I think the exodus from California to Texas is overblown. The choice is between

Earn above average salary and enjoy good weather, politics, and outdoors.

Earn a median salary and enjoy okay weather and lower taxes.

To back this up, CA and TX tax people differently, but CA is more fair: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/11/taxes-are-sur...

By More fair, I mean, CA has a similar tax rate across incomes, but does place more burden on top earners than TX does.

TX on the other hand, is unfairly taxing people more at lower incomes, and less for people at higher incomes.

TX policies don't align with my moral beliefs–I would not decide to raise my children there given the way the state is governed. That's of course a personal opinion, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life fighting for rights that we have in CA.

I disagree with that article (which repeats the ITEP WhoPays report). It incorrectly assumes that the incidence of the property tax is on the renters that occupy a house rather than the landowner. If you think that property taxes are more regressive in Texas than California you would predict that poor people pay more for rent in Texas than California, when the truth is the reverse. And if you think that property taxes are regressive, you would predict that low property taxes reduce inequality, but the truth is that California’s low property taxes only enrich landowners at the expense of the poor and are the biggest source of inequality. The property tax is a rather progressive tax insofar as its incidence is on those who gain from excluding others, while it allows taxes on labor to be low.

Rents in CA (bay area in particular) are a function of demand more than landlords' cost. When rents in CA go up by 40%, I guarantee you that's not because a landlord's taxes went up by 40%, but because demand has shot up and landlords can extract more profit from their renters. The big pandemic rent cuts in SF give a glimpse of what reasonable rents could look like here, if supply met demand (though even the lowest pandemic rents are still higher than they should be here).

I agree that CA's housing situation does often enrich landowners at the expense of lower-income folks, but my take on that is that's more caused by NIMBYism and an unwillingness to build enough housing to meet demand. The Prop-13-fueled property tax distortion certainly plays a role, but I don't think it's the dominating factor. CA's property taxes are lower (by percentage of home value) than the national average, but not by all that much, on the order of a tenth of a percent or so.

Property tax is absolutely not a progressive tax, by definition: everyone pays the same rate based on the value of their home, not based on their income or means.

> Rents in CA (bay area in particular) are a function of demand more than landlords' cost

Exactly. In other words, especially where supply is constrained, the property tax is incident on the landowner rather than the tenant.

> my take on that is that's more caused by NIMBYism and an unwillingness to build enough housing to meet demand

Yes, the difference in land use is bigger than the difference in tax rates. However, when property taxes are higher, there is more incentive for cities and households to allow more housing. And even if you believe that property taxes are regressive, it should give you pause to realize that it is more than made up for by California’s bad land use restrictions.

> Property tax is absolutely not a progressive tax, by definition: everyone pays the same rate based on the value of their home, not based on their income or means.

No, that’s just who writes the check. You had it right the first time. The tax incidence is who bears the burden of the tax. Since property taxes are capitalized into the price and the supply is not very elastic, an increase in projected tax payments (due to an increasing rate or increasing property value) are largely borne by the landowner (in the form of a lower sales price or a sales price that grows more slowly) rather than the young worker who buys/rents it.

Take a look again at the graphs in the article the GP posted[0]. Texas's tax scheme is about as regressive as it gets. Sales and property taxes are regressive. Income tax with marginal tax brackets is progressive. This is a pretty simple concept.

> However, when property taxes are higher, there is more incentive for cities and households to allow more housing.

True, and what tends to happen in CA is that cities will approve commercial development over residential, since they can get much more tax revenue out of commercial property.

But I don't think CA's property taxes are too low; from a little searching it seems like CA's average property tax rate is only slightly below the national average. Meanwhile, Texas' clocks in at several multiples of the national average.

I'm not really sure what you're getting on about with the rest of your post, though. Property taxes, as implemented pretty much everywhere in the US, are regressive. Full stop. It doesn't matter "who writes the check". Landlords will pass on the cost of property taxes to renters. I don't really see evidence that home prices are so much lower in Texas due to the high property tax. Lower, certainly, but I would still much rather buy a house in the bay area with its inflated prices over a house in Austin.

