Appatently the demise of California and the benefits of Texas were overstated.
Tesla engineers say "See ya".

https://kfor.com/news/tehttps://kfor.com/news/tesla-hq-leaving-texas-to-return-to-california-musk-announces/?ref=nbcnewsappsla-hq-leaving-texas-to-return-to-california-musk-announces/?ref=nbcnewsapp

or it was just a sound business decision to be closer to engineering staff.

or it was just a sound business decision to be closer to engineering staff.
You got it backwards. The engineering staff wanted to be closer to California, they were in Texas. "Returning to" means the staff was in Texas.

I've said it before but car companies are rapidly shifting from being primarily the heaviest of heavy manufacturing to becoming a tech industry.

You can build and assemble cars anywhere (Mexico, China, Japan, Korea, Alabama) but in order to keep up and have any hopes of a competitive edge, you need a lot of really sharp tech and engineering types. And the big league for this continues to be in California. Not only do they attract the best and brightest from literally around the globe, but there are also a bunch of fantastic universities (Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, USC plus several more) that continue to pump talent into that state.

It's a robust self-perpetuating machine and there is nowhere else that begins to compare.

People in the middle of the country love to throw stones at California but from someone who lived there for 25 years and was very well-connected in the professional community, I will say unless you've lived and worked there you will never have an appreciation for the incredibly skilled and often brilliant workforce.

Yes, it's expensive for the common man but if you want to be challenged and learn from the best of the best and become rich, there is still no better place on earth.


BTW, almost all the car companies (foreign included) have design studios in California, and for the same reason: tons and tons of talented people who want to live out there.

I've said it before but car companies are rapidly shifting from being primarily the heaviest of heavy manufacturing to becoming a tech industry.

You can build and assemble cars anywhere (Mexico, China, Japan, Korea, Alabama) but in order to keep up and have any hopes of a competitive edge, you need a lot of really sharp tech and engineering types. And the big league for this continues to be in California. Not only do they attract the best and brightest from literally around the globe, but there are also a bunch of fantastic universities (Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, USC plus several more) that continue to pump talent into that state.

It's a robust self-perpetuating machine and there is nowhere else that begins to compare.

People in the middle of the country love to throw stones at California but from someone who lived there for 25 years and was very well-connected in the professional community, I will say unless you've lived and worked there you will never have an appreciation for the incredibly skilled and often brilliant workforce.

Yes, it's expensive for the common man but if you want to be challenged and learn from the best of the best and become rich, there is still no better place on earth.


BTW, almost all the car companies (foreign included) have design studios in California, and for the same reason: tons and tons of talented people who want to live out there.

I have never understood the need to bash California. I try to get out there as often as I can. It is clearly one of the best states in our country for multiple reasons. I'm assuming a lot of the bashing has to do with politics. The politics of the state don't match my personal politics, but to me that's a minor issue because I haven't elevated politics to be the central part of my personal identity as so many people have in the last decade.

Anyway, if I were Elon Musk and had to decide where to locate my engineering staff, there is simply not better place to have them than Palo Alto.

I have never understood the need to bash California. I try to get out there as often as I can. It is clearly one of the best states in our country for multiple reasons. I'm assuming a lot of the bashing has to do with politics. The politics of the state don't match my personal politics, but to me that's a minor issue because I haven't elevated politics to be the central part of my personal identity as so many people have in the last decade.

Anyway, if I were Elon Musk and had to decide where to locate my engineering staff, there is simply not better place to have them than Palo Alto.

Same, California is better in almost every metric than just about every other state. Restrictive land-use policies and geographic restraints have driven up the cost of housing.

Same, California is better in almost every metric than just about every other state. Restrictive land-use policies and geographic restraints have driven up the cost of housing.

And the fact that so many people want to live there; despite all the rhetoric about it being a sinking ship, it still has way more population than any other state.

It's pretty simple supply and demand. And that's also why promoting yourself as 'cheap' can be very counter-productive.

California is expensive for very good reasons, which also begs the question of why other places are inexpensive.

And the fact that so many people want to live there; despite all the rhetoric about it being a sinking ship, it still has way more population than any other state.

It's pretty simple supply and demand. And that's also why promoting yourself as 'cheap' can be very counter-productive.

California is expensive for very good reasons, which also begs the question of why other places are inexpensive.

and for the first time in the history of the state people are leaving California and the population is dropping ...

and for the first time in the history of the state people are leaving California and the population is dropping ...

In the short term.

Still by far the largest state by population.

In the short term.

Still by far the largest state by population.

we will have to see if it is a short term trend or not ....

but yeah people don't grasp how many people live in California .. this is a good stat to throw out that puts the size of California in perspective "more people voted republican in California in the 2020 presidential election then the number of people that voted republican in Texas in the 2020 election "

Yes, we will have to wait to see but for now the population has only gone down in a short time frame compared to 100 years of incredible growth.

I believe California lost a congressional seat due to the population drop.

California didn't LOSE population between 2010 and 2020. It still grew. That growth just happened to be at a slower rate compared to the rest of the country. That is why they lost a congressional seat.

California didn't LOSE population between 2010 and 2020. It still grew. That growth just happened to be at a slower rate compared to the rest of the country. That is why they lost a congressional seat.

and from 2020-current day California has lost almost 700,00 https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-loses-nearly-700000-residents-since-2020/

The real winners are the remote workers who can collect California paychecks and have Oklahoma/Texas living cost. I know several people here in OKC that work west coast tech jobs remotely.

I believe California lost a congressional seat due to the population drop.

It's not just due to a slight population drop, it was due to other states gaining population.

I glanced at that article, but I don't know where they got those numbers. According to the Census Bureau, the population of California has only dropped about 500k since 2020 (~1.2%) with just over 110k leaving between July 2021-July 2022.

But since congressional seats are done on a yearly basis, but on a per-census basis, it is useful to look at the comparison between censuses. From 2010 - 2020, California increased by 2.3 million people.