Posted on 05/03/2014 4:30:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Another blow was struck for competition, common sense and low taxes as Toyota Motor Corp. announced that it will be moving its campus in Torrance, California to a suburb outside of Dallas, Texas.
“Toyota Motor Corp. is moving substantial parts of its U.S. headquarters in Torrance, Calif., to suburban Dallas,” writes the Detroit News, “as the world’s largest automaker seeks savings from its U.S. sales unit, people familiar with the matter said.”
Although no figures are yet available, anecdotal evidence suggests that people are fleeing California, not just companies.
SFGate.com says that 66% of all state revenue now comes from personal income taxes, and that the top 1% paid 41% of all personal income taxes in 2011, while half of all adult Californians paid no income tax at all.
And that was before Proposition 30 passed, a measure that raised the top income tax rate in California to 13.3%, the highest in the nation.
That plays into part of the corporate moves. Imagine being able to give employees a pay increase between 8% and 13.3% by moving from California, to say, Texas.
Not coincidentally, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has spent a great deal of time advertising to Golden Staters the benefits of moving to Texas. Similarly, Indiana and Wisconsin have taken pains to try to recruit corporate relocation from high tax jurisdictions like neighboring Illinois.
Imagine how much happier Toyota salespeople will be, who after all, get paid more money if they sell more cars and now will be able to keep more.
Show me a unionized employee who got a pay increase of 8%-13.3% this past year.
To add to the injury of a tax increase, California also made the tax increase retroactive, which raises a whole bunch of constitutional concerns.
AdverseEvents founder Brian Overstreet told CBN News that he “has suddenly found himself owing an extra $250,000 because of this sudden move by the state to impose back taxes for the past five years.”
Ironically, California is sitting on one of the largest oil finds, with an estimated 400 billion barrels of oil, or about half of Saudi Arabia's conventional reserves. But instead of tapping that economic potential, the state is taking the lazy man's route out by making the millionaires pay.
So oil companies are leaving California in droves, as our colleague Erika Johnsen at HotAir pointed out in March.
Destination? You guessed it: Texas.
Four of the top six states in GDP growth between 2008 and 2012 are high-energy states. North Dakota, Texas, Alaska and Louisiana posted GDP growth between 8% and 35% in the five years through 2012.
Even Hollywood is fleeing the Golden State.
Despite attempts by California to use the millionaire tax to produce subsidies in order to keep film production on the West Coast, states and countries that are hungrier for the jobs films produce, temporary though they may be, are outbidding them, notes Variety, the bible for all things Hollywood.
California currently pays a 20% subsidy for production costs. Australia pays 30% subsidy for production costs.
While the correct subsidy number should be 0% to offset production costs, California's political reaction to this Hollywood holocaust is predictably foolish.
“Steve Dayan, who serves as vice chairman of the state film commission and secretary-treasurer of Local 399 of the Intl. Brotherhood of Teamsters,” writes Variety, “spoke at the Feb. 22 labor rally, promising his union would be willing to repeat its 1999 action of encircling the State Capitol in Sacramento with 200 Teamster trucks — a tactic used to campaign for incentives. ‘We are not going to let other states poach our jobs,’ he said, evoking loud applause from the 700-plus attendees.”
Yeah, keep fighting the last war.
Presumably, Dayan believes that they can just raise taxes on millionaires even higher or, better yet, Toyota Motor Corp. to subsidize the jobs that California can't compete for on the open market.
In other words, expect the exodus from California to continue.
“Unfortunately they’ll vote Democrat when they arrive in Texas.”
Although some of this will happen, it’s not clear that it will be widespread. The people leaving will not for the most part be among the ones who pay zero tax. They are the ones who vote democrat.
It’s a little different with Florida where many move there for climate reasons.
Yes, NY is subsidizing new business relocations on the backs of existing businesses.
Wealth is portable to a degree, but more importantly the people with the ability to produce said wealth can easily tell CA to FO and walk away with their football. How well did Chavez do with the oil industry after the corporations walked away? CA can expect no better. Of course they could always build a wall...
Deprive an individual of the incentive to be productive and they will no longer be productive. It’s so simple a concept that the left cannot misunderstand the principle. Therefore the only conclusion is that the destruction of the California economy is entirely on purpose. Draw you own conclusion as to why.
Well, after 4 yrs in the Navy and 35 years as an Air Traffic Controller, is guess I never *worked* a day, huh?
But I sure do agree about California, it's Massachusettes without the ugly.