And I expect as demand goes up in Austin, home prices will go up (if slower), and tax rates will just help make homes even more unaffordable there for lower income folks. I expect it's easier to build in Austin, but it still takes time, and likely any new demand for housing in Austin isn't primarily in the outskirts of town where things are cheaper.

[0] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/11/taxes-are-sur...

> Sales and property taxes are regressive. Income tax with marginal tax brackets is progressive. This is a pretty simple concept.

Not true. Income taxes (as implemented in the US) have enormous blind spots that favor homeowners at the expense of renters: untaxed imputed rent and the capital gains tax exclusion for your main home. These undermine the claim that the income tax is more progressive than the property tax.

> Landlords will pass on the cost of property taxes to renters.

Not for the most part. The question is, when the property tax increases, how much of it is eaten by the landlord (in lower post-tax rent), and how much is a burden on the tenant (in higher gross rent due to reduced housing supply)? In California where supply is inelastic, I would argue that the low property tax is almost all a windfall to the landowner rather than the tenant.

CA income taxes are incredibly progressive. WA is actually in the same boat as TX in regressive taxation (sales tax), but is a liberal rather than conservative majority state. However, any attempt to institute an income tax is shot down by the voters fairly quickly.

WA at least doesn't have a prop 13.

What do you mean by average vs median salary here?

Poor wording on my part. I meant to say the average salary is much higher in California than in Texas.

For example, here is Tech: https://i.imgur.com/rHBVWRt.png

22% isn't nothing, certainly, but I wouldn't say it's "much" higher. And it looks like Austin's tech salaries are going up YoY at 4x the rate SV's are.

> The exodus will only pick up steam unless policymakers get their act together.

I used to live in California. There is no better state than California. If house price falls, I would buy another house in California.

I work in tech, despite California being the center of that industry, I've resisted relocating to there every time. I don't much care for it. Tastes vary. If the housing market wasn't so fucked it might be a different story.

The problem with California is that it is too crowded so no one goes there anymore.

Weather - not hot, not cold, not raining all the time Diversity Friendly people Liberal state Tech industry

I concur. If you can’t get a house though and have to live in crappy apartments California can suck.

climate and natural beauty hard to match. Everything else sucks

Just out of curiosity, why do you like it so much?

>High earners pay an effective tax rate of > 50%.

Musk has not paid any tax because he hasn't cashed out any of his stock options yet. Some of his options will expire next year so he will pay tax then, but I am sure California will get the lion share of the tax revenue (as Musk lived in California up to 2021.)

Tesla employees lots of people who pay income tax.

Capital gains is taxed on the residence at time of sale, not time of purchase. So if Musk sells when he’s not a resident of CA, he won’t pay CA taxes.

CA already came up with a convoluted way to tax even that: https://www.upstartwealth.com/blog/will-you-owe-ca-tax-after...

And yes indeed, the taxable event is vesting, it indeed happens outside of ca, and yes CA still intends to tax you! They will even come after you in another state for it, after you permanently move out.

!!!

Isn’t any equity he is awarded for the period of work he did as a tax resident of California, taxable in California, regardless of whether those gains are realized today or in 20 years?

Equity is taxed on sale. He will never sell it. He will give it to a bank and take a loan against it. When he dies bank can sell it and pay itself back.

I really don’t think this is true. Being granted the stock is a taxable event, even if you don’t liquidate any of it, and even if that means you have to sell some to pay the taxes.

Also, the methodology you’ve described for avoiding taxes is used to benefit from offshore holdings, not avoid paying taxes on locally held assets.

This scheme finances the personal spending of every American worth more than $50M. Sure, any time they're sloppy enough to personally receive real income, they pay taxes on it. Usually they are not that sloppy. The income goes to shells or other assets in which they've "invested". The assets become more valuable, and thus can be used as collateral for larger loans.

I’ve worked with organisations that trade SLOCs other types of instruments that are typically used for these types of transactions. They can be used to defer taxable events in some cases (by taking a loan today instead of selling your shares/options), but there’s no way to use them to avoid paying taxes on local assets. This is especially true with Musk, because he’ll have to sell expiring options soon, which will be a taxable event no matter what.

