Musk vs. California
By Kelly Brothers (MBA, 30-Year-TV-News-Anchor, KCRA Sacramento)
As Covid descended on California economies began to shut down and a debate raged over what businesses were “essential.” A rather public dialogue took place between Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, and Alameda County authorities regarding the forced shutdown of the Tesla plant in Fremont. This dialogue was punctuated by a pithy tweet from Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez who describes herself as a Progressive Latina Democrat; Lorena’s message:”F*ck Elon Musk!”
That tweet … and that attitude… would seriously cost CA. Elon Musk rather calmly threatened to leave the state. The arrogant Governor was dismissive, saying “Elon Musk isn’t leaving California anytime soon!” Six months later, Elon Musk left California.
Musk has sold (or is in process of selling) all of his personal real estate in the state. He is now a resident of the state of Texas. He has also moved his philanthropic foundation to Texas. One of his companies, Space X, is based in Texas and Tesla is building a new plant outside of Austin, TX.
Consider the unfathomable stupidity of in-your-face progressive/Socialist democrats forcing Elon Musk to give up on California. Musk came to CA as an immigrant and proceeded to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through Solar City and Tesla than all of the ignorant “progressive,” “ultra-leftist,” politicians in the state .. combined.
Anyone can make a proclamation or talk about climate change.
Musk didn’t talk about it. He simply brought products to market that benefited the consumer, the environment, AND his shareholders. He should be the “poster boy” for the green agenda, but instead they turned on him and tore him apart because he refused to buckle to absolutely arbitrary regulations based on flimsy and often ridiculous, medical data.
(By the way, automobile manufacturing is now deemed “essential” in CA.)
There is no way to know for sure what Mr. Musk paid in California state taxes, but it would surprise no one if he paid the most of any individual resident. Now, he will be a much happier resident of Texas and pay a small fraction of the taxes that CA previously squeezed out of him and his employees.
But the damage to CA goes much deeper than the tax revenue of one person. Musk didn’t just leave the state, he “turned” on the state, as well he should have. It is now his mission to get other innovators to leave as well, as well he should. According to the Governor of Texas, he is on the phone with Musk at least once a week, strategizing about how to get other CA companies to relocate to Texas.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle have both announced they are moving their HQs to Texas, with 13 other potential moves in the pipeline. This will suck a lot of the financial and social life out of CA. This was not all caused by one arrogant and explosive, sneering, leftist, tweet. Plenty of other factors are also in play:
- Companies are realizing they don’t need a highly centralized HQ because their employees can be productive from wherever they choose to live.
- The outrageous high cost of living in the bay area..
- Governments inability to deal with highly visible issues like homelessness; 2,000,000 in CA and growing by the hour.
- Executives, their elderly parents and their small children, have grown tired to stepping over syringes and feces in the streets of San Francisco.
CA’s state income tax is the highest in the nation; CA’s ranking for “business friendliness” is the lowest, and we have elected hardcore,USA-hating, leftist representatives who happily — often to the cheers of their supporter — lob crass, schoolyard, vulgar f-bombs at the people who are paying the freight.
53.6%, of CA State tax is paid by the top 0.91% of earners, and many in that category are realizing they can easily make their living from anywhere. Imagine the lost tax revenue of having the second wealthiest man in the world plus the executive teams of great companies, international giants like HP and Oracle, depart the state. We’re talking Tens-of-Billions of dollars in lost revenue every six months. And, the philanthropy is gone too.
Progressive/Socialist / Communist-Marxist agendas only work as long as somebody else is funding them. The next time the state raises your taxes to make up for the millions of taxpayers who have been run out of CA, try not to use the 6-th Grader language employed by Ms. Gonzalez.
By Kelly Brothers (MBA, 30-Year-TV-News-Anchor, KCRA Sacramento)
