As a gay dude I will never take a job in Texas. Companies may enjoy the lax regulatory environment and favorable tax laws, but there are many bright people who - for one of a NUMBER of reasons - will never move there. It is repressive and frightening.
Who knows if that will be enough to move the needle on any of this, but companies aren't just buildings and incorporation paperwork, they're also the people.
People who "refuse to move" to Texas honestly have no idea what they're talking about. Yes, you probably wouldn't like it, but it's certainly not what you think it is. I grew up in Texas (mostly Austin), and later in life moved to California, and genuinely can't stand the navel-gazey "I've never been there but I know I'd hate it" type of attitude that prevails here.
Texas is a gerrymandered purple state, not a red state. It's just that the state is the California's bogey-man, because Californians don't actually want to face the fact that we have major problems with long-term affordability and the ability to build a life for middle-class folks (perhaps less appreciated by the disproportionately high-income folks on this forum). Every single urban area in Texas is now heavily aligned with the Democratic party, and the vast majority of those areas are affordable places to build a life and build wealth.
When I was growing up in Austin, it had the second highest per-capita gay population in America after San Francisco. Houston had a lesbian mayor. In many cities Spanish is the dominant language spoken. Texas cities are not some place where minorities have to fear for their safety.
The reason not to move to Texas is that it's a suburban hellscape, and you'll be stuck in traffic for more hours a day than you'd like to admit. I left after pushing for transportation alternatives at Austin City Hall, and the result of that traffic mitigation was an express lane down the highway. Texas is, in large part, following the development pattern of Southern California.
Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso are all lovely towns, full of vibrancy, amazing culture, friendly people, reasonable weather most of the year, wonderful food, and reasonable cost of living. Politics are an issue, but again, that all hangs on a 2%-5% swing in a census year, and the entire state could end up redrawn as 50-50 split. I just want folks on the American coasts to remember that a big part of why Texas is branded as "that really bad place" is exactly because folks on the coast refuse to look in the mirror and fix the problems of affordability, wealth inequality, and clean energy that Texas has addressed. Instead, they've made Texas a bogey man that is "very bad" so that you can't point to things like rapid development of housing and renewables as actually the way to fix affordability.
> Texas is a gerrymandered purple state, not a red state
Man, I just don't get this at all. Sure, there may be some democratic areas in the large cities, but they pretty much have zero say in the local state governance. Look at the recent walk outs and leaving the state only to return to have the legislation they were protesting pass with nothing they could do. There is no democratic power. Even those large cities that lean left have attempted to buck the system by passing local regulations that the state then sues them to prevent those liberal policies from taking place. As an example, Dallas passed decriminalization for marijuana, but the governor said no via law suits. This idea of Texas being purple just comes across as farcical and out of touch. I say this as someone that grew up in Dallas, lived in LA, and now lives back in Dallas. You sound just like someone from Austin.
I know plenty of women that are very unhappy with the state for not dissimilar reasons as the GP with friends that have moved out of state specifically for the government's apparent disdain for women.
The effect of gerrymandering is why Texas is a very red state and nothing approaching the purple you claim. That claim is what makes you sound as if you were from Austin even if you didn't state it. Austin has a reality distortion field around it where they think everyone is a liberal hippie while being the heart of the right wing operation center. Try visiting Collin or Tarrant County or pretty much any small Texas town. It'll be quite a bursting of your purple bubble
My point is that OP was worried about lifestyle and safety. That fair. Don’t live in Ft Worth.
A “Red State” is a state where pretty much wherever you go, it’s Republican voters. Their election results statewide are R+15 or more. Oklahoma is R+34. Texas’s statewide elections are surprisingly close. Often R+5 or less, and occasionally R+2. That’s purple. That means that half the state are allies.
I lived in Austin for a decade, and I think this is off base.
Yes, Austin is not like rural Texas. But also, the state legislature is in Austin and loves nothing more than voting down or making illegal any progressive measure Austin tries to take. While I was there, we voted pretty overwhelmingly for a solid plan to add some trains, but the state leg then made the method of funding illegal. Same on the plastic bag ban. Same on regulating uber and lyft.
