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Anyone looking to start a new manufacturing business would be insane to consider California for any number of reasons- cost-of-living, (urban) quality of life,
by efitz 2y ago
Anyone looking to start a new manufacturing business would be insane to consider California for any number of reasons- cost-of-living, (urban) quality of life, regulatory environment, state taxes, etc.
Right now manufacturers should be considering other states. Florida, Tennessee and Texas all are income-tax-free and have business friendly regulatory climates. Several states like Alabama and West Virginia offer extremely low cost-of-living and property costs and likely would negotiate tax abatements.
- apercu 2y agoDoes anyone truly want to live in Florida, Texas, Alabama, WV? (I left Tennessee off the list because it seems a lot to people _do_ want to live in Nashville anyway). I grew up in Texas. I've lived in 5 states and a Canadian province. My sisters house in Fort Worth is assessed a little lower than my house in WI. But her property tax is more than my property tax plus WI state income tax so.....
- murderfs 2y agoFlorida and Texas are among the fastest growing states in the country, whereas California is losing population.
- scarface_74 2y agoAnd how many of the traditional demographics of tech workers do you think want to move to Florida? It is currently my home state and I work remotely. But I’m older. I would never want to live here if my wife were younger or I thought there was any chance we wanted to become pregnant.
- decafninja 2y agoI don’t know, Miami is pretty nice. The only reason I wouldn’t consider living in Miami is that if I ever got laid off, the tech job ecosystem is poor at best. It’s not perfect but neither is SFBA, NYC, or Seattle.
- scarface_74 2y agoUntil you have to pay the skyrocketing insurance costs. I am not blaming the government for that. It’s just life when you live in an area with frequent hurricanes
- p1esk 2y agoAfter many years in CA I love it in Florida. Palm Beach or Boca Raton are very nice, schools are excellent, weather is perfect 7 months out of 12. And houses are significantly cheaper than in equivalent areas in CA. Less woke culture too.
- fragmede 2y ago7/12 is 58% is an F.
- kortilla 2y agoWhy would you have difficulty becoming pregnant in Florida?
- acdha 2y agoThat’s mostly not the problem: it’s what happens if it goes wrong in ways which are guaranteed to happen for a certain percentage of women every year, and you’re no longer allowed to get medical treatment because some failed Christians couldn’t be bothered to read their own holy book (the Old Testament god is down with abortion, the New Testament one isn’t concerned with it). There are more children who used to have mothers until an attempt at a sibling went wrong than there used to be, and that’s simply shameful. This has ripple effects: it’s not just women suffering permanent injuries or death but also growing problems in many red states with doctors leaving to avoid the high likelihood of being charged for exercising what is standard medical judgement in the free world. Even getting pregnant is at risk for couples who need to use IVF. Those attempts can go wrong which are easily resolved if you can get medical care which is increasingly under legal threat. IVF patients tend to be richer and whiter so the GOP is trying to carve out exceptions but that’s far from a given and you’ll still have a nightmare if you get the wrong DA.
- kortilla 2y agoTravel to an adjacent state if you need an abortion. If you don’t have the funds to do that you aren’t smartly planning a family in the first place.
- acdha 2y agoTraveling to an adjacent state isn’t something you can do in an emergency. It’s not something you can easily do if you have family commitments, as growing families often do. It’s not going to help you if you have trouble finding a doctor because they’re leaving a state which is looking for excuses to attack their medical judgement. It’s not something you can easily do if you have a relationship which turns bad and the make partner is opposed because he sees the permanent anchor of a potential birth. Yes, there are ways that people can cope with that but just because it’s possible doesn’t mean people won’t try to avoid being in a bad situation in the first place, as was the topic of this thread.
- astrange 2y agoThe population increasing in a state is mostly about age structure of the country, not people deciding to move there. California's low growth and Florida's high growth are because Americans are getting older, retiring, and not having children.
- murderfs 2y agoThis is absolutely false, to the point where there's literally a wikipedia article about net migration out of California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_exodus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_exodus
- astrange 2y agoNet migration is not the same thing as population change. You can have net out-migration and population growth because people have children. > as well as comparatively high tax levels and a complex regulatory environment for businesses.[8] Texas is the leading destination of California's former residents Texas has higher tax levels than California because property taxes are higher. People are leaving pretty much entirely because of housing costs because California refuses to build anything.
- dragonwriter 2y agoCalifornia having negative growth is a result of immigration curtailment from COVID; as immigration numbers have recovered, California’s population loss rate as dropped from the 0.91% pandemic peak to 0.19% in 2023. For a long time before the pandemic California has had high internal outmigration mostly at lower income levels, nearly offset by internal inmigration mostly at higher income levels, with net growth because of international migration.
