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Unconfirmed industry rumors shared with TTAC today seem to indicate that Toyota Motor Sales will be closing its offices in Torrance and heading to a more business-friendly location.
Plano, TX is the rumored destination. Supposedly, the employees will be informed on Monday. We’ll keep you posted as events occur. No reason has been given, but surely the world’s most famously company has an eye on the lower cost of living and operations in Texas.
228 Comments on “Is Toyota Motor Sales Leaving California?...”
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Sad face. The reality of (coastal) California is that it doesn’t make financial sense for many middle-class families. The culprit is real estate – housing is incredibly expensive and same to commercial space. Thats a lot of dead weight costs that get passed on to consumers. We’d be really screwed if it weren’t for the Bay Area economy powering the state.
> middle-class families
LOL, that ubiquitous american “middle class”.
Professionals can afford to live and build communities there, and the weather and other external factors are quite nice. Less so for the proles for whom margin value of surf & turf is much lower.
One significant reason that area is so expensive to build in is the area around W. 190th St. and Western Avenue is completely built out and expansion by buying out any of the surrounding business parks would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention that you also have Honda’s North American HQ sitting right there on its southern border. Once a predominantly working-class area through the 1970’s Torrance is now predominately upper middle-class especially benefitting from the influx of Japanese and other Pacific Rim businesses that have also located there and their families having purchased property there and in neighboring communities. The “California is antibusiness” is probably the laziest intellectual arguments one could possibly make and is usually advanced by cherry picking certain statistics by competing states eager to get California business. Just to cite as a relatively recent and comparable example, think of the recent Nissan headquarters move from nearby Gardena which was a Carlos Ghosn decision to find a way to get cheaper real estate values while shedding expensive, long-term employees including those nearing retirement age. Citing unfriendly conditions in California is so often the current corporate doublespeak to cover their real reasons for making similar moves rather than speaking their inconvenient financial truth that the moves that in their corporate bottom line and improve “shareholder value.”
Those citing that “California is antibusiness” forget that “America is antibusiness” with its significant labor import barriers, which is why this is only a conservative step to the ultimate goal of moving fungible personnel to places with much more affordable people.
Also, “forget” is perhaps the wrong word to use for those with fungible skillsets who often don’t grasp this.
The left has done its best to ruin the state of California. California is the poster child of what invariably happens under one party rule.
Nice robotic GOP talking point there, but I’m more inclined to go with u mad scientist’s explanation of things.
Myopic partisanship is easy, but ultimately intellectually unsatisfying. How, in your estimation, does the phrase “one party rule” apply solely to Democrats?
Man. I wish my town could get even 1% of that tech business moving into the bay area.
Except for 1995-1996, the California Assembly has been controlled by Democrats since 1970. The Senate has been controlled by the Democrats since 1970. That’s one party rule.
No matter the jurisdiction, local economy and policy us going to be a little lopsided when any one party is in power for any length of time. I would also suggest corruption is more likely in such a situation simply because there isn’t another side to call out such corruption, although I would need facts to draw a definite conclusion one way or another.
> Man. I wish my town could get even 1% of that tech business moving into the bay area.
Exactly. The great irony is it’s a magnet for the sort of folks who’ll best survive globalization.
The Objectivist wannabes are expectedly oblivious to the fact it’s pretty much Galt’s gulch.
General Malaise your comments are absurd. Instead of regurgitating propaganda try doing the work it takes to come up with real verifiable facts. I have and heres actual verifiable facts about CA:
1.California leads the nation with 54 companies on the Fortune 500 list and 24 of Fortune’s 100 Fastest Growing companies — both more than any other state.
2.CA receives close to half of all venture capital financing in the U.S and remains the No. 1 state for attracting foreign direct investment.
3. Regarding sectors, where other states have one or two main economic areas, California has several — all of which lead the nation. California is first in high tech, biotech, agriculture, entertainment, and manufacturing
4. Regarding trade, California merchandise exports were $161.7 billion last year..no other state even comes close
5. How about tourism..CA is #1 in tourism in the country with over 200 million visitors in 2012 who spent more than $106.4 billion. No other state even comes close.
6.If CA were a country it would be the 8th largest economy in the world. Texas would come in as the 14th largest.
7. CA has the 10th highest household median income in the country…..Texas is number 25.
8. Texas does rate high in some things… number 1 in mercury pollution one of the worst and longest lasting forms of pollution. They also have the 4th most polluted waterways and the 9th most polluted beaches.
9. Come on down yall..Texas is great….lol
> I have and heres actual verifiable facts about CA:
If you did these facts on a per-capita basis along the coast for future facing industry it’d far and away be the most advanced place in the world.
Almost none of the haters can even understand what goes on there which really puts their critique into perspective.
There were 1.3 million businesses in California at the end of 2012, 5.2 percent fewer than in the previous year (that’s about 73,000 fewer). To put that in perspective, Massachusetts lost 5,200 businesses, the second-highest amount, and Kansas had 3.1 percent fewer businesses in 2012 than in 2011, the second-highest loss rate.
Here’s some other interesting info… http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_71.htm#.UIYJrByolZc
Smart people don’t try to learn about the world from the likes of the Manhattan Institute. But I’m sure that nobody ever accused you of being smart.
California is expensive for the same reasons that BMWs are expensive: It’s desirable, and there isn’t enough of it to go around.
On the other hand, high costs spur a need for lower cost alternatives. It’s actually a good thing that there are also some reasonable lower cost alternatives that are available, and the US is fortunate to have some of both.
Pity poor California – only the 8th largest economy in the world – all by itself. And sad, sad, ruined California, if it were a country, is the 5th largest food producer in the world.
The sad citizens are ranked 11th in the nation in per capita GDP.
Yup – totally ruined.
> California is expensive for the same reasons that BMWs are expensive: It’s desirable, and there isn’t enough of it to go around.
It’s quite comically karmic when those hating on poor people are whining about being gentrified.
One only has to live in California and be subject to its regulations and governance to confirm the decline… I do and have lived here for 57 years. The production of smarm is only topped by smug.
> One only has to live in California and be subject to its regulations and governance to confirm the decline… I do and have lived here for 57 years. The production of smarm is only topped by smug.
And somehow in that 57 years you missed the tech capital of the world gradually relocating there because folks with sights set on the future believe the weather’s worth it.
Apparently this is what decline means, in which case better vote w/ your feet and chase after those factories moving to the south (and overseas) for low wages.
…I do and have lived here for 57 years…
And for as awful as it is, you CHOOSE to live there for 57 years.
If all the jobs are gone and it is that horrible, I’m sure Alabama awaits!
I have it on good authority that Obama nationalized all of the moving vans in California, making it impossible to leave.
No reason to leave, our family and friends live here. My wife and I are comfortably retired, living off investments and compensation derived from several patents. Again, you’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice the slide downward and it will continue to get worse before it improves… all a part of what happens when you discourage intelligent, highly-skilled/motivated people with capital and actively encourage immigration of low-skilled people with nothing.
> compensation derived from several patents
I find it hard to believe that someone who ostensibly figured out how to file a gubmint patent on their own has such a hard time grasping the ascension of tech there.
“all a part of what happens when you discourage intelligent, highly-skilled/motivated people with capital and actively encourage immigration of low-skilled people with nothing.”
I figured that this is where this was heading. Somebody doesn’t like Mexicans very much, apparently.
Again, the delicious irony here is that “intelligent, highly-skilled/motivated people with capital” is pretty much the bay area, aka Galt’s gulch.
Unfortunately those working on the hard capital-intensive problems there rarely get compensated for their patents due to how employment contracts work, nor listen much to AM radio.
I moved to the US in June of 82.
Within a few weeks of exiting that 747 at LAX, I heard many tales about the impending death panels for California. Everyone, I mean everyone is leaving.
The people who said it then, still say it now.
But they are still living and working there!
Like the rapture it never arrives!
Great story bro’!
Half of my family is Latino, pch. That dog don’t hunt. California is resilient, which is one saving grace. The state has a wealth of untapped resources, which will remain so under one party governance.
And yet it is still a massive economy on its own…
> immigration of low-skilled people with nothing
> Half of my family is Latino
Must be the criollo end of mestizo
aka “the good ones”
Smarmy and racist, to boot. Quite a personality flaw you’ve showcased. I’m sure your mother must be proud.
I’ll take that as a confirmation, in which case you’re probably aware but don’t want to admit the caste system remains south of the border. Or it’s a lie, a la “patents”/some of my best friends are black.
It’s also interesting this new “I’m rubber and you’re glue” strategy from the separate and unequal for dem illegals crowd.
Making friends and influencing people with that brilliant intellectual charm of yours I see.
Mexico is a hellhole, but what does that have to do with the subject at hand? Your views appear to be very bigoted, which is no surprise given your political leanings. Smug, stupid and racist is no way to live your life, son.
> Making friends and influencing people with that brilliant intellectual charm of yours I see.
This seems to be a priority shared with the politicians and their handlers who have these people on a leash.
> Mexico is a hellhole, but what does that have to do with the subject at hand? Your views appear to be very bigoted, which is no surprise given your political leanings. Smug, stupid and racist is no way to live your life, son.
It’s quite curious because ~100% of your posts are quotes from GOP email chains. When pressed on these issues such as dog whistling about illegals, the standard excuses come scampering such as an esteemed background, ethnic friends and family, up to jumping on the cross as the true victim of racism.
The issue is that people who’ve been around the block understand how this works. The strings aren’t terribly complicated, nor do they need to be.
The only lesson that you can probably learn here is that those who rub your head while placing that dish of easy to digest slogans to spread around aren’t peers.