And, much more critically, same on abortion and other issues that directly impact people’s fundamental rights. Not sure if Garza is still DA, but his power to selectively enforce state law is limited, and people can still be denied lifesaving care because of regressive state laws, or prosecuted for having a suspicious miscarriage. Any kind of care for trans people is similarly handicapped.
The state politics also mean that public nature access is not great. The few nice places in the vicinity of Austin are usually overcrowded, and there are far fewer state or national parks compared to other large states.
I am glad to have moved out, and I would never move back while the state politics remain what they are.
Also “reasonable weather most of the year” is a stretch. Reasonable if you love summer, I guess, but six months of brutal heat is not fun.
I only lived in Austin for a couple of years, but I grew up in the Amarillo and Lubbock and am a direct descendant of the racist, slave-holding white settlers who signed on the Texas Declaration of Independence.
I can concede that there are plenty of nice folks and pretty places in the state.
That's the line the person you're responding to is fishing for: somehow the people in the state aren't responsible for the oligarchy that runs it. Somehow folks aren't responsible for not knowing how oppressive that political situation is for everyone who isn't shaped like them.
I've left Texas; your points here agree with my understanding.
Texas is nothing special- I can get the same cedar fever out on my 40 acres in rural Colorado, but the view is better. I'd rather live out here where I have an outhouse than try and find parking in the green belt and go climb on a few chipped and shitty 40-foot rock climbs in a 104* sauna.
I did go down for 18 days of the Kerrville Folk Festival this year- that and my kiddo who lives in Dallas are the only things that can pull me that far south any more.
It's a just-fine place if you're okay with the highly authoritarian politics.
A lot of folks clearly are okay with those restrictions on their behavior. They see the state as only repressing other people; if the state is murdering black and brown folks (say, folks like Sandra Bland for instance), it's clearly because that's the natural, normal thing for a state to do. And it's somehow never going to affect them.
Maybe their sister has never wanted reproductive healthcare and needed a drive from Lubbock to San Antonio and back to get 2 pills. Of course, now that's not even possible, so maybe that kind of state repression is no longer relevant?
But I feel that kind of stuff in my day to day life, and I can't really ignore it.
It's not much better west of the Pecos, but at least there are fewer people here.
Texas policy is actively hostile to women and the poor (healthcare, labor protections, etc). You’re probably fine if of means, and not a woman of reproductive age. Everyone else is existing in Texas as an economic human factory farm.
California is hostile to the poor. When median income in SF is $140K per household. A two-bedroom apartment costs $5000 per month. It's literally illegal to build housing for actual poor people who have jobs there. I know plenty of working class folks in the 40s and 50s here in SF with multiple roommates, because CA has effectively become a rent-seeking paradise. There is no future for these people. They will eventually lose their housing and either move to a state like Texas or become homeless.
I’d rather be poor and/or homeless in California, anywhere in the state, versus Texas. Especially as it relates to climate. Texas is running out of water and will only keep getting hotter.
Wait... you're talking about a Water crisis in terms of Texas compared to California? You really should give Cadillac Desert a read.
Texas is draining their portion of the Ogallala, and are putting strain on Texas rivers, but California is literally a desert that moves water to its cities from hundreds of miles away... devastating communities and national parks in the process.
> Every single urban area in Texas is now heavily aligned with the Democratic party, and the vast majority of those areas are affordable places to build a life and build wealth.
How much does that matter with the state legislature firmly in Republican control? The legislature isn't shy about making state laws to stop cities when the cities try to do Democrat things locally.
Well off tech folks in this forum will like California more. I’m well off and left Texas, so I obviously agree with that.
My point is that it’s easy to clutch pearls in a zero-sum economy like CA’s when you’re on top. The reason I still have a fondness for Texas is that despite some of the political change that I find frightening, it’s still a better place for most folks to go to build a life.
