago

Businesses are paying more taxes than people do, so the article's title is eeconomically infeasible. Also I suspect that businesses are creating more jobs, so 2:0.

cyanydeez 4y ago

Who needs to compete when places like Florida are actively engaged in secondclass citizen warfare. But yeah, the right coupling of business and government is as unhealthy as religion.

black_13 4y ago

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