Erect all the straw men you want, but your head-in-the-sand approach to the straits that California finds itself in does not speak well of your intellectual acumen, let alone curiosity. Better to remain silent and thought a fool than promiscuously post and remove all doubt.
> Erect all the straw men you want, but your head-in-the-sand approach to the straits that California finds itself in does not speak well of your intellectual acumen, let alone curiosity.
Sorry, I didn’t get my education from trite mailing lists, but I assure you the people running them are not made of straw.
btw, next time someone calls you out on those exaggerations, at least fake a response to make it convincing.
I think GeneralMalaise nail it. You can spew your BS for twenty paragraphs, no one believes you, no one thinks you have any kind of educational credentials and I’d be surprised if you even owned a car. I believe the only reason you’re here is because you’ve been banned from every other site on the net. You show no interest in cars, you rarely speak about cars, you’re basically a fraud and not a very interesting one
> I think GeneralMalaise nail it.
Let’s compare notes on what’s going on here.
From the start this site was a conservative watering hole to crap on Government Motors along with everything else that crowd hates on, plus some other auto articles peppered in for credibility (the EIC certainly didn’t know anything about cars). Expectedly half the comments are copy/pasted from some chain mail or derivation thereof, and significant number of the other half remark on how dumb this is. Ready audience/eyeballs…profit.
This has subsided with time, but many of the commentariat are more or less the same. Someone who didn’t get their education from email or AM radio comes along to comment, and again the expected unfolds. Note GeneralMalaise or whomever can proclaim california to be literally nazi germany every day, and your silence speaks volumes.
Don’t play dumb, you know how this works.
> You show no interest in cars, you rarely speak about cars, you’re basically a fraud and not a very interesting one
Lol, liar of the worst sort:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/04/rental-review-2014-mazda-cx-5-touring-awd/#comment-3156114
It wouldn’t be that bad, we still have Hollywood/entertainment, finance, shipping, petroleum extraction and refining and farming.
Another Bay area bigot. What are you talking about the Bay area economy powering the state? SoCal’s GDP > the Bay area’s GDP. End of story. Frankly, if you are a guy who likes women, SoCal is your spot.
Only surprising it didn’t happen sooner. I’d say to hell with California, but they’re doing a perfectly good enough job of that to themselves, by choice.
Considering how hard CA is working to become actively business hostile, I’m not surprised. I’m just wondering when Sriracha’s going to pack up and head east.
When I finally purchased a house of my own and emptied the apartment where I lived, the landlord made it a point to inform me I had given him such short notice he would be “forced” to keep my deposit.
I informed him that of the 26 apartments in the building, only 8 of them contained any steady renters who had been there longer than 6 months (in fact, all of them had been there longer than 7 years) and of those 8, 7 had all jumped ship within a 6 week period. If that wasn’t raising a gigantic red flag to him, he’d only figure things out after the place exploded, burned down and sank into the nearby creek.
CA’s officials can’t see anything beyond their own pension packages.
Wait, California is “business hostile” because a business owner screwed you over?
If Toyota moves, it’ll be because they can make a fortune selling the campus they own. In other news, Chrysler doesn’t own the Chrysler Building anymore.
California is considered “business hostile” because they have very high taxes. According to the Tax Foundation organization, CA ranks #48 out of 50 in their State Business Tax Index.
No, I think he said California is business hostile because he didn’t give the proper notice called out in his apartment lease so his landlord properly withheld his deposit.
Or maybe he is saying California is business hostile because his landlord somehow didn’t understand that the lease terms for giving notice didn’t matter because only 25% of his apartments had been rented for longer than 6 months.
Never mind, he clarified it later by asserting that high taxes = business unfriendly. In fact almost every business has left California so you can no longer even buy gas or groceries. It’s just a barren wasteland of empty businesses. They’ve all left. You can’t buy burgers, books or burritos in California. No insurance agents or real estate agents are left. All the businesses have left the high tax states and moved to Wyoming which has the lowest business taxes in the country.
Wyoming is booming.
Or maybe not. But if someone asserts that higher business taxes = higher degree of hostility towards businesses it must be true because, well it just must be.
There’s a lot of hyperbole here.
Let’s not forget that even though California is the “Mecha” of tech entrepreneurship, almost half of the industry is rejecting the place now and starting to base remotely and in the midwest.
“Silicon Prairie” is the common phrase being thrown around.
Even though I like the weather there, I would not work or found a company in the Valley or SF proper at all ever. LA is a distant maybe.
I stated as such because somehow the landlord managed to drive over 87% of his steady income sources away within a frighteningly short period of time. CA’s done an outstanding job of ensuring anything besides a desk job faces such seriously difficult regulations, it’s cheaper to just leave the state and set up elsewhere.
And now they’re driving away the desk jobs.
Funny how no one says much about states like Alabama and Tennessee literally throwing taxpayer dollars at corporations to get them to set up shop there.
Interesting piece of historical trivia. Chrysler Corporation never owned the Chrysler building, Walter P Chrysler funded it privately. In effect, the Chrysler was a tenant of Walter P Chrysler! Head spinning yet? Good.
It was done basically as land speculation; the idea was that it would appreciate and when he died his children could sell it and split the proceeds. It actually worked too.
The story claims that TMS would be relocating. That’s just one subsidiary, not the entire US business.
He just knows there’s a pony somewhere in that steaming pile!
If they are leaving CA, I recommend Texas. Even Arizona (Tempe) would be better. But Rio Rancho in New Mexico would also be an excellent choice.
I remember driving through Rio Rancho the first time and seeing people keep goats and chickens and other livestock in the front yard; I realized it’s truly a magical place apart.
So New Mexico is more like Mexico than I thought.
Just make sure you take extra ammunition. I spent 22 years in ABQ. I wouldn’t recommend NM to anybody for anything. The evening news there was better than the cop shows before and after.
I noticed the same thing. You watch some silly autopsy police procedural TV show then the evening news comes on and the real show starts.
Things are even worse now. But people from the Coasts seem to keep coming here and it is getting downright crowded now. But business wise, from the real estate end of it, things have never been better, in both rentals and sales.
strafer, it is actually worse than that. It has been said that New Mexico has more illegal aliens in the state than legal residents.
That’s why New Mexico allows the illegal aliens to get a NM drivers license so they can leave the state and settle elsewhere and be a burden on the Health and Human Services of that state.
Plano’s the rumored destination.
If that turns out to be true, it will be everyone else’s loss.
Rio Rancho? This is the town with an almost tax-free Intel plant, dirt roads and cows wandering loose on the city streets. In other words, a Libertarian paradise.
Yes, the very same one! Toyota would fit in nicely. The development of businesses in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces has been a BOOM to our real estate industry. My wife’s family is very much into the real estate business and we are enjoying the spoils of business expansion.
Texas is a great place to live.
>> Texas is a great place to live.
At least until you encounter the corruption. I really hate doing business there – at least in the small counties. I’m also not a fan of your outgoing state comptroller – good luck cleaning up her mess.
Yes, but… compare to California. That’s what Toyota must be doing.
Move to Plano worked wonders for JCP
JCP moved to Plano in 1992. Their current predicament can be attributed to the intrepid leadership of Mike Ullman and, particularly, Ron Johnson.
I moved to the Dallas area over Silicon Valley recently. The pay would not have been much different between the two areas, but the the lack of a state income tax and cheaper housing mean that is possible to live in a fashion that would not be possible in Silicon Valley. Dallas weather isn’t great, but I prefer it to midwest and northeast winters.
A better class of people, too.
I disagree Travis (I live in Fort Worth). Sure, there are some upsides, but the weather…LOL
Spent a week in Plano in June a few years ago, and the heat and the humidity was unbearable. Even worse than Orlando, FL in August.
Plano may be hotter than Orlando in June, but it’s not as humid. There usually isn’t much dew on the ground at the time of the morning commute and none on cars parked outside most days. When the frontal boundary is north of Plano, air from the Gulf of Mexico dominates the weather and it’s partly cloudy and humid. When the frontal boundary is south of Plano, dryer inland air dominates. The constant shoving match between those air masses makes for some rather rapid changes in the weather.
Pussies. Come to Houston.
Spent a year commuting to Ft. Worth for work. It has a lot to recommend it and the people were some of the nicest I’ve encountered.
Unfortunately they’re poisoning themselves – I have never endured low level sickness on a consistent ongoing basis like I did during the period book-ended by that assignment. Fracking.
Well, at least you didn’t blame it on Wi-Fi or something crazy.
I seriously doubt that hydraulic fracturing had anything to do with low level sickness. Fort Worth and most of the DFW metroplex uses water from reservoirs on the Trinity River. The more likely explanation is allergies. Lots of pollen from Southern Ragweed in the summer and Mountain Cedar in the winter. There’s dust in the air when it’s dry and mold when it’s wet. When the wind quits blowing in August, photochemical smog can be bad for several days.
I was going to say allergies.
In 1998 after five hospital stays the doctors told my wife that her only option was to move – the area was literally killing her.
I love Ft. Worth – great little city that reminds me of back home in New England (size, interests, etc). I visit annually when I’m in the area for the auto auction, and the drive back to Houston via Waxahachie is beautiful.
Companies set up shop in California not to save money but because California is a forward looking state that sets the fashion in regards to car culture, hollywood movies, music, fashion etc. Also California has a ready supply of tech-savvy graduates from a lot of great schools. Car companies understand this and that is why many have design centers in Southern Cal.
Now looking that Toyota is in the business of making cars that are about as exciting as kitchen appliances maybe the move to the small city of Plano makes sense for them.