The only way they can be used to avoid paying taxes all together is if you’re trying to derive income from assets held (usually secretly) offshore, and this is almost always criminal tax evasion. The only thing they’re achieving in this circumstance is basically an international fund transfer without creating any taxable income. There are no secret tricks you can do to transfer your assets beyond the control of the IRS, you can’t “give” them to a bank, and if they’re collected as collateral on a defaulted loan, that’s a taxable event too.

Companies can get away with moving their profits to other jurisdictions, because a collection of subsidiary companies can exist in as many different tax jurisdictions as you want. Individuals can’t (legally) do this, especially not US citizens, because they remain US tax residents for their entire lives, regardless of where they live or work.

A lot of billionaires don’t pay a lot of taxes every year, because they don’t have a lot of income every year. The only way to turn it into a scandal is if you ignore all the years in which they do pay a lot of taxes. Which is, of course, fundamentally stupid.

From the link in sibling thread:

His tax avoidance is even more striking if you examine 2006 to 2018, a period for which ProPublica has complete data. Bezos’ wealth increased by $127 billion, according to Forbes, but he reported a total of $6.5 billion in income. The $1.4 billion he paid in personal federal taxes is a massive number — yet it amounts to a 1.1% true tax rate on the rise in his fortune.

Why should we ignore these 13 years over which Bezos made $127B? Who would benefit from that?

Because the wealth of Jeff Bezos according to Forbes is just the amount of Amazon shares he owns, multiplied by the price of the stock on whatever day it was that somebody at Forbes decided to work out how much he was worth. Bezos, just like you and I, pays tax on his income. He only gets taxable income from the value of his Amazon shares when he sells them, which like most founders, he doesn’t do very frequently.

You’re literally just getting upset at him for not liquidating his entire position of Amazon shares (or options) every year. If he ever wants to turn the theoretical number some Forbes intern came up with for his net worth into income, then he’ll have to pay tax on it. He could theoretically live the rest of his life without selling his shares if he wanted to, just like you or I never have to sell any shares, or property, or any other type of asset we own. However if he did that, the IRS is going to come and take the tax he owes from his estate.

There is no tax evasion taking place here, this isn’t even a loophole. It’s the same treatment everybody gets.

You don’t have to sell your assets if you don’t want to, and you don’t make a taxable profit from selling your assets… unless you sell them. The propublica article you’re quoting is designed entirely to rage-bait people who don’t want to think about the topic long enough to figure that very basic fact out.

I am not "upset". Since there is no literate reading of this thread that would yield such a conclusion, I suspect you might be projecting... I don't claim this is tax evasion. ProPublica didn't claim this is tax evasion: "Certainly, there are illegal tax evaders among them, but it turns out billionaires don’t have to evade taxes exotically and illicitly — they can avoid them routinely and legally." When rich people write laws, they usually don't write laws they'll need to violate.

Since most people don't own billions of dollars worth of shares in giant firms, this "treatment" is certainly not what "everybody gets". Not even the billionaires' most ardent online white knights get this treatment.

Wouldnt the interest on the loan be greater than the taxable event?

Even with interest rates low, the prime rate is 3.25 [0]. So isn’t it worse to pay 3% interest per year than a 15-25% capital gain once? I assume Musk thinks he’ll live more than 10 years.

[0] https://www.bankrate.com/rates/interest-rates/wall-street-pr...

Interest payments are deductible. [0] The scheme was described by ProPublica earlier this year. [1] If they sell stock they lose the control over the firm that stock represents. That would be fine for normal humans, but not for the super control freaks under discussion. The interest, which is certainly lower than "prime" for borrowers like this in the era of zero-benchmark [2], is typically paid by future loans. It doesn't hamper the lifestyles of the rich any more than it benefits the public treasury.

[0] https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc505

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

[2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/

Not sure why the downvotes, this is 100% what is going on the the top of the top 1%.