It’s not perfect, but when every single blue city in a blue state has an affordability crisis, I have to commend Austin for actually building the housing people need to actually own something, instead of just talking about it and doing mostly nothing like SF, LA, Seattle, Portland, NYC, and Boston have all done.
Good on Texas for not letting cities try to preserve themselves in amber. That just enriches incumbents by allowing them to engage in rent-seeking.
Austin's affordability is still incredibly bad, especially when you consider how stratified the incomes tend to be. When I was working there my apartment cost around $1300 a month and the year I left my rent rose by 30% to around 1700 a month. This was in an area far away from the core of Austin, next to absolutely nothing. It's recovered a bit recently but because all of the people (you included) are encouraging folks (see: tech) to move to Austin the rents spike based on how much perceived demand there is. The minimum wage has not (and by state law cannot change) kept up with modern standards and while many companies offer starting pay above minimum wage it's still well below other cities. If you honestly think Austin is a place where people can go to own something then I think you've been so long away from the city as to be out of touch.
In comparison I'm paying around $2000/month for an apartment in Seattle but this is in an area that's right next to the light rail and well taken care of. With the light rail expanding I could easily find apartments even cheaper that still keep me within walking distance and without needing a car.
Gay Texan here leaving the country next year. Maybe culturally in the cities you have a point, but the gerrymandered state government still very much affects you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Senate_Bill_12
Thanks to SB12, it would be illegal for a teacher to answer when a student in my kids’ class asks why they have 2 dads. They would also be unable to join a support club like the Gay Straight Alliance which was (barely) tolerated when I grew up here in the 00s. This isn’t even mentioning performative BS like teachers having to hang the 10 commandments in schools, or the rabid anti-trans laws affecting adult treatment and identity documents. Discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity is also banned in higher education, as well.
This isn’t even covering the abortion ban or other issues. A friend’s sister almost died of an ectopic pregnancy because she couldn’t find a doctor to help terminate. She wanted the child, but nature had other plans.
I love Texas and agree with a lot of the positive points you raised. I wish I didn’t have to abandon my family and friends having lived here for over a decade as an adult and having grown up here, but I can’t raise my kids here.
All this is true, but the abortion restrictions are state-wide and a real issue while also remaining a symbolic turn-off for women from blue states. The bigger issue is the influence of Christianity on the legal system, which approaches third world levels for such a rich state.
I don't disagree that the abortion issue is egregious.
My point is more subtle. California is currently sacrificing the futures of entire generations. Why? To protect the property wealth the previous generations. To protect ocean views. To protect vibes.
My point is that I'm a consequentialist. I honestly don't know which state is doing more harm. Texas' is open and obvious and mean spirited. At the same time I see what California is doing to it's young people. It has become normal for people in their 40s and 50s to be forced to live with roommates because housing attainability literally doesn't exist. A major problem is now schools lacking teacher because the they can't afford to live anywhere. Cities are now building company town-style dorms for teachers. It's crazy.
I have no idea why it gets a pass from the pearl clutchers on my side of the political spectrum.
I just wish we would have the same reaction when looking in the mirror, and say: "as a egalitarian dude I will never take a job in California. Homeowners may enjoy favorable tax laws, but there are many bright people who - for one of a NUMBER of reasons - will never move there. It is destroying young people's futures."
I know that if I lived somewhere urban it would feel welcoming. I know there's a large LGBT community there already. I know that there's gay clubs and stuff like Texas Furry Fiesta.
But the urban areas aren't passing the state laws. The state of Texas has laws that ban teachers from talking about LGBT topics or about LGBT folks in school. If I were to find a partner and I wanted to adopt, in Texas I have no protections against discrimination. A child placing agency can exclude me on religious grounds.
Trans folks face all that and more. They ban transgender folks from using school facilities. They ban trans folks from using public restrooms. They do that thing where they define gender as being exactly equal to biological sex. The "panic" defense is allowed in murder cases. I'm not trans personally, but they're part of my community and they're slowly having their existence criminalized.
Again: there are many parts of Texas that are great. The legal landscape is hostile to LGBT folks.