The Japanese automakers set up shop in Southern California because California was their US beachhead, because the imported vehicles arrive at the nearby ports, and there is a major airport. (Presumably, having a Japanese enclave in the area didn’t hurt, either.)
Toyota Motor Sales oversees the dealer network. That isn’t particularly Japanese and it has a lot of lower-level white collar employees. It makes sense to move that to a place such as Dallas, which has cheaper housing and a more central location within the US, as well as a major airport.
I would assume that LA will always be a major presence for Toyota, because the executives like it and it is a relatively easy flight to Tokyo. Southern California also leads the market, so it’s wise to have designers there. But they don’t need to have so many lower- to mid-tier distribution managers and staff in such a high-cost area; that job can be done just about anywhere.
Pch101 clears it up again. TMS, not TMC is moving. There’s no better place to be affluent. It’s not a nice place to be poor. It’s a good idea from a company that seems to be full of them.
I find it amusing how posters in the comments section conflate these stories into something more than they are.
When TMC opens a plant in Mississippi, you don’t find anyone freaking out with “OHMIGAWD THEY MUST HATE BUSINESS-UNFRIENDLY KENTUCKY!!!” accompanied by eight-page rants that were cut-and-paste from World Net Daily. But somebody opens shop outside of California, and it’s suddenly part of a tax protest, as if TMC was managed by the Tea Party.
It’s also smart for multinationals to divide up their operations across state lines. They gain political leverage by having more governments beholden to them.
You have to be asleep at the wheel to not know that California has been losing business at record rates for the last five years.
I think 05lgt is correct, Pch101 has cleared up my questions on this, thanks.
The polarized guys are quite interesting though, just not for the reasons they think they are ;)
“kitchen appliances”
And not just those. A lot of my friends work there and a goodly number are air conditioners.
In Texas, if you’ve got an evaporator coil, you’re never out of work.
“…California is a forward looking state that sets the fashion in regards to car culture, Hollywood movies, music, fashion, etc.”
Quite right.
It seems like every destructive, morally-inverted social trend that afflicts the US started metastasizing in either Los Angeles or Frisco.
Hell, why not move to Tennessee?
That worked out SO well for Nissan — kept all their top-flight talent, grew market share, and drew all kinds of new professionals into its operations.
Oh, wait …
That’s because TN was only #15 on the magical business hostility index. Wyoming is the magical, unbelievably business friendly state. Ranked #1 for the lowest business taxes anywhere. It’s such a magical business friendly state that things are really booming there. So magical and booming that it’s population has increased almost 70,000 people since 1983 and someday might actually have a population of over 600,000 people!!!!
Probably the only thing that is keeping Montana back is some TAC reader had an apartment there and had the landlord keep his deposit because he broke the lease without proper notice.
Offices tend to go to places that are convenient for the top guy who is leading the site selection.
Ghosn is often commuting in from Europe. It’s not surprising that he want to set up his US shop somewhere closer to Europe.
Japanese executives like California, and it’s closer to Japan than the US Southeast. The sushi is also much better in LA. TMC doesn’t have much reason to move everything.
That argument would work better if Nissan had picked a city with flights to Europe.
Carlos Ghosn doesn’t need to fly commercial.
Ghosn doesn’t need to fly, period.
I can appreciate that you’re just not very sharp. No one on the internet is going to fix that problem for you.
Still, even you should be able to find one of those funny search engines, type in “Carlos Ghosn Gulfstream” or something similar, and realize that Ghosn is well known for burning lots of jet fuel on his private plane which he uses to commute regularly between Japan, France and the US. The guy runs two companies, and he’s not flying coach class while he manages them.
Burning fossil fuel in executive jets is not required to manage corporations in this day and age given technologies in play. Not needed… a point that seems lost on your smarmy, pointed little head. Your lack of awareness is laughable.
So Google isn’t your thing. Not exactly a surprise.
I have my doubts that Carlos Ghosn is much interested in your management advice. Accordingly, he spends lots of time traveling around on his Gulfstream and has organized the business to suit his commute.
They have Scion, Lexus, Toyota Financial Services, and a major data center in Torrance as well. Are they moving those as well? TMS is part of a massive campus down on Western Ave
This is good with me. The robots working in Torrance are clueless when it comes to customer service. Honestly, having lived in TX, I don’t see moving there as an improvement.
And where did you not like living in Texas? It isn’t for everyone, and I’m not being smarmy about that. It took me 5 years to start appreciating the state and what it has to offer, but I can see how it may not be “all that” to many.
My brother never cottoned to Texas and moved back to the east coast….
Why not locate it near their main North American R&D center in Ann Arbor? Commercial property in SEMI is relatively inexpensive. Alternatively, how about near their Camry plant in Kentucky?
They already have some significant Toyota offices in Northern Kentucky, near the Cincinnati airport. They could ape Nissan and move there.
As Pch101 points out, TMS services the dealer network so there’s no need to be near manufacturing or R&D. It’s a cost of doing business/employee living costs question, and warranty claims can be denied from anywhere.
Dallas probably has a better workforce for these kinds of jobs.
And DFW is a better hub airport than Detroit for reaching much of the US.
The real estate costs that are most important here are those of the workforce, more so than those of the company. For the money that many of these jobs pay, the workers can either own homes in Dallas or rent apartments in LA. It’s better for the company if it has workers who can afford to live on their pay.
So move them and slap a thousand toward moving expensive? Sucks to have to pick up and move unless they want to shake the braches to see what leaves fall.
You could drive down from Area 51, and move all of them in your magic Enclave, using only a gallon of gas in the process.
(Of course, I’m assuming that your super secret NORAD guards would allow you to leave, so perhaps this is just a pipe dream.)
Yes, perhaps you should drop the crack pipe.
Amazon et al are promoting the branch shaking method by paying workers to quit. It’s a good idea, the remaining workforce wants to do the business, not just bring home a check.
DFW isn’t a meaningfully better hub than DTW for domestic flights to the kinds of places TMS employees need to go. And unlike DFW, DTW has flights to Nagoya.
The real problem is getting anyone to move — I doubt many employees from SoCal will put up with Michigan winters.
TMS services the US dealer network. Most of the travel would be domestic, going where the dealers are.
If it’s like other relocations, then many of the current employees won’t make the move. But they won’t be difficult to replace in that part of Texas.
Why not move to Ann Arbor?
Winter tires are an added unnecessary expense.
Toyota should stay in California. Baja California. It’s an international company, so what’s the difference? BC is as business friendly as you can get. And the Tacoma pickup is already built right there in TJ. Probably taking in a donkey show as we speak.
Mr. Deming is rolling over as we speak. The only thing left to do is wonder where the rabbit goes next, since we know he is late. Cue “the End” by the Doors.
Currently I live in east of Houston in a small town. My house is on 3 lots just over 6 acres and is valued at $120,000 I bought a house in the forest north of Sonora to retire. That house cost me $175,000. The Texas house costs me 3 times the amount of property tax, twice the insurance. Gasoline is about 40 cents cheaper but every thing else is the same. You might actually find your power bill is more due to the cost of air conditioning. So yea I’m sure Plano housing is about 20% of Torance, but after that get ready to bend over. And if you are a liberal be prepared to face the onslaught of the all mighty Tea Party.
I love Texas and it’s people, St Arnold’s beer, and Texas bbq. Texas music is great, just don’t be fooled by those Nashville pretenders. Oh and it’s hot as hell!. Get use to it.
You have higher property tax in Texas because you pay no state income tax and no taxes on on groceries. In the end your annual taxes should be significantly lower in Texas than in California.
Umm I’m sure Sonora is quite lovely (certainly compared to Houston) but as someone no longer in the workforce you don’t have to worry about the CA state income tax, plus your nearest metro area is Stockton fer chrissakes (!) lol so it’s a little unfair to directly compare only your 6 acre homestead taxes in TX given that you have no income tax there and you’re in the metro area of one of its largest cities.
California is lovely, hip and with tons to do if youve got some cash or connections but if I were a mid level office drone with a family it’s easier to have a good life elsewhere.
I believe CA does indeed tax pension income. Also, I presume the retirement destination in Sonora is comparable to the one in Houston with regards to size and proximity to amenities? Because if not, the comparison is invalid.
My like-for-like situation is this:
* 30 minute or less drive to urban center
* 2 or more acres
* 4br/3ba 2-car garage
In Austin, the property tax on that is about $4500/yr on a ~200k property. In, say, northern NJ? Long Island or Westchester NY? Howsabout within 30 minute drive of SF or LA? Even if the tax rate is lower, the assessed value will be a _LOT_ higher. My property in northern NJ would cost 6-7x as much, at least, with taxes all in about 6-7x or more higher.
As it is, if I were paid 2x what I make here back in the NY area, I would still not be able to enjoy the same quality of life on that salary.
Yup, you’re right. And the taxation is just one reason why so many people from California are moving to Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas.
We’re doing a booming business here in real estate, both rentals and sales. People cash out in California and pay cash for a house in New Mexico (because they can, with the proceeds from the sale of their house in California).
The bottom line for me and my lifestyle is that if you eliminate the cost of a house then the cost of living in Texas is equal if not more compared to California.
If you earned your pension in California at any level of government or public agency, they’ll tax it even if you move out of the state. If you worked for a multinational and paid taxes in California while working, and your tax was reduced by whatever retirement contributions were made, they’ll recover it by taxing your pension too. If you wonder why so many dot-com entrepreneurs stay in silicon valley or the bay area, it’s because at some point, the state makes it too expensive to leave, so they stay and buy real estate and politicians.