Which is why the current congress push to ramp up capital gains to get money back from the rich is super super misguided. It screws startup founders like myself, but it literally has no impact on the mega rich.

Eh, downvotes happen. (Admittedly, I'll be less enthusiastic about sourcing in the near future...) I suspect 'AmericanChopper has learned something ITT, which was the point. He had a particular understanding of this practice, which had been imparted by someone he trusted. Now he knows that understanding was... incomplete, let's say.

ProPublica can bang the drum all they want. In USA, the big media firms are all controlled by very rich people who don't want this sort of story to stay in the mainstream consciousness for more than a couple of days. So, information like this disappears more quickly than the average citizen can understand it.

He will pay gains on where the stock vested. So CA in this case.

That's not actually true - California will probably consider this California income because he earned it while in California.

Are you a tax lawyer by any chance? or is this just guessing?

This is somewhat unique to CA but it was in the news recently.

https://www.sambrotman.com/personal-income-tax-residency-cal...

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/misc/1004.html

I know people who have been harassed by CA franchise tax board many years after leaving the state, and had to prove they had left.

Sure, though, they probably weren't one of the wealthiest people on Earth that could afford ton of accountants and lawyers. Billionaires aren't known for paying taxes, so pardon me for being skeptical.

Nope. CA taxes you on the shares you earned in the state, regardless of where you sold it.

They don't tax it at the time you recieved the shares?

Depending on the grant type receiving it might not be a taxable event. And even otherwise, in a lot of cases the majority of income is realized in the form of capital gains.

I think OP meant Tesla's workforce being the overly-taxed. Maybe it's easier to recruit talent there?

Maybe, although I would imagine Tesla's the premiere destination for fresh triple-star college graduates that don't mind taking a pay hit to work for Tesla (and burn out after 3 years.)

Or California's housing market is just too fucked. I think this is more plausible than the income tax too high theory.

Every talented meche or swe I know either gets paid multitudes more somewhere else. Or has worked there and didn’t want to work 7 day weeks anymore.

It’s all anecdotal but I’ve only heard negative things about working at a Musk co.

I was on the job market a few years ago and on a whim decided to look at the careers sites of SpaceX and Tesla. While there were openings that were interesting to me, both companies' listings had spelled out in clear terms – this job is for people who are passionate about the work. You will be expected to work long hours, nights and weekends. This is an exempt position so there will be no overtime pay.

I backed away real quick.

Musk isn't eligible for ISOs, so any options he gets are taxed in the year they are exercised. Sure, he can avoid exercising them, but options nearly always have an expiration date. And assuming the stock price has gone up since the options were granted, the taxable amount will be even higher upon exercise.

CA also has some fairly unique (and IMO unfortunate) tax rules where they will still require you to pay taxes on some things even after you've moved out of state. I believe option exercise (for options granted+vested while living in CA) is one of those.

i did not know there was only one high income employee at Tesla.

The Propublica article said Musk paid $500M in tax on a $1.5B options exercise.

Is that incorrect?

Resource driven economies like Texas can maintain a low income tax by deriving most of their tax revenue from property taxes and taxing oil and gas revenues.

IMHO the high income tax regime found in California is actually a function of high density, high income, knowledge based earners moving in.

If enough of them arrive, demands for services (schools, fire, police) and infrastructure (i.e. light rail, etc.) will increase. The original NIMBY locals will initially love the increasing property values and new restaurants... until their property tax bills start rising to astronomical sums.

The state will then need to push for Prop 13 like property tax capping legislation at which point the state legislature will need to raise funds somehow and magically they will end up with a 10%-20% state income tax on super high income earners like Elon, et. al.

That said - just a IMHO prediction and just saying that you can't blame it entirely on just California(ns) being dysfunctional. :)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbXLnmLEevQ

Property tax values in Austin just saw the highest increase in Austin History

California actually spends less per student on education than even many poor states. For all their virtue signaling about public transport, CA don't even have universal school bus service (which is table-stake in most states). Most parents drive individually and drop kids!