Prayers for Florida folks. I think we left just when SoFlo started to speed up on its downhill trajectory.
It's understood by everyone that serving in the Armed Forces constitutes real "work".Yes,I should have made *that* clear.As for Air Traffic Control...was there a union there that gave tons of $$$ to the Rat Party? If so,I don't consider that "work".Sorry.
Exit tax?
Maybe when the whole country is solidly Progressive, they might be able to get away with guard towers in every corner of the state.
In that way, every citizen can be the recipient of the love that every Progressive has for all of mankind.
(Except, “ya know”, for those who are still in the womb.)
IMHO
“Since then, there has been talk in California about an Exit Tax.
Yes, seriesly.”
Why not ? The USA already has a 10 year exit tax (you can leave the USA but you still pay USA taxes for 10 years).
I see no reason for CA to go 1 step further with a forever exit tax or maybe 2 steps further with a forever and retroactive tax or maybe 3 steps further with a forever, retroactive plus a penalty tax.
“Fortunately, an exit tax is a dead issue having been ruled on by Scotus “
Just one more democrat president and they have control of Scotus too.
Thanks very much! I’ve moved to the Bible Belt in Florida and even here we’re turning blue - thanks to farmers wanting those subsidies and cheap, imported labor.
The left knows how to run a state, by running everyone else out, and letting all the illegals in.
CA already tried taxing retirement distributions of people that left the State, claiming that they earned that money in CA and it rightfully belonged to the State. It was knocked down because retirement plans fall under Federal regulations.
Can’t wait to get out of Cali myself, the second I can retire. I used to think it was Paradise. Paradise has turned to Hell, for so many reasons.
This is true, the conservative minority in CA may even dominate a majority of the counties, but they are forever hopelessly outnumbered through big-city machines and unfair reapportionment.
The Dem takeover started with Pat Brown in 1958 and has continued with just a few short interludes such as Reagan and Deukmejian. I don’t see CA people ever again going Republican for anything.
First they “progressively” tax income.
Eventually they will have to tax/ confiscate wealth.
Here in Iowa we have a higher marginal personal income tax rate than New York. 8.9%. And we have the highest corporate income tax rate in the nation. 12%.
But our incumbent governor is as full of economic happy talk as Barack Obama.
But I’m not ready to say goodbye to Iowa. No. I’m ready to say goodbye to our current class of politicians.
That’s one of the many reasons I’m running against the governor in the June 3rd Republican primary.
While advocating for taking our personal and corporate income tax rate to ZERO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIQlWbw0ZKs
I live in Austin - the number of former CA residents in my neighborhood is outsized and they are mostly progressive. The one saving grace is that I doubt TX can make room for the massive number of state and local bureaucrats / employees, that once the music stops in CA, those workers will have no place to land...
Did you notice the figure "35 years"? That means I 'worked' THROUGH the strike...yup, a SCAB!
In '81 I had been at Chicago Center, the busiest air traffic facility in the world, for 13 years. I was one of only 8 non-PATCO controllers (FedGov is open shop), which made for a miserable existence. We had 22 that either did not walk out, or came back before Reagan's deadline....and 465 were fired. So, I claim to have actually "worked", at least a little, for my gov't check.
But, since Massachusetts only votes Rats into office, you are therefore a Rat yourself. By your own reasoning. Sorry.
“The Californication of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado is in full swing. The New Yorkification of Florida has been going on for decades...”
It’s more advanced than Yo-Yo suspects. And more widespread.
Left/Progressives have been invading Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming for some time. They show up from Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecticut (fewer Californians, yes; the suspicion is they fear our harsh weather).
Californication as a phenomenon has been metastasizing: folks from states injured by earlier invasions (Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Oregon, and Washington State) are appearing in greater numbers. A worrisome percentage are retirees who bring their breezy brand of feel-good Left/liberalism right along.
Perhaps the numbers are less than in places like Oregon or Colorado, but this region of Flyover Country is so thinly populated already, that each “immigrant” causes a greater impact, relatively speaking. Cities (such as they are) expand, while towns and rural areas - the only areas inclined to the Right - go on shrinking.
Not that we are guilt-free: South Dakota insisted on sending Left legislators to DC. George McGovern, Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin. Not to mention RINOs: Larry Pressler, James Abourezk. Every single one home-grown.
Too soon to tell if the migrations are ruining Nebraska (which is less than perfect anyway). And in North Dakota the locals have a saying: minus sixty degrees F helps keep the riff-raff out.
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