> they’ll recover it by taxing your pension too. If you wonder why so many dot-com entrepreneurs stay in silicon valley or the bay area,
The dot-com crowd don’t have pensions; they get options.
The median priced house in Texas pays a higher percentage of its value in property taxes every year than any state of the union.
“Yeah, but it has great restaurants!”
—unofficial city motto of Houston
Potentially true, but only because 1) most government in Texas occurs in the local level financed by local property taxes and 2) real estate isn’t that expensive here. I pay about $2500 each year in property taxes and zero in state income taxes. There are few limits on the ability to expand the housing supply to meet demand. Plenty of land for sprawl and few restrictions on tearing down an old small house and replacing it with a new bigger one.
completely false. Both NJ and NY have higher property tax rates.
Essentially, you just put into a nutshell the argument that the apologists of Soviet Kalifornistan always use.
“So tell me, why do you willingly live in a place with high taxes, crippling economic regulations, militarized police, no affordable real estate, gridlocked infrastructure, gangbangers galore and a general parade of daywalking weirdos, freaks and degenerates?”
“Well, the weather’s really great here!”
More than New Hampshire? I find that rather improbable.
A like-for-like comparison is also more valid, compare properties with similar characteristics and see what the costs come to.
My folks sold their suburban NYC home a decade ago, and at the time they sold it, the property tax all in was around $18k/yr. This for a 3br/2.5ba on 1/8th of an acre. The PITI all in on my house (larger, on a bigger patch, with a shorter commute) _today_ is at least $350/mo less than their property tax alone 10 years ago, and my salary + bonuses is more than their salaries combined were at that time.
Good move for Toyota….Nissan did the same thing a few years ago.
“more business-friendly”
AKA “willing to allow companies to socialize costs and privatize profits”.
North Carolina is very business friendly. Just ask the people downstream from Duke Energy.
More business friendly than in SoCal but still doesn’t compete with the lower taxes and tax breaks given to businesses in Texas.
Texas is sort of like a potential father of the bride offering up a lot of money to someone willing to marry his unattractive daughter.
I recognize that the price of housing in Hell is lower than living in southern California but that’s due to an understandably higher demand for housing in SoCal than in Hell or El Paso or …
“If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell”
—-Gen. Phillip H. Sheridan
Texas, you have got to be joking.
California is where the money is at.
Mississippi is cheaper still. You can get a farm for $2000.
The other advantage to Mississippi is you can marry your sister.
@ dddwww…Oh that’s so! bad. But I’m still chuckling
That is so orginal, did you just think that up? That is quite he sharp and clever wit you have going there…….
Yeah, and in Soviet Kalifornistan you can marry your dog.
California is not where the money is anymore. All economic indicators point to Texas championing the influx of capital and migration. California is doing quite the opposite these days…
Very true, wiedowerz. Left-wing policies have wreaked havoc in California. The state legislature has decided to spend tax revenue on public employees and impose an ever-increasing amount of regulatory burdens on business.
Maybe Toyota had developed a fear of earthquakes.
maybe they just want further away from Fukushima radiation.
I’ve lived in Plano, TX for 20 years. Plano has many things going for it, but close proximity to DFW airport isn’t one of them. Not specified, but I would guess that Toyota Motor Sales would be moving into the Legacy & Dallas North Tollway area. A mile or two from Cars and Coffee Dallas. That area has lots of underused office space and, within 10 miles, houses ranging from less than $150k to greater than $1M. There are many neighborhoods with exceptionally good schools. Plano is about 17% Asian with lots of highly educated professionals. It’s the most affluent city in the US with population above 250,000, but that’s due to lots of upper middle class families and relatively few poor people. Lots of BMWs on the street, zero cars with rust, but very few exotic cars either.
Love Field is set free in October. Perhaps proximity to Love Field is sufficient for TMS’ air travel needs.
Toyota probably put a higher priority on employee retention and recruitment than being close to airports. It’s about a half hour drive from the Legacy business park to either DFW or Love Field, but that site offers a short 15 minute commute from several neighborhoods with exceptional schools and moderate home prices.
Legacy Business Park: http://www.planotexas.org/For_Site_Selectors_Business_Parks_Legacy.aspx
Fortune 500 HQ’s in the US by State:
New York – 45
Texas – 37
California – 13
Ohio – 16
Pennsylvania – 10
Georgia – 10
Virginia – 10
Missouri – 8
and the list goes on….But now let’s do their corporate tax rates
New York – 7.1%
Texas – .5-1.0% due to a complicated hidden tax system
California – 8.84%
Ohio – .27%-1.3% due to a complicated hidden tax system
Pennsylvania – 9.99%
Georgia – 6%
Virginia – 6%
Missouri – 6.25%
It would seem looking at this list that Ohio is the most ‘business friendly’ but still only ranks 3th on the list. In fact its next door neighbor Pennsylvania has one fewer major city and nearly 40X the corporate tax and still manages to hanve 10 fortune 500 HQs. New York has 29X the corporate tax and nearly three times the HQs. The numerous studies have shown that corporate tax rates at the state level have little impact on where companies choose to situate themselves. Most of their choices are based on available land, cost of land, cost of living, and resources close by for both business and pleasure. The fact that they’re contemplating moving to ‘Plano, TX’ is easily obfuscated by the fact that Plano is essentially a greater suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth. They’re moving from one large city to another where Plano is more or less setup to be another growing commerce park city. Their choice to shift has more to do with practical realities than any left/right poltiical argument.
It is the same reason why Bayer when they decided to have a US HQ centered it in Pittsburgh, PA instead of somewhere else. The land was cheap, the culture decent, and two major universities with a Medical Center and a major pharmaceutical program existed there. You move to where it makes sense and ignore the tax implications for the most part.
Philadelphia is one of the worlds hubs for big pharma.
Toyota should know there are only a few places worth living in the country … the Boston to DC stretch, the West Coast, the South West, and perhaps a few places in Texas. If they locate anywhere else, they risk not being able to hire the top talent. Top talent can choose where they want to live, and they tend to migrate towards the most desirable places. The Detroit automakers suffered from the metro Detroit location … this is a big reason why Detroit has never had a line on some of the top engineers. In my class, most of the top engineers left for the coasts. ( UM Ann Arbor ) … the rest stayed in Michigan. At USC, I never heard of any engineer headed for the Midwest.
And of course, anyone who lives anywhere else is irredeemably stupid.
No, you didn’t say that. But by saying that there only a few places “worth living,” you imply that everywhere else isn’t.
There’s plenty of places worth visiting, and living if you’re young and don’t have enough taxable income to care. Once you’re done with the ‘scene’ and start having things like income or family, suddenly finding a quiet place that doesn’t leech your hard-earned money becomes more prominent in your thinking.
Those young engineers of which you speak? Give them 10 years, and see where they end up. The ones who aren’t low-to-mid-functioning autists will likely have spouses, families, a couple of vehicles, and a house. For them, finding a place that’s not as ‘interesting’ but leaves them with more money to spend on relevant things (like education for their children) goes up on their priority list.
> Those young engineers of which you speak? Give them 10 years, and see where they end up.
The flip side to nonfungible skillsets is nonfungible employers. There aren’t many places in the world to make state of the art.
Recall this is something that’s been going on for a while. The original garagists are still there.
spoken like a true coastal elitist…..”Top Talent” is code for “people better than you” everyone who lives i areas not listed above just sit around all day, drooling, trying to remember their names……..
> spoken like a true coastal elitist…..”Top Talent” is code for “people better than you” everyone who lives i areas not listed above just sit around all day, drooling, trying to remember their names……..
This is really confusing. If we’re to accept that people with money are simply better and to be worshiped for their job creation skills, how does adding talent to the pool of virtues negate this?
What’s happening in Soviet Kalifornistan, economically at least, is just a large-scale version of the cancer that killed Detroit – long-term, one-party leftist rule.
It’s said that Chicago is the only city in the Rust Belt to survive the Manufacturing Age, mostly because it’s so big and so economically powerful, that the same damage that nuked every other city in that region could only do so much damage. Soviet Kalifornistan is the same way.
It’s so big, and so economically powerful as a result of it’s past policies and growth, that the damage being done to it’s economy in the name of Fairness, Justice and Progress hasn’t terminally crippled it.
Yet.
But like Chicago, sooner or later it will hit the point where the cancer has killed too much of the functional sectors to allow the whole to live on.
Currently, tiny tear down homes in So Cal beach like Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Corona Del Mar, Pacific Palisades, LaJolla, Marina Del Ray, Laguna Beach, PVE, … start at 2M, and are appreciating widely. Nice homes start in the 3Ms and go up from there. How can you compare this to metro Detroit? Anyone who is anyone left metro Detroit a long time ago. SoCal continues to attract top tier residents, even with astronomical real estate prices.
Because middle-class families can legitimately afford a conventional loan on a $2M home.
You know who’s buying those houses? Foreign investors. Because there’s not much else to spend their surplus USD on besides overpriced treasuries.
CA’s in an echo RE bubble, which will be just as fun to watch from a safe distance as the last one was. “It’s Different This Time!” Suckers.
The current hot areas did not go down much in the overhyped real estate crash. For example, Corona Del Mar appreciated just short of 500% from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s. Then, fell back about 15% before exploding higher about 18 months ago. Personally, a 15% drop after a 500% run is not a crash. And, the current buyers are real people who worked hard and made a lot of money in a great California economy. Those are the buyers of these homes … not investors. Investors are buying the inland garbage in Riverside and San Bernardino where homes sell for less than 500K. California still works for top talent.