Just compare the building/facilities of any top bay area public school with that of Texas. The former look like shack while the latter look like mini universities. Bay area schools still rank higher because of students and parents, its nothing to do with the state.

> The former look like shack while the latter look like mini universities. Bay area schools still rank higher because of students and parents, its nothing to do with the state.

Palo Alto High School is literally a mini university. Just do a google image search. You can't tell it apart from Stanford.

>>If enough of them arrive, demands for services (schools, fire, police) and infrastructure (i.e. light rail, etc.) will increase.

The high taxes of CA are due to the state sector having taken over the political system, via control over the dominant narrative/ideology.

To give just one example, emergency workers can retire at 55 with 90% of their pension, that averages $108,000 per year.

California now has $1 trillion in pension obligations for its unionized public sector workers.

Property tax values or property taxes? If Austin is like other cities, then if houses all rise the same amount of value, then the property taxes assessed remain the same (the percentage goes down). Any increase in spending (and therefore raise in revenue from property taxes) would have to be done explicitly (they don't just get a windfall from rising property values).

This seems like a bizarre way to torture the narrative to say high taxes are good, no, required?

Have you seen where the money goes? It ain’t supporting a “technology infrastructure”.

> High earners pay an effective tax rate of > 50%

How so? I put a salary of $300k in SF here, and came up with 38%: https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#c0piT.... Obviously Fremont workers do not need to live in SF.

I payed >50% for two years but I was above 400k.

Honestly, coming from a third world country where I got taxed more and having had to work in Austin and Atlanta before on previous jobs, taxes are the least of my complains for California. Yeah they should fix property taxes... but my main complaint is that even though all politicians like speaking a mouthful about helping the poor and how broken healthcare is, every single government program that's supposed to help the mentally ill is utterly and completely broken beyond belief. And I'm saying this coming from Argentina that as a country has around the same population and way less GDP.

Literally the only thing about California that doesn't feel "first wordly" as all the nice places in Europe I've been to is how it deals with people that need mental health or that have housing issues. I tried discussing this with every other politician I meet or something but besides condescending smiles because of the perceived trauma they think growing up in Latin America caused (it didn't) I never get any iota of acknowledgement that something in the world is wrong. Except for the Republicans, which is the only problem in the US, apparently.

I feel you, swap out Latin America for Middle East and Argentina for Iraq and thats been my experience here

From that calculator, it seems that you need to be making $2.3M in Fremont, CA to get to 50%.

Put in 3 M$/yr and you'll get 50.7%.

Not a lot of people hitting that regularly, but I imagine it can sting a little if you've got a more proletarian salary normally and are hitting that region just once because of say, a start up liquidity windfall

Worlds smallest violin

I think they mean all taxes, including property tax, which you may pay directly as a homeowner or indirectly as a tenant.

I would argue that actually Texas has the backwards taxes considering they’re the 2nd most regressive tax system in the county

https://washingtonstatewire.com/am-i-taxed-too-much-a-compar...

I’ve long suspected that the Democratic obsession with federal policy is to try to reduce the appeal of other states where companies may want to move.

It’s often seemed like people in California would prefer that a manufacturing operations operate in Asia and come through their ports rather than operate in the middle/south US.

Tax havens are bad for the places where economic activity actually happens. From California's perspective, I don't think it matters whether that haven is in Asia or the middle/south US. It's just as bad for California either way

Naw, Cali just wants clean air and water, and manufacturing doesn't want to pay to not screw the planet. That's why companies pillage Asia: their environment is for sale to the lowest bidder. Capitalism without regulation, baby!

You're making the same conservative argument about wages: if you pay a living wage companies will flee. No, if a company can't pay a living wage, it shouldn't exist. Likewise, if a company can't manufacture products without destroying the environment, it shouldn't manufacture those products.

I'm just a conservative. A nature conservative.

I don't understand any of that - if anything - the opposite is true.

The public schools aren’t pitiful at all. California has great schools.

There are some really great public schools if you can afford to live near them, but that's certainly not true on net. Otherwise California wouldn't consistently rank among the bottom half of US states for public schooling.

