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Old 01-04-2012, 06:49 PM
 
Location: The Other California
4,254 posts, read 5,587,455 times
Reputation: 1552

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This well-researched article in City Journal covers it all: the state's obscene regulatory burden, high taxes and fees, environmental extremism, and a threatening culture of litigation. Reversing all of this will take a miracle.
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Old 01-04-2012, 11:22 PM
 
566 posts, read 1,934,391 times
Reputation: 335
Excellent article on the reasons why businesses leave California. We layed off 75 employees in 2000 when our company moved from Orange County to Colorado. We now employ 150 employees in a state much friendlier to business. Our reason for leaving was to escape new California regulations aimed at our industry.

At the same time my friend in Apple Valley moved his metal finishing business to Washington. His 100 employees were left without jobs. His reason was to escape rising California electricity prices.

Would I move my company back to California if the regulations were to change? Not at this point. As a subchapter-S corp my income is taxed at the personal rates. So my income taxes would almost double if I moved back to California. And it looks like that could go even higher with the ballot measure on the next election. And there are also the unjustified, nuisance lawsuits that employers in California have to worry about.
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Old 01-05-2012, 01:18 AM
 
Location: Florida
2,011 posts, read 3,540,685 times
Reputation: 2747
Most people just don't listen to these arguments. They believe it's all BS. They also don't understand the difference between "a good place to do business" and "a business friendly place". Some people think business friendly means you let business do anything it wants. That is not reality though. What all these people who are unhappy need to do is cite specific examples of how CA is not business friendly, and how everyone pays for that.

For example: Every month I get a letter from my health insurance company that looks like a late payment notice. It's worded as if I am in default and that my healthcare plan may be cancelled. I had to call the company to say WTF. I make my payments on time. The company told me that the CA insurance commission now requires these notices. They said they have been inundated with calls from concerned customers but the wording of the notice that must be sent out monthly is mandated, and that they cannot change it. They are supposedly working with the CA insurance commission to come up with a more sane wording. If you are self-employed and have your own private plan you probably receive a similar letter.

That is a small, but worthy example of being business unfriendly. No doubt the company still makes money in CA, but someone pays for these types of BS requirements...the consumer. It costs "something" to comply with any regulation. Whether it's the postage to send out a notice, the attorneys who had to work with the state to draft the notice, the labor to handle the extra customer service calls from confused customers, the IT costs to setup the automatic printing of these notices based on active accounts, the personnel who have to monitor compliance, etc. All this must be done to basically tell me "pay your bills on time or else." Is that really needed? No doubt someone thought consumers were having their health plans unfairly terminated because they didn't realize that if they don't pay their bills, it might be terminated Does it take a monthly reminder that sounds like I am in default?

This is just a tiny example. What businesses need to do is provide such concrete examples of how unnecessary regulation costs YOU. In CA, everyone seems to think all business regulations are just trying to keep businesses from destroying our environment or oppressing employees. They seem oblivious to all of the questionable regulations that are hardly saving the environment. Just saying CA is unfriendly to business goes in one ear and out the other.
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Old 01-05-2012, 10:28 AM
 
7,150 posts, read 10,849,450 times
Reputation: 3806
Read the article ... as a former journalist, I give it a "B" for "Barely" ... it's good for general consumption reading material to stimulate some thought. Despite its extensive reporting of examples of unhappy business owners and their own complaints and rationale for leaving the state -- and in spite of some (mostly credible) stats based on surveys of satisfaction / dis-satisfaction -- the coverage of the issue remains unbalanced. There are citations of dissatisfaction -- there is not much in the way of actual studies of the issues, including opposing viewpoints, nor reporting on who IS happy in the state (I know many of you will say that's because no businesses are happy in CA -- nice joke but not true ... there are many thousands of businesses happy to be in California despite regulatory and taxation issues ... it is simply the "right" place for their business). There are no numbers analyzing the start-ups. There is no reporting on the businesses that move in from elsewhere (yet we know there are businesses moving in -- thanks, for example, to Montclair, our monitor of good things happening to CA).

Very most importantly, I repeat: there is no analysis of how California compares in this economy. THIS economy is brutal almost everywhere. The article does cite some examples of how much better certain businesses are faring in the exceptional cases. It does not consider the specific -- and often temporary -- issues of how what California is currently struggling with is a function of the overall economic near-collapse. Nor does it consider how California will fare in the overall recovery.

To complain about most of the issues raised in the article by unhappy business owners, is fairly typical: anti-tax, anti-environmental controls (imagine trying to safeguard the future!), anti-employee compensation and benefits (image the worker-bees earning more than a crust of bread!), and so forth.

