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by darth_avocado 505 days ago
When industries move away, taxes do as well. When the taxes go down, services and property values go down. Engineers may not want to give up perfect weather, but they still want to be employed, have their properties not depreciate and want good schools.
3 comments

Industries aren't really moving though. The state a company is incorporated is generally orthogonal to where that company puts their HQ or hires most of their workers.
Eh, people will still move to California to start a business. When it gets threatened enough, it'll cave and play ball with other states to get back into the game. Having an insane upper hand with the climate based desirability will help them to get back on track, in my opinion. Now, I don't live in CA, and wouldn't want to move for some other reasons, but I genuinely don't think there is a better climate than SF, LA, SD metro areas. Maybe Cape Town, but then again, different problems.
Various pundits have been really pushing this "People are leaving California in droves!" narrative, desperately hoping that it one day becomes true. They need it to be true in order to repudiate all the various political Californisms that they disagree with. The reality is that California's population declined less than 1% in one year out of the last 125 and stood approximately steady in one year. It increased the remaining 123 years.
Yet, tax revenues are dropping everywhere. At a state level and at local levels.
You’re really underestimating how much people value the ability of just going outside at any point of the year without and physical annoyances. It’s hard to live anywhere else once you experience the life in that climate, and people won’t move out easy. Ok, I’m definitely overstating, and very biased, but still.
Eh, when somebody quits Meta in Texas and gets hit with a Non-Compete they're move real fast back to CA.