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Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by onlyrealcuzzo on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:08AM (#44510957)
Florida doesn't have that many highly paid workers.

They've got a decent amount of rich retired or passive income folks.

Aren't they trying to attract high earners from high tax places like NYC?

This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL, which sounds like a bad idea for the businesses it's presumably trying to serve.

But what do I know?

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by charliebwrites on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:21AM (#44511160)
> This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL, which sounds like a bad idea for the businesses it's presumably trying to serve.

Employees, yes. But the execs at these big firms would love to have more control over their best people so they have less leverage

Employees unfortunately need employers to pay them, so they will take the deal they can get

If your options all move to Florida, guess where you’re moving

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by Yeul on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:32AM (#44511330)
The US is going full Cyberpunk! After 20 years of service you are eligible for citizenship of the Corporate zone and one child permit.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by Analemma_ on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:38AM (#44511409)
> and one child permit

The way discourse has been trending lately, I suspect it will be just the opposite. Florida and Texas will probably be first to impose one-child-minimum policies, with heavy penalties for noncompliance.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by ryandrake on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:16PM (#44511823)
Yea, I was gonna say! The current administration has this weird fixation on "babies" and encouraging people "having babies" and incentivizing "baby production" with these new savings accounts that are essentially baby bonds, and weirdly trying to denigrate childless people. Why this sudden politicization of childbearing?
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by davkan on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:30PM (#44511974)
Well population decline is a very real threat and with the conservative scapegoating of immigration (the only thing keeping the US growing) they need to get labor somewhere.

Plus it fits right in with their anti-woman and anti-lgbt sentiments. Good god-fearing Christians should be having children after all. But of course child poverty and healthcare is not their concern. Labor should be hungry and desperate.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by ryandrake on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @01:44PM (#44512869)
I remember when the "threat" was out-of-control overpopulation. Most developed countries have finally solved that, and now the "threat" is underpopulation? It sounds like we're just justifying everything as a threat. In any well-run society that isn't a ponzi scheme that relies on ever-increasing labor, population decline is what you want, given the extreme environmental footprint of every single person. The Earth has fixed and limited resources, so the fewer people competing for them, the better.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by davkan on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @02:03PM (#44513074)
Population decline is an economic issue not an ecological one. How do we support a larger population of non-working elderly with an ever decreasing population of workers. I don't see how without a restructuring of our economy and society which doesn't seem to be on the table.

South Korea is essentially already doomed. In 25 years over half their population will be over 65. It's workforce will be half what it is now. It simply will not be able to care for the elderly. They will work until they die in poverty.

Ideally as society advances and productivity increases the necessary ratio of workers to non-workers should decrease as well but, the gains of productivity increases have historically not translated to wealth of the populace. And even if productivity does shift to benefit the worker it has to outpace population implosion which seems impossible considering the compounding nature of the decline.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by triceratops on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:05PM (#44513693)
> population decline is a very real threat

A threat to what? How can it be that AI is poised to eliminate large numbers of skilled jobs but we still don't have enough humans? Both can't be true simultaneously. One of them has to be a lie.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by davkan on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:09PM (#44513739)
Even if you believe AI will eliminate a significant portion of skilled labor do you honestly believe that the increased productivity will be used to support our aging population?
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by triceratops on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:12PM (#44513757)
If the productivity isn't well-distributed, it's all the more reason to have fewer mouths to feed.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by davkan on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:14PM (#44513779)
Have you pictured what that will look like in practice?
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by triceratops on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:17PM (#44513804)
It can't be worse than too many children, not enough work. We've had that for most of our history.

Have you pictured what a society with mostly unproductive humans (relative to AI) and no income redistribution looks like? Peaceful and tranquil aren't words I'd use to describe it.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by davkan on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:21PM (#44513858)
A false dichotomy. I did not suggest rampant population growth. Not that I agree with your characterization anyway.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by triceratops on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:25PM (#44513885)
> I did not suggest rampant population growth

Neither did I. My argument is we need a long-term population decrease to maintain a stable society if all the wild AI predictions come true. We simply can't have 25% unemployment for multiple generations without something like UBI. And even with UBI there will be lots of idle hands and unrest.