I still know a handful of engineers from my UM-AA graduating class who stayed in Michigan. Not a single one of them hit it big time. They tell me staying in Michigan after graduation in the 90s was a huge mistake that they can not recover from. The problem is Michigan.
Real estate in OC is being bought up by Asians, namely Chinese and East Indians. Also true of much of the Bay Area.
OneAlpha, California is broke; bankrupt! Too many freebies, not enough people to pay for it all.
During a recent visit to my parental home in Huntington Beach it became evident that Californians continue to exist by the Grace of God; nothing else.
California authorities are resorting to all sorts of ways to raise revenues just to help get them through the end of the Fiscal Year. Law enforcement is particularly hard hit and is left up to their own devices to raise the revenues they need to operate.
During this same trip I noticed that the California Highway Patrol was working only the east-bound lanes of the Interstates, those heading out of California, targeting out-of-staters before they could leave California. We had gotten a heads-up from my #2 son who was a CHiP for 12 years before taking a job at the MCRD. Many of his old buddies are still working as CHiP officers and have told him the pressure is on them from the top to bring in more revenue.
But there is also the water-police that keeps a person from watering their lawn and property, even if that water is brought in from a private well! And gasoline costs a dollar more per gallon than just across the state line in Arizona or Nevada.
All this has caused a lot of Californians to cash out in California, sell their homes and head East to Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas. No surprise that businesses are considering doing the same.
Wow. This is a nice story. Good fiction.
I live in a city quite close to Huntington Beach. I water my lawn freely. The price of my home has increased $200,000 in the last two years. Our local restaurants are always packed and the economy is rebounding nicely.
I haven’t gotten a ticket in years. Curious.
Oh… And the state is not bankrupt. Our “horrible” democratic governor balanced the budget. And our schools are beginning to go back to normal funding levels.
Sure. I pay a dollar more per gallon. But the ocean is a 20 minute drive, and the desert and mountains are no more than an hour 1/2 drive away. I will gladly pay that to live where I live.
jacksmack, all those Californians cashing out and moving to New Mexico are good for the real estate business of my wife’s family. Those buyers have enlightened us with their experiences and their reasons for leaving California. No chit!
I think it is great that it works for people like you who enjoy it all, and you are welcome to it. I was born in Huntington Beach, and the place has changed for the worse.
If Toyota sales does leave California, you’ll have some more of your fellow Californians to support with your taxes. And you’re welcome to that, too!
Better you than me, bud.
Former Orange County California resident here..notice I said “former.” Your house may have appreciated $200k, but I bet you are still upside down on your mortgage by $300k. Just down the street from where you were living were several subprime mortgage companies headquartered right off the 405 Freeway. Good luck trying to sell your house, I had a nice one and was happy to unload it in 2007 just before the bottom dropped out. And yes, I lived close to the beaches and PCH as well. Good bye, the last sane person left in California please turn out the lights. Who the hell can afford to live there anymore? Certainly the salarymen in Torrance can’t be plunking down a million dollars to live in a nearby area.
Outside of the usual gentrification realities, these eastward-bound narratives quite interesting reveal that in a certain (middle) America it’s a sin to admit being relatively poor. Apparently it’s all the bad gubmint’s fault they can’t afford it anymore but all the newcomers can. Maybe they should ask for a dole.
Former OC resident, many prime areas in SoCal have blown through their 2007 highs. For example, Corona Del Mar, Newport Heights, and East Side Costa Mesa are trading much much higher. And, in the South Bay and West LA, many properties are 30% higher than the 2007 peak. However, many Riverside and San Bernardino properties are still 25% below their peak. It depends where you live.
The real estate crash was a lot of hype. Feel sorry for so many who did not take advantage of the temporary price drop in LA and OC beach communities.
Yeah. Nice try. Stereotypes don’t make something true.
When we bought our home we got a 30-year fixed and have never seen our home depreciate below what we paid. Now we are enjoying the comeback of the housing market.
It’s funny to me how the rest of the country just loves reveling in the “downfall” of California. The tea partiers can’t wait for it to fail so they can point to the failed policies of the government.
If California isn’t for you, that’s great. But the fact is that the state is still growing. And contributing something close to 13% of the national GDP. Even if you don’t want to live here, millions still do.
That is truly hilarious! Governor Brown “balances” the budget by borrowing money and ignoring the state’s debt. You really can fool some of the people all of the time.
Jimmyy – citing home price appreciation for areas where the .1 of the 1% live is absurd. Anyone can take a slice of the most prosperous zip codes in the whole world and make the case “see, the real estate crash was all a fantasy”…get a clue and take a drive east of PCH. The house I sold in 2007 is still down by 1/3 what I sold it for, and yes it was in a very nice area that was representative of the typical OC that most folks associate with. I won’t say the town lets just say it was somewhere between Seal Beach and Los Alamitos. Stop trying to talk your home price up, and So Cal in general, no one is believing it.
OC homes 30% below the peak? That is a headline from years ago, and that only occurred in a minority of OC zip codes. In the zip codes I know, the price drop was more like 15%, and I don’t thing a 15% drop is a big deal after nearly a 500% price jump. Big deal.
The home you sold has surly appreciated the last 2 years. Over the last 2 years, the gain must be at least 40%.
And, many zip codes west of the 405 are nearing or surpassed the last high.
Being from Detroit, I can tell you need to get your facts straight. Your so called “leftist” rule had nothing to do with Detroit’s downfall. If you knew anything about the history of that city (and the American automakers) you would know that they have had just as many Republican governors and Democratic. But you would also know that it was the corrupt officers in the city of Detroit that led to its downfall. Google Coleman Young. That bastard is one of the biggest reasons Detroit began sliding and his legacy can be seen even today. And it had nothing to do with him being a democrat and everything to do with him being a corrupt asshat.
And as for the automotive companies… They suffered from being under the thumb of the unions. Period. When you can’t operate efficiently you can’t compete. And the unions bled them dry. And still are holding them back.
You can take all your tea party leanings and come up with nice convenient anti-democratic reasons for the downfall of everything in this world. But it doesn’t make it fact.
Yeah, 50 years of 1 party rule had NOTHING to with Detroit’s demise. Since Coleman Young was a corrupt Democrat his party affiliation OBVIOUSLY had nothing to do with it……….
And what party do auto unions support and vote for? Who did the UAW support in every recent presidential election? Yeah, party is irrelevant. Always the same line when that party happens to start with a D
> Yeah, 50 years of 1 party rule had NOTHING to with Detroit’s demise
People for whatever reason tend to attribute economic symptoms to anything except actual underlying socioeconomic realities.
I suspect this is because they don’t know anything about econ or such but feel their opinions are right anyway.
> People for whatever reason tend to attribute economic symptoms to anything except actual underlying socioeconomic realities.
I suspect this is because they don’t know anything about econ or such but feel their opinions are right anyway.
And you are so right that you offer no explanation except your own arrogance……
> And you are so right that you offer no explanation except your own arrogance……
I’ve offered brief explanations elsewhere,
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/04/rental-review-2014-mazda-cx-5-touring-awd/#comment-3156466
though there seems to be bit of a crackdown on describing objective realities that might reflect poorly on cultures well-represented among the commentariat.
More azzhattery from the ripe petunia.
Yes, MarkF, the left has such a record of success in every major American city they’ve controlled for decades. Success as measured by how thoroughly the cities have been brought low.
I’m not surprised by this news. American liberals are the bureaucratic vagabonds of the developed world, and California has been throwing away billion-dollar enterprises since Walt Disney moved to Florida.
American entitlements cost more and accomplish less than any comparable program in the developed world, yet liberals believe our programs are underfunded. Business loathes labor inefficiency. At some point businesses are going to leave the locality, state or country. When American manufacturers leave for Asia who benefits? Oh yes, our West Coast port infrastructure, most of which is in California. Ironic because California is the first place to flip sh*t when the East Coast and Gulf Coast get a GDP bump from oil import/refinery activity.
Texas is not a particularly sophisticated socioeconomic culture, particularly regarding healthcare and anti-poverty measures, but if you’re desperate to escape American liberals, it’s one of your few options.
The company where my (former) son-in-law worked as a corporate attorney, did the very same thing. They closed their extensive operations in California, moved production to Mexico, and set up their new headquarters just across the border in West Texas.
Downside was that many of those California employees, including my (former) son-in-law were set free, terminated, and left at the expense of the State of California. Many of those ‘free agents’ are still unemployed today.
Yeah, the entitlement state is an unforgiving branch of economics. If government uses entitlements to boost productivity, they run surpluses. If government uses entitlements for charity, they start a vicious cycle of falling economic output and rising entitlement expenditures. Somewhere in the complex socioeconomics of government and industry is a workable compromise between productivity and charity. By borrowing money, we’ve managed to avoid reform for over 30 years, and during Clinton’s second term, it looked as though we might be rich enough to be as spendthrift as we pleased. We are paying dearly for it now.
http://www.ibtimes.com/america-workers-are-more-productive-their-wages-are-flat-some-cases-lower-1393941
International Business Times just disproved your whole argument. In fact we’re more productive than ever and that’s just from 2000 to 2013. We became nearly 30% more productive over the decade while our wages rose at most 10% in comparison. Basically your whole economic theory collapses in on itself literally the second you lift a finger to do research.
I really don’t understand why conservatives think their talking points work when it took me 10 seconds to blow it to bits.
> At some point businesses are going to leave the locality, state or country. When American manufacturers leave for Asia who benefits?
I suppose the answer being fished for here is to preempt this by making American wages competitive with Asian ones, or at least those of the deep south.
