

Even profitable firms fleeing California - rfurmani
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/california-332753-businesses-business.html

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ojbyrne
While it may be true, this is an editorial. Check the sources:

"State Democratic leaders ignore the obvious. Liberal-leaning think tanks have
produced studies alleging that few businesses actually leave the state. That
is true on its surface, although Fox News reported that more than 2,500
employers, accounting for 109,000 jobs, have left California in the past four
years."

In other words, research bodies are too liberal-leaning to be of value, let's
rely on foxnews. Not really HN worthy.

~~~
rdl
I think it's really hard to get accurate figures here.

Clearly a lot of major CA employers choose to put factories or large
operations in other states for cost reasons; some of this may be regulatory,
some may be taxes, some may be availability of labor, some may be availability
of other resources (cheap power in OR/WA, old industrial facilities to
repurpose, ...).

I don't think a lot of companies move their HQs from California to elsewhere,
but you could easily have a much bigger effect from California-HQ companies
putting their major new facilities out of the state.

I personally would like to put my business in Washington, Nevada, Hong Kong,
maybe Texas, or potentially Colorado or Montana, for a mix of tax, regulatory,
and cost reasons. Unfortunately, with the possible exception of Seattle,
there's really no way to reliably locally hire enough computer security
people, or to have proximity to customers, to overcome the advantage of the
Bay Area. The alternative is some kind of distributed company, or recruiting
and relocating lots of people, but that makes the difficult problem of a
startup even harder.

~~~
functionoid
Really Washington? Do you see what is happening to Boeing?

You are missing the point it is not about software company or manufacturing
company sooner or later we all will get affected. It is about the path of self
destruction Democrats are taking us on with their ideological thinking and and
selfish behavior to remain in power.

~~~
ojbyrne
So you're really going to use the example of one of the most heavily
government-subsidized businesses ever to advance the cause of deregulation?

~~~
functionoid
Never heard of building aircraft (Boeing) as government subsidized. If you are
talking about solar panels then yes.

~~~
rdl
Boeing gets massive government assistance. Aside from their Defense and Space
business (which is facing some serious problems now) which is basically direct
federal money, US trade policy encourages sale of commercial aircraft
internationally.

Big industrial companies selling overseas get much more assistance from the
federal government than any small computer company hacker news people would be
familiar with. The US does this a lot less than most countries, too, but it
definitely exists.

Boeing has far closer ties to the government than a tech startup would.

