What, you don't thing that a State (especially California, the startup capital of the world) in a serious budget crisis has anything to do with entrepreneurs that may be attempting to start their own businesses in such a climate?
Although I've unfortunately added to it, I don't think on the whole HN discussions on the subject have been particularly enlightening, partly because, unlike with technical topics, HN posters don't generally have expertise or particularly unique insights into this area. We just have a mix of libertarian-leaning and social-democratic-leaning people arguing with each other (with a moderate majority for the libertarians).
> We just have a mix of libertarian-leaning and social-democratic-leaning people arguing with each other (with a moderate majority for the libertarians).
Indeed, I decided I'm going to bow out of politics conversations. It's relevant tangentially, but it adds noise and friction. I'd rather connect cooperatively with like-minded people in entrepreneurship and technology, I don't want to get into arguments, build bad will, etc. with people here. Like Delirium says, at this point the argument quality isn't even particularly insightful.
This is a legitimate concern, but the subject of this article concerns issues that directly affect the interests of the HN community. It's clear to many of us that political grandstanding, personal drama, and he-said-she-said do not belong on HN.
At the same time, many current and aspiring startup founders have embraced the cultural shift to learning about traditionally non-technical areas such as sales and marketing. And rightfully so; this is after the previous shift (or "great opening up") to learning about design and a good user experience.
We've done all this because there's no escaping the cold, hard reality that the success of our companies depends on getting the word out and selling people on our ideas. Good code is not enough.
The skyrocketing cost of public pensions in California affects the solvency of the state government. When the state government is desperate and must make ends meet, tax hikes are the first and most obvious options, and are always taken into consideration. When you're thinking about starting a company and setting up shop in Silicon Valley, the tax burden is a huge factor to take into account.
As things stand today, the benefits of the personal network, concentration of talent, and the established tech ecosystem in Silicon Valley are still more than enough to outweigh the comparatively high tax burden for those who wish to start and operate a successful company. "Political" articles like this are of interest to us because they tell us about important future changes in the formula we use to calculate where we want to set up shop.