California tends to attract the sorts who work on stuff that might be worth something in the future so they won’t be stuck on the same boat.
No state is required to choose between visionaries and middle class laborers. We’re forced into the situation because the US electorate has become enamored with the ineffective cat-and-mouse game of using regulators to force businesses to bridge the gap between market wages and US standard of living. Between corporations and government, which is designed to maximize profit and which is designed to insure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare? Which entity has the power to levy taxes to pay for social initiatives?
Gubmint doesn’t do their job because they’re are too busy hiding the consequences of forcing corporations to pay artificially high wages. Social Security, Medicare, and public pensions ages are all artificially low to suppress labor participation. The Welfare system punishes people for trying to work their way out of poverty. Education loans take the 18-26 demographic out of the workforce. Sadly, Obama has championed labor-force suppression during his presidency, including boasts about how ACA will allow American workers to retire even earlier than Medicare age.
In a society obsessed with paying people not to produce, there is no money to secure the middle class. The middle class withers away and the US declines with it. California has the disease. The ’13 statistics from Census Bureau estimate there are more entitlement recipients than full-time workers in the state. In general, since the implementation of the Great Society, poverty amongst the over 65 demographic has plummeted from 30% to 9% approximately. Poverty rates for the under 18 demographic have risen from 15%-22% and 18-64 has risen from 10%-13% approx. Nice plan for the future.
If California doesn’t move against the grain, like Texas, they will lose a lot more than Toyota Motor Sales.
> In a society obsessed with paying people not to produce, there is no money to secure the middle class.
There’s couple misconceptions here
1. People forget (or more likely don’t learn in their 3rd rate state schools) that Keynes was quite bourgeois and was mostly concerned with keeping the pitchfork crowd off his peers’ lawns. For this class of people it’s either paying for peace or paying for security (you see much of the latter in latin america for example). So really you mean “not to produce (guillotines)”
2. The ubiquitous “middle class” in the US apparently spans everything from mid-prole to petite-bourgeois. They get free-ish educations (only the dumb ones get stuck with intractable college debts), and benefit from the Keynesian peace dividend. Unfortunately a plurality of these vote against their own economic self-interest anyway so it’s hard to entire sympathize with their first-world plight.
> forcing corporations to pay artificially high wages
This is true, but almost entirely by artificially restricting free movement of people. Most white-collar jobs can be done by “foreigners” for fraction of the wage. Simply observe blue-collar manufacturing work unburdened by trade restrictions.
> poverty amongst the over 65 demographic has plummeted from 30% to 9% approximately. Poverty rates for the under 18 demographic have risen from 15%-22% and 18-64 has risen from 10%-13% approx. Nice plan for the future.
This is a poignant point for the seniles who believe the entitlement state is dirty brownies instead of them.
And he’s a racist, too. Like so many of them.
In other words you can’t afford to live there
You misunderstand my point about demand-side income subsidies in the United States. Every society will have people beyond working age, permanently unempmloyed/underemployment, disabled, chronically-ill and so forth. Paying for their care is hardly an economic crisis. The American entitlement state is deeply troubling because we pay able-bodied individuals to sit idly so we can socially-engineer the size of the labor force. We also pay seniors to retire with public funds, though they have ample tax-subsidized private retirement funds available. Keynes advocated no such policies.
It’s true that much of the middle class votes against its own interest, but their Freudian death wish imposes social costs on everyone. What do you propose? Social Darwinism? I’d rather remove the system that makes them subconsciously wish for death.
> The American entitlement state is deeply troubling because we pay able-bodied individuals to sit idly so we can socially-engineer the size of the labor force.
The largest employer of last resort for the able bodied is the military; everything else is either necessary work (IRS, justice, etc) or a drop in the bucket. I agree it’s a general misallocation of productive resources that can be better used fixing infrastructure or whatever, but technically they’re not sitting idly.
> We also pay seniors to retire with public funds, though they have ample tax-subsidized private retirement funds available. Keynes advocated no such policies.
SS is in theory (and more or less in practice) just a government pension. If your argument is for better (or worse) needs-based dole, sure, but these are different things.
> What do you propose? Social Darwinism? I’d rather remove the system that makes them subconsciously wish for death.
Wut? In the grand scheme of things these are all first-world problems.
These are some of the more moronic comments I’ve ever read on a posting.. Perhaps the most mindless and pointless comments are from U Mad Scientist, while the most enlightened comments are from GeneralMalise. Who has it about right.
Tomorrow Toyota will announce they are moving the CA operations to Texas. The ideas that the move was the result of Toyota being landlocked in Torrance or that somehow the value of that site will repay the costs of this move are laughable. The Toyota Campus in Torrance is built on an abandoned waste dump and is immediately down from one of the largest refineries in the US. It is and will always be a toxic waste land. Selling it will be like trying to sell a tumor.
The move was directly tied to the anti business climate in California and is a giant FU to Jerry Brown and his sycophant supporters. The uber liberal California legislature supported by the entitlement occupy crowd has doomed the California business climate. For those of you homers that think there is a business climate in California read this.
http://www.turningpointusa.net/texas-lures-companies-from-california/
Last year California’s anti business climate was responsible for the loss of 10,000 Raytheon jobs to Texas, this year they’re losing 10,000 Toyota jobs to Texas.
California is the most anti business state while Texas is the most business state.
So enjoy it while you can. The entitlement seekers will demand more and more while the tax paying base continues to evaporate.
A true Idiocracy exists in the Golden State, but these self-anointed leftwing ninnies will continue to whistle as they walk past the graveyard until they turn the lights off.
Yes exactly. And I appreciated your comments. We lived in CA for 25 years while I worked for an auto OEM. A month before I actually retired we use our vacation to move to Colorado and we’ve never looked back.
CA has a nice climate, in parts, and if you can afford it. We couldn’t. Turns out the climate isn’t as important as the quality of affordable life.
To explain the mental model at work here, it goes something like this:
1. Does it agree with what I read from email chain?
2. If yes, “most enlightened comments”
3. If no, “mindless and pointless”
It doesn’t take much to figure out how this social system works when a like-minded group gets the same message.
> CA has a nice climate, in parts, and if you can afford it. We couldn’t.
> Last year California’s anti business climate was responsible for the loss of 10,000 Raytheon jobs to Texas, this year they’re losing 10,000 Toyota jobs to Texas.
LOL.
You’ve posted nothing that motivates me to rethink my position or my comments. Your comments are pointless and do not support the position that California has a business climate that approaches the geographic climate. Please post any data you have that counters my argument that Texas typically ranks as one of the most business friendly states and that California is typically among the most business unfriendly. Please include any information that these factors weren’t in the business calculus of both Raytheon and Toyota.
Like all of the uber left when left with a position that’s indefensible you resort to demonizing and name calling
And so what if I tend to enjoy the intellectual capabilities of like minded individuals. Occasionally arguing with idiots gets tedious. Borrowing a page from your playbook.
> You’ve posted nothing that motivates me to rethink my position or my comments. Your comments are pointless and do not support the position that California has a business climate that approaches the geographic climate.
Exhibit A:
“CA has a nice climate, in parts, and if you can afford it. We couldn’t.”
Exhibit B:
Those who could afford it: http://bit.ly/1kaB9Sk
Of course as you cogently pointed out, it does require some rethinking to connect these two dots, even if they’re conveniently laid out next to each other.
To be sure I realize bring reasoning into this is truly pointless other than the resulting comedy. The dots were connected with pen and highlighted in multiple comments above, and the connection still failed to be rethought.
Dude you are well and truly vacuous. The population increases with newcomers allocated to hovels and the inland empire. BFD. So what? Look at the housing affordability index and then connect your moronic dots. Does it surprise anyone that a welfare state at tracks the entitlement crowd?
Many other places have reasonable climates that are much more financially accessible. California doesn’t have a monopoly on nice areas to live.
Now why don’t you run back to your warren and connect the dots about CA’s business climate vs. that of Texas.
We’re all breathlessly awaiting that.
> Dude you are well and truly vacuous.
Let’s take a step back and consider:
1. you left california because it’s too expensive
2. things generally get more expensive because too many people want them
3. more people are moving there
4. ostensibly they’re getting better paid jobs which allows them to contend over what you can’t afford anymore, thus driving the price up
All this really shows is that you lack the skillset of those moving in, which is obvious enough from your comments, and now that you can’t afford it it must be bad. We call that sour grapes.
“Dude you are well and truly vacuous”
… and boring, annoying, bigoted, uneducated, presumptuous, shallow, obnoxious, but you already knew that
> “Dude you are well and truly vacuous”
> … and boring, annoying, bigoted, uneducated, presumptuous, shallow, obnoxious, but you knew thst
> “Vacuous” pretty much captures it. E-mail chain? Only in his sad little head.
> And still he offers no evidence to support his excremental logic. The repetitive flailing about continues to amuse!
These are entire comments quoted for comedic irony.
Unfortunately comedy doesn’t make the truth burn any less.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/04/is-toyota-motor-sales-leaving-california/#comment-3159442
I believe I addressed your issues in my previous post specifically dealing with ‘business friendly’ arguments on taxes and such. If that were a true argument most businesses would be moving to Ohio, not Texas. The complexity of the situation is greater than your right-wing model can account for and thus needs to be rethought or disregarded.
My poor ignorant dear. Do you not find it evenly remotely possible that Rick Perry may have, possibly sweetened the pot just a bit? Are you so caught up in your left wing hubris you are incapable of having a single clear thought.
So now you’re alright with Gov. Perry handing out government largesse at the taxpayer’s expense to draw in companies that will pay less in taxes than they receive? It sounds like a bad case of ‘corporate socialism’ you guys love to decry.