It IS clear, however, that California needs to do a better job on the "chickensh*t brigade" front.

That all said: who the hell thinks it is a good idea to foster endless growth? Look what California was and what it has become already with unbridled growth. Was Brown really a bad guy for saying we need to slow growth and control it? Do you all really want opportunity for economic advancement at any cost to your environment and health and that of your children? At what point does quality of life over-ride capital cancer?

Can't quote it enough: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" -- Edward Abbey
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Old 01-05-2012, 01:59 PM
 
Location: LBC
4,156 posts, read 5,535,268 times
Reputation: 3593
Quote:
Originally Posted by nullgeo View Post
Read the article ... as a former journalist, I give it a "B" for "Barely" ... it's good for general consumption reading material to stimulate some thought. Despite its extensive reporting of examples of unhappy business owners and their own complaints and rationale for leaving the state -- and in spite of some (mostly credible) stats based on surveys of satisfaction / dis-satisfaction -- the coverage of the issue remains unbalanced. There are citations of dissatisfaction -- there is not much in the way of actual studies of the issues, including opposing viewpoints, nor reporting on who IS happy in the state (I know many of you will say that's because no businesses are happy in CA -- nice joke but not true ... there are many thousands of businesses happy to be in California despite regulatory and taxation issues ... it is simply the "right" place for their business). There are no numbers analyzing the start-ups. There is no reporting on the businesses that move in from elsewhere (yet we know there are businesses moving in -- thanks, for example, to Montclair, our monitor of good things happening to CA).

Very most importantly, I repeat: there is no analysis of how California compares in this economy. THIS economy is brutal almost everywhere. The article does cite some examples of how much better certain businesses are faring in the exceptional cases. It does not consider the specific -- and often temporary -- issues of how what California is currently struggling with is a function of the overall economic near-collapse. Nor does it consider how California will fare in the overall recovery.

To complain about most of the issues raised in the article by unhappy business owners, is fairly typical: anti-tax, anti-environmental controls (imagine trying to safeguard the future!), anti-employee compensation and benefits (image the worker-bees earning more than a crust of bread!), and so forth.

It IS clear, however, that California needs to do a better job on the "chickensh*t brigade" front.

That all said: who the hell thinks it is a good idea to foster endless growth? Look what California was and what it has become already with unbridled growth. Was Brown really a bad guy for saying we need to slow growth and control it? Do you all really want opportunity for economic advancement at any cost to your environment and health and that of your children? At what point does quality of life over-ride capital cancer?

Can't quote it enough: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" -- Edward Abbey
Fear of change, fear of brown people, fear of gays, fear of labor unions, fear of people with differing viewpoints, fear of the future, fear of taking responsibility for our own political action or inaction. Fear of our own ignorance and ignorance reinforcing our fear. But hey, that's how the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuating itself.

Its much safer to a fragile psyche to: 1) pretend the the state operates independently of the national economy; 2) ignore the CA specific impacts of the succession of a) Enron b) the tech bubble c) the housing bubble, all of which more acutely felt in CA than elsewhere, and; 3) ignore the fact we threw gas on the fire by electing an Austrian body-builder to make unfunded tax cuts in the midst of it all. During the next bubble, many of the folks who expand with it will temporarily quiet themselves. But once it bursts, they will also fail to see any causal connection to the inherent unsustainability of our national model of endless growth while abandoning our economy on the ground, and then return to victim mode. While onerous regulatory burdens do exist, its telling how seldom those are explicitly cited while all the economic realities identified above are ignored entirely and passed off as honest analyses.
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Old 01-05-2012, 04:33 PM
 
Location: My Own Private Island
258 posts, read 613,065 times
Reputation: 264
Old News .... California, since the late 1980s is anti - small business. I would never own a business in California. Never.
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Old 01-05-2012, 04:51 PM
 
7,150 posts, read 10,849,450 times
Reputation: 3806
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Kurtz View Post
Old News .... California, since the late 1980s is anti - small business. I would never own a business in California. Never.
We are so sorry, Mr Kurtz ... how will we survive without your presence?
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Old 01-05-2012, 05:02 PM
 
Location: Florida
2,011 posts, read 3,540,685 times
Reputation: 2747
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Kurtz View Post
Old News .... California, since the late 1980s is anti - small business. I would never own a business in California. Never.
I don't agree with that. This is a good example of blurring the difference between "a good place to do business" and "a business friendly place." Companies do business all of the time in places that make CA regulations, costs, and bureaucracy look tame. There are some really unfriendly places overseas. Heck, if you want to sell in China you are practically extorted into giving up some IP and letting Chinese companies take a good slice. So why would any business do business there? It's simple. Although unfriendly to business, it is still a good place to do business. The market is so large that you will still make a profit even after all of the BS. Ditto for CA. The market in CA makes it a good place to do business. You can make money here. I know. I own a small startup software engineering firm. I make money in CA.