I've lived in Texas. It is exactly as bad as people say, and I will never move back. Regardless of how nice Austin is, there is only so much I can tolerate an actively hostile state government to my existence.
Just to add to your Texas comment: there are a few larger states that have distinct hubs where people think so differently, that they might as well be living in different states. People who haven't lived in these states don't really have a good feel for how different the internal cultures can be.
California: we know how SoCal is culturally worlds apart from Norcal, and both are worlds apart from inland California.
North Carolina: culturally Charlotte ≠ Research Triangle ≠ Greensboro-Winston Salem-High Point. There is no single NC culture.
Florida: the stereotypes exist, but I've visited different metros in Florida and they couldn't be more different. South Florida (Miami) is very Latin while the panhandle (Tallahassee, Pensacola) couldn't be less Latin -- it's mostly southern culture. Orlando, Tampa are also way different.
Florida in fact shouldn't be governable -- every part of the state has different interests. Yet it somehow works.
The real reason companies are moving to Texas (the casual racism is just a bonus)? Court shopping for their arbitration clauses. If you sue/have an arbitration dispute with a Texas based company they have strategically located their headquarters in the areas with the most 'court shopped' judges that will rule for the corps.
Refuse to do business with Texas corporations. They are un-American and take away so many of your rights when you do business with companies based there.
Why would you refer to historic racist policies that are no longer enforceable? We might as well talk about Japanese internment. It's not relevant to modern life.
No, the reason not to live there is that I don't have the save civil rights as in other states. My life is, on a fundamental level, worth measurably less in Texas than that of a brainless fetus. I can't get lifesaving healthcare if I accidentally get pregnant. If you're totally cool living where around 50% of the population aren't legally your equal, you may not have done your homework on how this always turns out.
Honestly it may be 50-50 purple in population, but the policies are what affect people the most. I’m not even worried about Democrat vs Republican, as I’m not associated to either party, and both have their share of crazy.
There are a number of laws in Texas that make it a non-option for many of us.
I don't even know how to respond to statements like this. Yes, if you care about issues de jour, yes, Texas is going to look terrible. And Texas has terrible stances on issues like abortion.
At the same time, you can't ignore the facts. Texas has high property taxes, which are de facto wealth taxes, so it shouldn't surprise anyone on that Texas has significantly lower wealth inequality than California does.
Again, unless you literally inherit a house with an inherited property tax assessment in CA or vest equity in a unicorn, you're probably going to be poorer in CA than in Texas.
We have to stop pretending the landed aristocracy that exist in California somehow "doesn't count" as inequality and injustice.
Oh California has its problems too, I moved away from California after living there for a few years due to the impossibility of affording a home. It’s a beautiful state but the affordability was oppressive, even for high earners. On top of a bunch of other social issues of their own.
Absolutely not here pretending that California is some promised land. Hell, even the state I ended up moving to has its own problems.
It’s just that the problems that Texas does have are untenable for my family.
I don't know why you're being junked, you said nothing that any Texas resident wouldn't agree with. Shit, we have two of the largest airlines in the world that as an industry have always been incredibly welcoming to the LGBT community.
The only thing that sucks about Texas is the property taxes, other than that it is a very welcoming state with great infra and comfortable standard of living.
>The only thing that sucks about Texas is the property taxes, other than that it is a very welcoming state with great infra and comfortable standard of living.
Great infrastructure is fucking insane thing to say. I was living there during the big freeze in 2021 The state is incredibly unprepared for any sort of major weather event and refuses to actively harden infrastructure against these sort of events. That was one of the many reasons why I chose to leave, because I don't want a repeat.
You're referring to the rather backwards (and isolated) power grid in Texas. Its just another example of how Texas is managed by Good-Ol-Boy network instead of opting for a more consensus-oriented structure as California would do. The ruling party centralizes power at the state level, from where it will burn books, monitor menstrual cycles, issue school curriculum plans and limit power of localities. I don't see how this management model survives to the point where its population grows to pass California. I'd think that TX growth slows some as smaller states like Tennessee, N. Carolina, & Colorado siphon away some of its success owing to better management.