In that sense we're lucky that the AI boom and a trend toward smaller family sizes is happening roughly at the same time.

A halving of the world population is like the world as it was in 1970. Not some Dark Age devoid of prosperity. Getting to that in 2 or 3 generations, in the absence of a climate change calamity, wouldn't be the worst thing.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by davkan on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @03:32PM (#44513942)
I don’t personally see AI as replacing a significant portion of workers any time soon, nor our government implementing UBI if it does. But should both those things come to pass then sure, the devastating effects of population decline on our economy could be mitigated to some degree.

The population doesn’t just halve. Instead the population ages dramatically.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by d4mi3n on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:50PM (#44512233)
Look to history[1][2]. In short, it’s an old tactic for increasing nationalistic sentiment, growing targeted demographics, and putting pressure on women’s rights/bodily autonomy.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Births

2. https://ahistoryfactaday.org/the-nazi-lebensborn-program-a-c...

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by heraldgeezer on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @01:27PM (#44512697)
>The current administration has this weird fixation on "babies"

This is not a Trump or American thing... This is a problem in EU too.. Lack of births is a very real issue and will only get worse.

I live in Sweden where you get 480 days off work already to split between 2 parents already and has for years. Births are in record decline.

Imo we are just too comfortable and don't need kids the same way we used to.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by supertrope on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @02:29PM (#44513343)
Traditionally higher population means a bigger workforce and army. Things a country can use to become "great." The US reaped a demographic dividend from the Baby Boom and is now feeling the pain of Baby Boomers retiring and transitioning to needing elder care. The Trump Administration is overlooking how US led free trade, security alliances, and R&D funding were also important factors in the US becoming the wealthiest and most powerful country.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by atmavatar on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:56PM (#44512304)
They're equally as likely to reintroduce the medieval policy of prima nocta.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by red-iron-pine on Thursday July 10, 2025 @10:55AM (#44521810)
gotta have more wagies to do the drudgery
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by codeddesign on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:24AM (#44511202)
This is limited to industry category and employee’s keep their current pay. How is this bad?
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by coev on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:38AM (#44511410)
Bonus is a very significant component (often the majority) of comp that gets cut when you're under a noncompete in these kinds of jobs. Yes I understand that's a "world's smallest violin" problem at these scales.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by stego-tech on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:35AM (#44511374)
Seriously? HN and the tech news sector have exhaustively covered the abuse and exploitation of noncompetes inside and outside of tech for the past decade. They protect employers at the expense of employees, consistently fail to provide reasonable compensation for lengthy agreements, and are regularly exploited by bad actors to harm current and former employees by making them accept lower wages and worse working conditions.

Even fifteen minutes of casual reading through old threads here should answer this question for you. The only supporters of non-competes tend to be those who do not view employees as people, but as proprietary property.

If your company information is so sensitive that losing a worker would leave you vulnerable, then the solution is to compensate that employee well enough that they don’t see the need to leave and take on that additional risk.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by jepj57 on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:48AM (#44511524)
If only people weren't forced to sign non-compete agreements... seriously, you don't like em, don't sign em.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by stego-tech on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:14PM (#44511795)
The freedom not to sign is not the same as the liberty to pass up an opportunity for survival. Your snippy quip just makes you sound like an ignorant fool who can’t defend their position, let alone coherently argue against others.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by thefaux on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:04PM (#44511709)
If I walk across the desert and find a house on an oasis and the owner offers me water on the condition that I first put a chain on my ankle that is tethered to the property, do I really have the option to say no?
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by portaouflop on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:34PM (#44512037)
Yes and to stay within your metaphor you can just go to the house next door and get water without being chained up
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by jdenning on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:57PM (#44512323)
What if all the houses are following the “standard industry practice” of chaining anyone who asks for water? What if refusing to follow this practice means that you can’t obtain funding to build a house?
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by const_cast on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @06:12PM (#44515222)
> If your company information is so sensitive that losing a worker would leave you vulnerable, then the solution is to compensate that employee well enough that they don’t see the need to leave and take on that additional risk.