I find it humorous you’re down to ad hominem attacks immediately when confronted with a fairly obvious issue with your model.
“Vacuous” pretty much captures it. E-mail chain? Only in his sad little head.
Sorry GeneralMalaise, there’s no reply button for Xeranar’s mindless babble so I’m hacking your post. Xeranar Gosh oh gosh, I never imagined! Corporate socialism, well goodness doesn’t that take all??? So I assume you have some sort of proof that Rick Perry alone is the only governor to cut tax deals and no other state, even California hasn’t done the same? Ummm, I seem to remember a pot sweeting for a Tesla and the entire movie industry, but I assume as long as it’s for liberals that’s ok.
Wow oh wow am I impressed with your investigative reporting. You already know, ahead of all the world’s press that Toyota will pay less in taxes than they receive. Wow you are good. Or a doctrinaire talking points liberal.
And still he offers no evidence to support his excremental logic. The repetitive flailing about continues to amuse!
Yes, we are very pro-business here in Texas. It’s also one of the least environmentally responsive states. The toxin levels and cancer rates near the refineries and petrochemical plants that dot our coast are spectacular. As are the fracking area health challenges.
What are the specific health challenges posed by fracking?
Here is a great article out of Carlton that weighs the pros and cons; mostly it has to do with groundwater contamination and toxin release.
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/health/case_studies/hydrofracking_w.html
Texas sucks. Traffic is bad. There is no water. The gov is an idiot. 80% of the working population is paid minimum wage. Property taxes are high. Sales tax is high. Lemon law for vehicles favors the dealers. Tornadoes are a given as are hurricanes. Hail that can destroy a vehicle is common. Fracking is ruining the remaining water supply. Earthquakes are more common as a result of fracking. No regulations or insurance requirements to prevent your town getting leveled like West, TX did last year. Religion blocks common sense. Woman have no rights. Toll roads.
I couldn’t wait to leave that state. The only thing I like about TX is no state income tax. Toyota is leaving one toilet for another. Best news is Californians will get to sell their million dollar hovels and buy a mansion in TX. One other perk is no recycling b.s. like in CA.
Never been to Texas and was in CA once, which was a positive but expensive experience. I can’t speak to some of what you’re referring to, and the lack of water is probably the part which concerned me the most. However regarding sales tax, PA is 6% and Allegheny county is 7%, but we also have the privilege of a 3.07% income tax. Eastern Ohio is 8% in most places, and their income tax is graduated, 3.52 @ 20K and 5.45% at 104K+. Texas is similar to Ohio, 6.25% and up to 8.25 depending on locality. This is comparable to where I live, and yet both mine and a neighboring state get jabbed with an income tax. I doubt either state offers its citizens more for its additional tribute. Looking at the Tax Policy Center’s info, I see property taxes as a percentage in PA were 1.55% where Texas was 2.02%. So while it sucks to pay .47% more (1) I’m not paying an income tax and (2) in theory I’m being taxed on something I choose own. I’d also think on average estates in Texas are much larger in terms of sq footage and land than here. A small 1100sq foot 2br ranch house I almost bought with a converted basement (sold as a bedroom) with a two car garage, deck, and small yard was assessed at 86K with a tax bill of $3700. This would have gone up at least five hundred if I bought it. I’d be curious to know what 4K in taxes would buy in Texas, I can’t imagine any worse. While one might take issue with the other things you named, local taxes shouldn’t be one of them
“The Texas (TX) state sales tax rate is currently 6.25%. Depending on local municipalities, the total tax rate can be as high as 8.25%.”
http://www.taxrates.com/state-rates/texas/
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/412959-Residential-Property-Taxes.pdf
What some of the ideologues miss is that state income tax is a pretty small component of the expenses of this sort of division. In this case, these people manage dealers.
There are other considerations that are more relevant, such as the overall cost of living for these workers. The pay probably isn’t much different in both locations, but it almost surely goes further in Texas, which makes for a happier workforce. Some jobs have to be in higher cost markets in order to attract the right workers, but I doubt that’s an issue for most of the employees of this unit, which manages the dealer relationships.
Looks like Tyler Cowen is being proved right. The lower middle class and middle-middle class move to places like Texas.
I-95 and west of the I-5 are for the wealthy, internationally mobile money, and some upper middle class.
@u mad scientist
I’ve noticed that, despite my repeated attempts to pull you back to the subject, you continue to obfuscate the discussion. Incase you forgot the original discussion concerns the question to you; please provide evidence to support your claim that California is a business friendly state.” Nothing more.
You can attack every fiscal conservative participant to this post, but that doesn’t change the fact that you, you sir, cannot provide one single cogent argument as to why Toyota and other companies shouldn’t seek a more receptive business environment.
Speaking for a lot of us on this post, may I once again add we await breathlessly, the benefit of your insight.
Oh by the way it’s not that we couldn’t afford to stay in CA it’s that we chose not to. Why in the world would I want to squander the product of our life’s efforts supporting unending social engineering experiments. One party rule in CA is a economic death sentence.
Define ‘business friendly’
Provide proof that any decision by Toyota to leave California is based on such premise.
Provide an argument that proves your theory on ‘one party rule’ because the majority of states are largely one party or the other. In fact Texas is a perfect example of ‘one party rule’ under your poorly defined paradigm.
Once you agree to lock down those definitions I would atleast consider your argument. Otherwise it sounds largely like anecdotal remarks desperately masquerading as objective evidence.
The whole article is basically an unsubstantiated rumor which set off a right-wing feeding frenzy off of a completely discredited economic theorem. Even the right-leaning business magazines and economists recognize the evidence skews away from the idea that low-tax high-incentive states are more desirable for major corporations than others. In most cases it comes down to what I said prior.
Business Friendly
Pew: Which States Will Generate Jobs in 2014?
Fastest Job Growth 2014:
North Dakota 3.57%
Arizona 3.08%
Texas 2.75%
Colorado 2.67%
Florida 2.34%
Georgia 2.18%
South Carolina 2.14%
Oregon 2.14%
Idaho 2.05%
Utah 1.98%
Bottom States for Job Growth 2014:
New Mexico 1.25%
New Hampshire 1.25%
Tennessee 1.23%
Massachusetts 1.16%
Alaska 1.15%
New York 1.12%
Vermont 1.11%
Maine 1.02%
Illinois 0.98%
D.C. 0.75%
Source: Moody’s Analytics
http://www.pewstates.org/proje…
USA Today Analysis: Red states’ income growing much faster than blue states’
True CA was 15th but nearly all the growth was in the Bay Area, OC and Silicon Valley. Not so much IE
As for why Toyota moved, read the press releases today. Are you so thick that you can’t figure this out for yourself?
True both states have one party rule. The difference is the uber liberal democrats created a toxic business environment in CA while the appalling conservative Republicans created a pro growth business environment in Texas
Rumor? Read the papers, listen to the news.
I like this post. It shows how poor our educational system really is.
According to the BLS, there are 15.4 million employed in California, about 4 million more than there are in Texas. The link above indicates that the forecast is for California to add 264,000 jobs, which is second in the US only to Texas.
It’s apparent that we have schools in this country that aren’t teaching fractions, let alone statistics. California would have to add 35% more jobs than Texas just to achieve the same growth **rate**.
CA schools rank 47th in the US so I guess some improvement is possible.
So California has a larger population than Texas, you would expect it to have more jobs. I believe the rate of increase or decrease is what’s important, not absolute numbers.
It seems unlikely that Toyota would hire 35% fewer people to do the same work in Texas that it does in California, simply because Texas has a lower population.
You might want to screw on your thinkin’ cap for a minute or six, and understand the mathematical implications of that point.
I don’t understand what you mean, it’s clear that the number of jobs added in Ca. is 2nd to Tx, but it’s also clear that Ca. growth *rate* placed it at number 15. Tx may be adding the most jobs but it’s growth *rate* puts it at number 3. What don’t you think is clear due to a poor education?
>It seems unlikely that Toyota would hire 35% fewer people to do the same work in Texas that it does in California, simply because Texas has a lower population.
>You might want to screw on your thinkin’ cap for a minute or six, and understand the mathematical implications of that point.
You logic escapes me. You are the one that wrote Toyota was hiring 35% less workers? That your numbers. I simply said Texas jobs growth rate greatly exceeds that of a California due to a business friendly environment.
As for Toyota what ever the final head count turns out to be the simple fact remains they are leaving CA for a more friendly business climate.
Perhaps if you spent a bit more time understanding statistics instead of just blindly quoting them you wouldn’t come off as such a peacock.
Let’s say Corporation X sells widgets, and needs 5,000 employees to staff its back office.
Corporation X needs those 5,000 employees because of its needs in the US market or whatever. The number of employees that it needs has nothing to do with the state population.
If it adds those 5,000 jobs in Texas, then it adds a greater percentage of jobs in Texas than it would in California.
Corporation X would need to hire 6,700 people in California to produce the same percentage growth rate in jobs as it does in Texas. But it doesn’t need to hire 6,700 people, it only needs 5,000. In percentage terms, its contributions to the Texas economy appear to be more impressive, because Texas has a smaller economy.
“You logic escapes me.”
That isn’t surprising. Even basic arithmetic is hard for some people.
Jumping Jesus Christ you art one thick stump.
>Let’s say Corporation X sells widgets, and needs 5,000 employees to staff its back office.
Corporation X needs those 5,000 employees because of its needs in the US market or whatever. The number of employees that it needs has nothing to do with the state population.
If it adds those 5,000 jobs in Texas, then it adds a greater percentage of jobs in Texas than it would in California.