Seriously. It's a bunch of people who've never lived there telling me what it's like.
The property taxes are what keep Texas affordable. Texas's infrastructure is going the way of Southern California, when the politics on property taxes follow what Southern California did, the affordability will disappear too.
Lots of people who have lived in Texas have commented here.
And why do you keep talking about California? You know that two places can both suck, right? Or suck for different reasons, such that different people can find one of them appealing, but not the other one?
That's funny because I lived in California for years and nobody even mentioned Texas, while Texans can't seem to do anything but tell everyone they think of California.
I live in Texas (Austin). The biggest downside day-to-day is the weather in summer. The politics are also a valid concern.
That said, it’s not some dystopian hellscape. Day-to-day it’s not that different than any other place.
Also the cost of living is a lot less than the big tech centers (Bay Area and Seattle). A similar house to mine with a similar commute in a similar quality school district is 4x the price in the Bay Area. I can give my family a better life here.
Some folks find Howdy Arabia to be a pleasant, rewarding place to live. To me, I think roughly half of the US working population would dispute this, as they would dispute a discussion of any other place. It's just that the disputants change based on where you're talking about.
It's warm. It's dry, and there's some evidence the power system isn't up to the task. Their call.
The most obvious recent example is the right to receive lifesaving medical treatment. It's no coincidence that between 2019 and 2023, there was "a 33% increase in maternal mortality rates in Texas, compared with a decrease of 7.5% nationally during the same time," and the "rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester."[0]
If you have a non-viable pregnancy, but there's still a heartbeat, Texas will try to force you to carry to term anyways. In the best case this causes you immense emotional suffering, in the worst case it means that doctors will often hold back lifesaving medical care until your life is in imminent danger - but waiting this long causes your chance of injury/death to rise sharply. Unfortunately Texas also doesn't want you to receive this lifesaving medical care out of state, so anyone helping you is liable to be sued for $10,000[1].
No matter what your position is regarding the intent of the law, we can hopefully all agree that the changes in maternal mortality are horrible, and that nobody should be forced to risk death just so they can see their non-viable pregnancy die before their eyes[2].
I'd much rather companies that incorporated in Delaware than the Wild West that is Texas: I want to have peace of mind knowing the company is not trying to get away with shady stuff like Elon is with his companies.
Where the hell are you getting your information? Texas has the second-largest LGBTQ+ population in the United States, trailing only California. An estimated 1.8 million LGBTQ+ adults reside in the state. Demographically, this includes approximately 735,000 gay or lesbian adults, over 1.2 million bisexual individuals, and nearly 93,000 transgender
People who have lived in Washington for a long time do not, in fact, welcome Californians to Washington, nor is Washington especially warm and welcoming to anyone else. The Seattle Freeze is real.
as a normal human being who enjoys social safety nets and don't want to shut down local pools just because black people are allowed in them, I also don't like texas.
Sounds like a whole lot of “companies can do whatever they want to without anyone else having a say in it”. Sounds amazing in the short term but a nightmare in the long term if you live there.
Honestly it sounds like a nightmare even in the short term, companies are well known for literally poisoning everyone around them when no one else has a say in it...
The low regulation and trend of news articles from Texas... it doesn't inspire confidence.
Something I've wondered: for all its claims of business-friendliness, why does Texas insist on attracting the lowest-margin industries? All of the high-margin innovation-based industries continue to get started in California.
There was a huge Bitcoin push in Texas about 5ish years back. But the way they went about it was that they passed a bunch of tax breaks for Bitcoin miners - the most commodified, energy-intensive part of the value chain. Coinbase and Kraken and Ripple and Solana and Binance's U.S. operations are all based out of California.
The article mentions Exxon's reincorporation in Texas, and Chevron also recently moved their headquarters from California to Houston. But oil is a dying, commodified industry. The replacement is electrification, in terms of solar, batteries, EVs, inverters, and other parts of the value chain. Enphase is in California, SunPower was until its recent bankruptcy, Tesla R&D is still in Palo Alto, and other major companies like Rivian and Lucid also put all their R&D in the Bay Area.