Yes, this is what I think people are missing: non-competes harm the free labor market.

Labor is a resource like any other, and as such there's a market. If the labor is highly valuable that means we should value it as such, in dollars. If we're not doing that then that means something is distorting or otherwise breaking the free market.

I would never expect to buy a car for 5,000 dollars. But, for some reason, with labor, everyone's expectations of how a market works suddenly need not apply. Why is that?

The problem is if we forcibly lower wages via non-competes then that harms the labor market as a whole. Yes, companies get to save a few bucks, but in exchange the expectations are broken. This is actually self-destructive. Why? Because companies, as much as labor, relies on those expectations. Now, you can't hire better workers for more money because we've detached monetary value from the actual value of labor. Oops! You want the best of the best? You can't do that do anymore.

On the surface, non-competes appear to benefit companies, but they don't. It's an illusion, and a seductive one.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by bigbadfeline on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:41AM (#44511440)
> This is limited to industry category and employee’s keep their current pay. How is this bad?

I don't know... former communist countries had restrictions precisely like this one, it was an integral part of their regulations.

Former feudal countries too, maybe a bit harsher.

The land of the serfs and category 5 hurricanes - sounds sweet.

> and employee’s keep their current pay

Oh yeah, inflation is just starting - to pay for the big bubblegum bill, in real terms that pay is going down 10%/yr, and the serfs cannot renegotiate.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by ysofunny on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:25AM (#44511225)
their current pay is getting increasingly worthless given inflationary trends
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by lokar on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:18AM (#44511097)
Citadel and other hedge funds have been moving people there (from NY and Chicago)
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by bobbiechen on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:33AM (#44511341)
Anecdotally, I heard that at these firms, all the "interesting" work is moving to Florida office because of the longer non-compete period. New York and other offices still exist but the most promising proprietary stuff goes to Florida.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by JackFr on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:51AM (#44511564)
They are moving to Florida because the personal income tax rate in Forida is 0% and in New York it's about 14%.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by const_cast on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @06:14PM (#44515238)
As someone living in Texas, which also has no state income tax, it's not this simple. The tax burden is not actually lower, it's just more convoluted. Property taxes, aka wealth taxes, are much higher. These are passed along to consumers, meaning even if you don't have personal wealth you still pay a bit of it.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by red-iron-pine on Thursday July 10, 2025 @12:43PM (#44522902)
there have been a few threads here comparing TX to CA and found that CA is still pretty competitive even having a beefy income tax.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by commandlinefan on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:53AM (#44511600)
According to the article, this kicks in at $140K. I imagine this impacts a LOT of Floridians these days.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by PenguinCoder on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:23PM (#44511899)
I doubt it. Not just reports on various online forums, but I have family in FL and they always, still are, complaining about low wages. FL is mostly hospitality and tourism. Not a whole lot of 140k + salaries to go around.

Non anecdotal source - https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/12057

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by rs186 on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:27AM (#44511258)
I hear that many financial services jobs are moving to cities like Tampa and Miami -- would like someone to confirm that.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by toomuchtodo on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:38AM (#44511407)
Tampa and Dallas, lower wages and regulation (vs NYC and NJ traditionally).
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by potato3732842 on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:33AM (#44511349)
I work in the space and it's a steady trickle for sure.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by gist on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @11:40AM (#44511432)
> This sounds like a bad idea if you're trying to convince people from NYC to move to FL

People will typically come to Florida (despite this) because it's Florida and a nicer place to work year round than NY etc.

Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by hightrix on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:33PM (#44512015)
There is a large medical technology presence in Florida. Many of these people are highly paid.
Re:Florida is letting companies make it harder for highly pa... by const_cast on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @05:55PM (#44515112)
Economically challenged Red states seem to have an almost self-destructive compulsion to pass legislation that puts them further in the hole.

Say what you want about California, but they have an economy. Florida doesn't. Naturally, the legislative landscape of California has a lot to do with that. Usually everyday people have the hubris to acknowledge that emulation is a viable strategy when you're in the hole. Evidently, not Red state legislators.