- DiscourseFan 2y agoFlorida will be underwater immanently, in Texas abortion is illegal. I'd call it a "bubble," for lack of a better term.
- kortilla 2y agoWhatever you want to call it, people want to live there.
- DiscourseFan 2y agoThey want a well-paying job or a better community or better schools. Nobody "wants" to move to a state just because its that state. Long term political and ecological trends won't deter short term gains for many, that's all.
- kortilla 2y agoOkay, nobody “wants” to live in California either by that logic.
- DiscourseFan 2y agoWell, there are a few...but most people I know who've moved to California recently only did so for work.
- nunez 2y agoTexas politics is temporary IMO. Tides will turn eventually.
- DiscourseFan 2y agoHistory is not some abstract concept that moves with as much regularity as the moon around the ocean. It takes people to change laws.
- 2y ago
- decafninja 2y agoFlorida and Texas don’t belong on the same list as WV and Alabama. I can see why even a deep blue liberal might hold their nose and move to FL or TX. I can’t see why you’d do so for AL or WV.
- shiroiushi 2y agoThey wouldn't, just proposing the idea here is crazy. The OP might as well have suggested Idaho, Wyoming, or northern Alaska as viable places to build giant tech company campuses.
- sroussey 2y ago> Florida and Texas don’t belong on the same list as WV and Alabama. Most of Texas and Florida is a lot more alike to WV and Alabama when you take out some of the cities which the state very much hates. Both states are very much local control when it comes to the Federal government, but exactly the opposite when it comes to their cities.
- nunez 2y agoHouston and Austin are frickin' awesome if you're into food and hot weather. Alabama has beautiful beaches...and Huntsville. Birmingham is actually quite nice. Florida has amazing beaches.
- kagakuninja 2y agoTexas actually has higher taxes than California, despite the lack of income tax. They make up for it in property tax AFAIK. California actually has low property taxes for many property owners, thanks to the controversial proposition 13. Desirable urban areas of California are expensive because we don't have enough housing.
- eric-hu 2y ago> Desirable urban areas of California are expensive because we don't have enough housing. I hear this a lot about California and other places. But I also know lots of people look to buy a 2nd, 3rd, etc property for rental income. For those homeowners, buying more property is rational because it's an investment they already understand. They can reap economy of scale benefits, even at a low multiple like 2-3 properties: water heaters, dishwashers etc become easier to maintain. The incentives are strong for homeowners to buy rental property. And they're in a stronger position to buy than renters. My gut tells me that 7-8 of every 10 new houses built are bought with the intention to rent it out. It seems like "build more homes" will result in current property owners owning more property to rent out, and most renters will still be renters.
- kagakuninja 2y agoThen that would result in lower cost rental units. While not what everyone wants, it would be a great improvement over the current situation. There are also ways to create tax incentives that could discourage your scenario from happening.
- spockz 2y agoThis is a large reason why many of our larger municipalities now forbid to buy a home in their zone if it isn’t (going to be) your primary residence. It seems to be working quite well.
- astrange 2y agoThe only thing that matters is how many homes there are; stuff like this and vacancy taxes has barely any effect. The main reason to do it is if you want to appear to solve the problem without actually trying to solve it. The main reason anyone would own two SFHs is that you need to do this in order to move. If you sell your first home before moving you're homeless. And after that it can take a long time to find a buyer. They're a bad rental investment though because it's way too risky to own one; one bad renter or one roof replacement means you've lost money.
- scarface_74 2y agoAnd you would be crazy to move your company to Florida where if you got on the wrong side of the governor, he would go out of his way to punish you. Florida is my current home state. You would be much better off moving to GA, TN, AL or almost any other southern state with more traditional business friendly Republicans. And this isn’t meant to be a Republican vs Democrat thing. More so a “business friendly traditional Republican” vs “culture warrior Republicans”. I have no opinion of how Democrats run their states. I’ve only lived in two states my entire life - GA and FL. I don’t keep up with state politics in other states.
- shiroiushi 2y ago>Florida, Tennessee and Texas all are income-tax-free and have business friendly regulatory climates. Yes, and abortion is illegal in those states, the schools are terrible, and they're full of MAGAts. You're not going to attract top talent to these places, especially women. There are very good reasons that knowledge industries are mostly concentrated in blue states.
- slavboj 2y agoYou might be surprised to discover that roughly half of their population is women.
- shiroiushi 2y agoNot women who'd work in a tech company.
- selimthegrim 2y agoWe just lost a good (female, Australian) grad student we were recruiting, to UT Austin.