It's really not the school that determines outcomes but the home life. You have a lot of kids in LAUSD who have no real role models at all in their lives and come home to terrible situations every day, which makes the school district look bad but its not really something the school district has any power to solve short of offering boarding school for at risk kids.

The Chetty study says it's not just the home life, it's the whole neighborhood. And whether the majority of families in the area are single-parent homes or not.

Source: Sandi Metz 2019 RubyConf "Lucky You"

but also: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-family-geography-of-the-ameri...

The schools are not nearly as good as they should be for the income in the areas they're in. You would think that in an area where the average home is over $1 million every school would be a 10/10, but it's far from that.

Bay area public schools are horrible. I live 15 mins away from Apple HQ and all you need to know about our assigned elementary school is that it has metal detectors on the entrance because of the gang activity.

That has nothing to do with the schooling and everything to do with the homelife these impovershed students experience after the bell rings. If you are a good role model to your children they will do fine in public school and not join gangs or drop out like those whose only role model is their cousin who got out of prison and is trying to recruit them into a gang.

will you send your kid to a school like that?

Of course. Public schools these days have excellent programs especially if you are into tech, engineering, or pre health.

If we are judging by one completely objective measure (high school graduation rates) California is currently the lowest-ranked state in the country: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/high-school...

By that website, the lowest ranked state is California (83% graduation rate), the second lowest ranked state is...Texas (84% graduation rate). So...California is slightly worse than Texas on schooling?

I wonder if something else is going on for California and Texas to rank behind Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana? I'd bet that the issue with the standard of measure, not the actual quality of education.

I disagree with that metric, because many students should not finish high school — I think the graduation rate is too high in every state. I would compare states based on testing performance, keeping in mind California’s demographics and the absurdly high number of kids who don’t speak English at home.

I should say I think its schools are fine, rather than great.

if you can afford living close to one or pay for private schooling

Hell, in SF that first bit doesn't even help, due to the broken lottery system here. It's probably the main reason why there are so few children (by percent) in SF when compared to other cities. Parents make the logical decision to move out of SF when their kids become school-age because they have near-zero control over the school their kids end up at. Alternatively, they put their kids in private school, which is out of reach cost-wise for many families.

Yeah, and median house price next to the great schools is 2mil. Or it is fairly far from big tech hubs.

As long as you consider changing the school name to be a great use of effort.

> repeal of the SALT deduction in 2017

The SALT deduction wasn't repealed (for which a coherent argument could be made, though it would still be a bad idea), it was capped (for which there isn't even a principled argument.)

> High earners pay an effective tax rate of > 50%.

“High earners pay high rates” isn't exactly a sign of a backward tax regime.

> middling infrastructure

Compared to what?

Not sure. I wouldn’t draw a comparison between Austin’s infrastructure and the bay area’s.

Compared to states with comparable infrastructure but less tax.

And one of those would be....?

California has the highest income tax rate of any state. So... any state with comparable or worse infrastructure. And there's quite a few of them [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastruct...

[2] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/state-item/california/

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/states-that-...

OK, awesome. I encourage anyone complaining about CA taxes to go enjoy that super infra in North Dakota (#4).

There were literally rolling blackouts in CA last summer and the state came dangerously close again this summer.

Edit: Not sure why everyone is assuming I'm saying Texas is somehow better. I'm well aware of the power grid problems there as well. The question was "in comparison to what" and setting aside CA and TX, at last count there are 48 whole other states in the nation.

Texas also has rolling blackouts (and less grid resiliency) and have people already forgotten the catastrophe last winter?

I don't think electricity grid is the example to use to highlight Texas' superiority over California

Texas lost its energy during freezing winter, let’s not forget, and came very close to it being the case for months.

The Netherlands

Certainly not Texas

Mmm, Northeast?

The exodus has been soundly proven to be a myth. [1] But assuming it isn't, there aren't many better places to go. Texas is a joke. Traffic is worse than LA in the major cities and it is run by Christian zealots. Yeah maybe you pay fewer taxes but the other quality-of-life tradeoffs aren't worth it.

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/California-exodus-is-ju...