That said, if the nature of your business is such that your location can be in another state and still reach this market (without incurring unreasonable distribution costs), then yes, you "might" be better off elsewhere. There are just too many factors to consider. Sometimes these threads try to make it all sound so simple when it's not.

My belief is that CA IS a good place to do business, but NOT a business friendly place. I don't see it becoming a business friendly place anytime soon. The voters in the large population centers think of business in a negative light. They are all greedy, want to exploit the workers, and ruin the environment. They mistakenly believe that all of the regulations being put in place are there for good reason, and without them our planet would be ruined and employees would be working 80 hour work weeks for $2 a hour. They are blissfully ignorant of all the BS regulations and requirements that do little more than cause the consumer to pay more for something. That's another concept lost on many voters. It amazes me how many people seem to have no clue that when you increase the cost of doing business, the business just passes the costs on to the consumer. They can sit there and cheer a new tax on gas stations and be blissfully unaware that THEY will end up paying that tax.
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Old 01-05-2012, 07:05 PM
 
Location: LBC
4,156 posts, read 5,535,268 times
Reputation: 3593
Quote:
Originally Posted by CarawayDJ View Post
I don't agree with that. This is a good example of blurring the difference between "a good place to do business" and "a business friendly place." Companies do business all of the time in places that make CA regulations, costs, and bureaucracy look tame. There are some really unfriendly places overseas. Heck, if you want to sell in China you are practically extorted into giving up some IP and letting Chinese companies take a good slice. So why would any business do business there? It's simple. Although unfriendly to business, it is still a good place to do business. The market is so large that you will still make a profit even after all of the BS. Ditto for CA. The market in CA makes it a good place to do business. You can make money here. I know. I own a small startup software engineering firm. I make money in CA.

That said, if the nature of your business is such that your location can be in another state and still reach this market (without incurring unreasonable distribution costs), then yes, you "might" be better off elsewhere. There are just too many factors to consider. Sometimes these threads try to make it all sound so simple when it's not.

My belief is that CA IS a good place to do business, but NOT a business friendly place. I don't see it becoming a business friendly place anytime soon. The voters in the large population centers think of business in a negative light. They are all greedy, want to exploit the workers, and ruin the environment. They mistakenly believe that all of the regulations being put in place are there for good reason, and without them our planet would be ruined and employees would be working 80 hour work weeks for $2 a hour. They are blissfully ignorant of all the BS regulations and requirements that do little more than cause the consumer to pay more for something. That's another concept lost on many voters. It amazes me how many people seem to have no clue that when you increase the cost of doing business, the business just passes the costs on to the consumer. They can sit there and cheer a new tax on gas stations and be blissfully unaware that THEY will end up paying that tax.
This is a far too reasonable criticism of this subject.

But I'm not sure the voters in large populations centers necessarily see business in a negative light. They do, however, witness and live with egregious urban environmental abuse inflicted in the name of business on a daily basis. A high information voter living next to an oil refinery in Wilmington is more likely to vote for that oil tax than a low information voter in, say, Irvine. I kind of see it as a social consequence of density.
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Old 01-05-2012, 11:26 PM
 
Location: Conejo Valley, CA
12,460 posts, read 20,011,681 times
Reputation: 4365
Quote:
Originally Posted by CarawayDJ View Post
They are supposedly working with the CA insurance commission to come up with a more sane wording. If you are self-employed and have your own private plan you probably receive a similar letter.
Nope.....

Quote:
Originally Posted by CarawayDJ View Post
It costs "something" to comply with any regulation. Whether it's the postage to send out a notice, the attorneys who had to work with the state to draft the notice, the labor to handle the extra customer service calls from confused customers, the IT costs to setup the automatic printing of these notices based on active accounts, the personnel who have to monitor compliance, etc.
What is your point? Governments do not create regulations just to bother businesses, instead they create regulations to prevent businesses from stealing wealth from their employees, their community etc.

Quote:
Originally Posted by CarawayDJ View Post
They seem oblivious to all of the questionable regulations that are hardly saving the environment. Just saying CA is unfriendly to business goes in one ear and out the other.
Please provide some examples of "questionable regulations"....and real examples not complaining about the actions of your health insurance company.
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