The other major industry Texas is known for is construction, and cheap houses. But construction, if you read any of the construction-physics.com articles that frequently pop up here, is another famously low-margin industry. We know how to do it, and millions of people do.
My theory is that low-margin industries get located in Texas because they make it easy. By being business-friendly, low-regulation, and low-expenses, they become the only place that low-margin commodity businesses can survive. Thus, everyone who has no pricing power and struggles to cut costs moves to Texas, because they offer the lowest costs of everyone.
California is the opposite: by making business onerous, creating huge amounts of regulation, taxing the hell out of both people and businesses, and enshrining a pyramid scheme in their state constitution via Prop 13, they make sure that only the richest can survive there. And thus only the richest do survive. The state is filled with wealthy companies and wealthy individuals because everybody else got priced out and moved elsewhere. Selection effects dominate efficiency effects.
Yep. It's a great city though I wouldn't live there due to the summers.
Honestly, the reflexive hate both Texas and California get on HN is ridiculous and a great way to filter out accounts to ignore.
There are valid criticisms to make for both, but if someone only criticizes and cannot point out or conceed positive attributes as well, it's best to just treat that account as a lost cause.
Yep. And it's absolutely being exacerbated to further entrench divisions.
Honestly, I wish the HN/YC moderation team could be explicit in showing how it has taken down certain bot rings as a trust building exercise, because there absolutely are nation state bot rings on HN as well.
Rural Washington, Oregon, and California actually are what these leftists think Texas is. Let’s not forget which state Cliven and Ammon Bundy staged their standoff in.
New York, California, and Florida have higher life expectancies. That's a quarter of the US population better off, after only taking into account 3 states.
Additionally, Apollo (the world's second largest PE firm after Blackstone) has just selected Austin as it's second HQ [0] as it is looking to shift the bulk of it's hiring and headcount outside of NYC [1].
This is a huge deal, just like how Wachovia-Wells Fargo merger helped build NC's PE industry and Citadel's new HQ in Miami helps put Florida on the map for high finance.
I’m skeptical about this, at least for finance. Your second link points out that these firms are between a rock and a hard place: senior employees and leadership are already established in NYC, and junior employees/new hires want to move there (both for the experience, but also because it exposes them to competitors/alternative employers).
Perhaps it’s different this time, but the underlying message in the past has been more about negotiation with the city and state rather than an earnest intent to relocate to an entirely new state (and regulatory environment, etc).
I don't expect it to displace NYC but it's a good shift and it's good to have additional clusters arise.
For example, if you were always specialized in Energy, Houston/Dallas would have always been comparable to NYC, or if you were specialized in TMT then LA and SF were similar.
Reading between the lines, I'm assuming Austin was chosen not just for QoL but also to solidify an Energy and probably AI and Data Center thesis as well. Also, I'd assume most backoffice roles like Accounting, Compliance, IT, etc would be shifted to Austin similar to what JPMC did in Dallas.
> State officials are eager to supplant Delaware as America’s corporate-law hub. In 2024 they established the Texas Business Court, presided over by expert judges capable of handling even the most complex disputes. Last year the state also introduced a measure to allow firms to prevent shareholders with a stake of less than 3% from suing them, and another to let only large shareholders put forward proxy proposals.
Interesting, hadn’t heard. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
Working with regulators is a terrible experience. I hope they can fix this as well.
Republicans and the Supreme Court have learned their lessons from Georgia, and will never let this happen. They will find new ways to disenfranchise all the people who'd vote blue. Plus their war on education ensures that people who grow up there will remain uninformed and hateful and thus red.
Given the state's war on education, how do companies think they'll have a pipeline of well educated workers? We know it's only going to become more biblical as long as the current Supreme Court exists.
Who knows if that will be enough to move the needle on any of this, but companies aren't just buildings and incorporation paperwork, they're also the people.