California has exploded to the world's 5th largest economy. Surpassing even the UK.

Zero growth isn't the right baseline. The fact that the population hasn't boomed means something is definitely wrong.

> But assuming it isn't, there aren't many better places to go.

Washington state is a good alternative. It has all of California’s grievance politics and collectivism but with none of the tax burden.

What about Puerto Rico? I moved here 6mo to take advantage of the lowest taxes an American can get and it's pretty livable. Of course English is spoken as a second language, but all in all it's pretty livable

There are better places to go, hypothetically. Realistically: People are going to Texas. Obviously they are; ranked by GDP per state, California is #1, Texas is #2. The only people who give a shit about the Christian zealots are people hundreds of miles away outside the state; people like Elon Musk don't care, and still move there, and move their companies with them.

> The only people who give a shit about the Christian zealots are people hundreds of miles away outside the state

That seems untrue, given Texas' shift toward purple. Certainly wealthy people in Texas (regardless of their politics) aren't affected too much by who sits in the state house, but there are plenty of Democrats in Texas who aren't wealthy.

And just as a random example, I bet women who are looking to terminate unwanted pregnancies in Texas right now are probably sick of the Christian zealots.

There are many millions of people in the country that don't share your politics. Some of them are even engineers with families.

I don't know which people like sitting in traffic. Wide roads is a sign of sitting in traffic.

Family wise though, moving to Texas is bad for half the members of your family. Half the people in your family, aren't going to agree with the Texas government's views, whether you want to force them to or not.

> Half the people in your family, aren't going to agree with the Texas government's views

You do realize that there are plenty of women in Texas (and elsewhere) who support curtailing access to (or even outright banning) abortion, right?

Edit: I didn't expect this number to be so high, but apparently 43% of women in the US identify as pro-life (https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018...).

gender is not very predictive of people’s opinion on abortion, it’s a common confusion and i’m not sure where it comes from

Recently moved to north of Dallas. Many wide roads, very populated area. Rarely see traffic that slows trip time more than 10%. Much better than my experience driving in Seattle and what I've seen in SF/LA.

The speed limit on the freeways and tollways is 70 mph, so distant places that would take over hour to get to in Seattle are 15 min drives here.

If you think the abortion debate is as simple matter of "men vs women", you obviously haven't looked up the facts, otherwise you would know that men and women in the US oppose abortion in roughly equal numbers.

I feel like this should be obvious but wide roads don't imply sitting in traffic. If traffic is 1.5x but road width is 2x then you're less likely to be sitting in traffic.

That's a big "if". Building wider highways seems to just attract more people to drive on them.

>Not to mention the a worthless human being of a governor. Backwards politics and ideals. It's a joke of a state, everything wrong with America hyper-concentrated on steroids.

There are millions of people who think this exact same thing about California.

You need to spend less time on the internet. You’ve worked yourself into a frothy rage and I suspect the only think you know about the state is what you’ve read online.

Go outside sometime, you may be surprised.

These laws and politics have real effects on people's lives. Just because you personally are comfortably removed from them doesn't mean that they aren't problems.

I don't think anyone disagrees with that point, but if you're expecting to have productive discussion here, and not be downvoted and flagged into oblivion, I would suggest you frame things in less inflammatory and absolutist terms.

It's stuff like this (from another post of yours) that shows your ignorance of people's views:

> If someone can't agree that (a) the current state of climate change is bad, and (b) women deserve bodily autonomy, their opinion simply doesn't matter to me. IMO they also shouldn't be around women.

I agree that women deserve bodily autonomy, and I'm fine with abortion if it's a choice made freely, but there are tens of millions of women -- 43% of women in the US[0] -- who believe abortion is wrong. Not sure how many of them also want to impose that view on other women who don't share their views, but I expect that number still ranks in the millions. Should those women not be around... themselves?

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018...

Life is terrible for poor people. Software professionals are living high on the hog in Austin. If you turn off the news and live locally things are far better for the cohort that reads Hackers News.

Even a single filer with an AGI of ten million dollars has an effective California tax rate of 13%