Corporation X would need to hire 6,700 people in California to produce the same percentage growth rate in jobs as it does in Texas. But it doesn’t need to hire 6,700 people, it only needs 5,000. In percentage terms, its contributions to the Texas economy appear to be more impressive, because Texas has a smaller economy.
Growth rates relate to the attractiveness of the situation not one single example.
Texas growth rates are higher as more business want to relocate there and the job base is smaller. Sure one could make the claim the rates are higher because the base is smaller. Except, the absolute numbers favor Texas as well.
Texas has a smaller economy but it’s growing much faster than is California.
I’m not sure what you can’t understand about this. Perhaps you were one of those CA students who were graduated due to social goals not educational.
As I said, you’re not one to understand this stuff. Hopefully, there are others who can figure it out.
In any case, California’s primary problem is similar to Manhattan’s: it’s expensive. Real estate is worth a fortune, and that puts a squeeze on middle class incomes.
I can completely understand that TMS would relocate to a place with cheaper real estate, not so much for the sake of its own costs but so that it can maintain a stable workforce in the future. This has little or nothing to do with state corporate tax burdens (which are fungible, anyway), but quite a bit to do with the price of worker housing. If California eliminated its corporate income tax tomorrow, it still probably wouldn’t change anything.
> Texas growth rates are higher as more business want to relocate there and the job base is smaller. Sure one could make the claim the rates are higher because the base is smaller. ..I’m not sure what you can’t understand about this. Perhaps you were one of those CA students who were graduated due to social goals not educational.
This is so funny. Mr. “PhD in Mech E” finally figures out the arithmetic after being patiently spoon fed for so many replies yet remains not only righteously defiant but embarrassingly imperious. I guess that degree mill never taught shame.
It’s perhaps beyond hopeless to point out that net in/out-flows isn’t directly between these two states but across the country. On the balance both are mostly sucking jobs away from the rest of the country, not each other.
As I said, you’re not one to understand this stuff. Hopefully, there are others who can figure it out.
In any case, California’s primary problem is similar to Manhattan’s: it’s expensive. Real estate is worth a fortune, and that puts a squeeze on middle class incomes.
I can completely understand that TMS would relocate to a place with cheaper real estate, not so much for the sake of its own costs but so that it can maintain a stable workforce in the future. This has little or nothing to do with state corporate tax burdens (which are fungible, anyway), but quite a bit to do with the price of worker housing. If California eliminated its corporate income tax tomorrow, it still probably wouldn’t change anything.
This deal was developed completely out of Japan with Texas officials. The sole goals were consolidation of operations and operational costs reductions. They could give two shits about the workforce quality of life.
Job growth simplified
North Dakota added 14.5K jobs
New York added 108K
The fight continued on in more complex terms but it is that simple. On that top growth list only one state is both fairly red and very large and that’s Texas. Which probably has as much to do with the sheer size, climate, and series of medium to large cities as it’s strongest growth rate. Otherwise you have Georgia which is growing but when we get down to brass tacks most of the growth is in Atlanta, the blue area of the state, Florida is purple and again shares more with Texas as a hospitable place with a series of medium to large cities.
The rest of the ‘high growth’ red states are so underpopulated that to get into a fight over them is silly. When North Dakota is first with a little over 14K in jobs the argument loses any sense of proportionality when New York near the bottom added almost 8X that much.
> You can attack every fiscal conservative participant to this post, but that doesn’t change the fact that you, you sir, cannot provide one single cogent argument as to why Toyota and other companies shouldn’t seek a more receptive business environment.
Would you say this is a cogent argument?:
“Last year California’s anti business climate was responsible for the loss of 10,000 Raytheon jobs to Texas, this year they’re losing 10,000 Toyota jobs to Texas. ”
Let’s hope so, because it’s recorded as what you wrote and what I replied to using some basic reasoning, which now apparently needs to be spoon fed: given that rising prices is what made you leave and population is booming, it’s trivial to deduce for those who can rub some cells together that those displacing the exiles have better paying jobs and therefore the money to push prices upwards.
Contrast this to your explanation that it’s: “newcomers allocated to hovels and the inland empire”, which if true perhaps reveals your relative spending power in comparison.
Look, this reasoning business is obviously challenging stuff for you, so it’s best to learn from the mistake of those who came before with the same playskool arguments and got burned the same way.
> Oh by the way it’s not that we couldn’t afford to stay in CA it’s that we chose not to.
Sure. Now that it’s inconvenient you take it back.
Yes it is a cogent argument, how else do you explain the loss of 20,000 jobs?
Newcomers displacing exiles have better paying jobs? By gosh maybe you’re on to something. Or not. The AHHI in California is dropping not rising. Your vaunted growth is primarily driven by low skilled immigrants.
Actually my relative spending power is doing quite well. Thanks for asking.
We relocated to an area that is consistently ranked among the best areas to live in the country, not many places in CA can claim that.
Now go back to your trolling you are one tedious little snot.
> how else do you explain the loss of 20,000 jobs?
This was abundantly explained by comparing numbers which are orders of magnitude larger than 20k. I guess they don’t teach how to compare numbers to Mech Eng’s.
> Newcomers displacing exiles have better paying jobs? By gosh maybe you’re on to something. Or not. The AHHI in California is dropping not rising. Your vaunted growth is primarily driven by low skilled immigrants.
Global AHI tends to correlate between states incl california, and you may have heard of the great recession which I’m guessing similarly affected Texas, too. Oh who am I kidding, you have a “Ph.D in mech e” yet can’t seem to grasp most basic of reasoning.
What matters is competition within the neighborhood you live in. For example, the areas with great jobs I’ve looked at have been booming. Perhaps this fixation on the low skilled immigrant areas is indicative of the price points you’re competing in.
> We relocated to an area that is consistently ranked among the best areas to live in the country, not many places in CA can claim that.
What is this, better homes and gardens? “PhD in Mechanical Engineering”, LOL. Much of the coastline is choice of shorts or jeans most of the year, and an abundance of jobs in future facing industries for those with the skills to land them.
EVDeath, clearly, you do not like California. I reside in California about 1/3 of the year, and I will always will. I think California is one of the greatest places on earth. Basically, if you are talented, educated, and very hard working, you can make a fortune in California. That is what happened to me, and in the Corona Del Mar section of Newport Beach, many of my neighbors are the same.
But, if you are one of those “get the foot in the door, then hang around forever to get a pension” types that populate the Midwest, then you will hate California. California will chew those types up and spit them out. Those people will move away, make negative comments about California, claim the place is a disaster, then tell the story they are glad they got out. When I read such comments, I know the real story is they could not cut it in California … they did not have what it takes. California is only for the Ivy League type worker.
Part of California’s secret is the large immigrant workforce. East of the miles of the endless million and multi-million dollar coastal homes are a bunch of hard working immigrant workers who provide the labor for California’s massive manufacturing empire. I think California manufacturers more than any other state. Frequently, these valuable people, who power California’s GDP, are not paid a lot, so they require state services which comes from the pockets of California’s upper class. While I am not happy about the taxes, I look at the millions I have made on my California homes, which I attribute to the GDP miracle from the low paid immigrants, so I pay up. By the way, I am a Republican.
Same with companies … only the best survive. And, when one leaves, another is right there to take it’s place. I don’t see much empty office space in California. California is an incubator for future great companies in America. Without California, the US would be screwed.
As far as Toyota moving people out, I would guess Toyota will fill that building with other employees. And, if Toyota abandons it’s south bay office space, multiple corporations will be interested in it.
It is possible that the Toyota move may reflect that firm’s success where more and more people in the middle of the country now purchase Toyota. Twenty years ago, the bulk of Toyota sales were on the east and west coast.
You sir are a misguided fool who doesn’t have a clue who you’re writing about. So you made money flipping houses in CdM and NB. Big whoop!
As for you Ivy League nonsense I guess a PhD in Mechanical Engineering doesn’t cut it in your mind. So I worked 25 years in advanced technology, retired and moved to Colorado. Yes we miss the ocean, but that’s more than made up for by the great quality of life here.
California schools rank 47th in the US, all those immigrant workers don’t seem to be doing very well now do they?
Jimmyy – I would encourage you to stop waging class warfare where only on this site would you get someone from Newport and Corona Del Mar picking fights with folks that live just across PCH (and a bit north of you) in slightly less affluent, yet still among the richest zip codes in the country. I left while I still had the chance….cashed out at the top and ran all the way to the bank. You have made a small fortune in California? Sounds like you have done it, but my hunch is that you started with a large fortune. And good luck once Jerry Brown changes the property tax code. That comes next.
EchoChamberJDM Im glad that you “left while I still had the chance….cashed out at the top and ran all the way to the bank”. Good for you and good riddance.
EVdeath…I was born and raised in Alaska so I know a thing or two about cold weather and snow. If you think cold and snow are conditions that ferment a better quality of life…..all I can say is that you are entitled to your opinion. I moved away from being cold all winter and wet all summer and vastly improved my quality of life. The place I moved to is Thousand Oaks, in Ventura County CA, a city of 128,000 6 miles inland from Malibu. It is one of the best places in the country to live (http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/10/14/thousand-oaks-ranks-as-4th-safest-city-in-u-s/)
Today I had some business to take care of at Pepperdine University….one of the most stunning places on earth to get an education. On the way back to TO I took the long way and drove Mulholland Hwy just for the hell of it because it is one of the best roads anywhere to drive if you like cars. All that jibber jabber about how great TX is and how horrible CA is sound like a lot of sour grapes now.
Have a good day wherever it is that you call home.