Is California going to harass our high-tech companies into leaving the state?

Richard Rider, Chairman, San Diego Tax Fighters

12 years ago

Here’s an unsettling article from Spectrum Location Solutions, discussing California’s unswerving commitment to driving away businesses from the Golden State. In the last couple decades, the CA legislative anti-business campaign focused on manufacturing firms — “dirty businesses” (all manufacturing is dirty, by CA political standards). But today the new targets seem to be the cash generating, clean, high-tech companies. Brilliant.

CA will continue as a start-up business center, I suspect, but maturing firms are doing their expansions in more business-friendly states. And the more they do that, the more business management will note the contrast in the bottom line for such facilities. Google and Apple are two that have shifted new operations to other states.

While CA is openly hostile to business, the San Francisco business climate approaches Venezuela and Cuba. Recently a private Google employee bus shuttling employees to and from work was blockaded by protesters, demanding Google pay a billion dollars to the state! As the article points out, businesses in the San Francisco region [those not dependent on local retail trade] simply have to be considering moving out of state.

http://spectrumlocationsolutions.me/author/bizlocate/

Another High-Tech Co. to Ease Out of San Francisco Bay Area?
Posted December 19, 2013 by bizlocate
Tags: Business Relocation and Location

Word has it that another California high-tech company is looking for an out-of-state location to house a growing part of its business. Depending upon how much more cost-effective the locality proves out to be, it’s possible that later on more jobs will be relocated to the new community.

One specification is that the state and locality must be “friendly” to business – which brings me to some unfriendly targeting of a well-regarded company, Google.

Last week, headlines reflected mean-spiritedness hitting the streets of San Francisco. That’s when protesters blocked a Google bus from taking employees to their jobs at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View. How radical were those who impeded the lawful operation of a shuttle bus? Well, consider the extremists’ demand as illustrated by this headline: “Protesters Block Google Bus, Demand $1 Billion.”

Anti-Business California

The action reinforced my belief that California’s hostility to successful businesses will spill over to hostility to successful employees, who are guilty of, well, doing absolutely nothing wrong.

To Google officials I say – I hope you continue to meet with officials from economic development agencies representing places that show understanding toward job-creating companies. Places where being gracious remains part of the social fabric.

Google already knows plenty about friendly areas. Consider stories that have run this year alone about Google expanding in Pennsylvania (“Google to add hundreds of new employees to Pittsburgh office”), North Carolina (“Google announces $600M Lenoir data center expansion”) and South Carolina (“Google to invest $600 million, add 3rd data center in Berkeley County”).

. . .To read the full article with examples of fleeing business operations, go to the link:

http://spectrumlocationsolutions.me/author/bizlocate/