The Journal’s Rebecca Elliott and Rob Copeland report:
Tesla Inc. is moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas, cementing Chief Executive Elon Musk’s commitment to the Lone Star State and adding to a handful of Silicon Valley companies that have relocated there.
Mr. Musk announced the move from Tesla’s Austin-area factory, which the company began building last year and where it held its annual shareholder meeting Thursday. He added that Tesla plans to expand its activities in California but that the company’s ability to scale up in the San Francisco Bay Area is limited.
It seems that the Covid era has encouraged technology workers to consider whether they prefer Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), who is partial to mandates and taxes, or Gov. Greg Abbott (R., Texas), who favors a different path. According to the Journal:
Tech companies were among the earliest to send employees home at the start of the pandemic, and a number of prominent players in the industry have allowed their employees to work remotely on a permanent basis. That shift has prompted many Silicon Valley employees and startup CEOs to relocate to other parts of the country for cheaper housing, less traffic and a better quality of living.
Mr. Musk nodded to some of those challenges, saying of the Bay Area, “It’s tough for people to afford houses, and a lot of people have to come in from far away.”
Texas, particularly its capital of Austin, has attracted more technology companies and startup development in recent years, offering lower taxes and less regulation than California and more affordable real estate.
Further up the west coast from the Golden State, Oregon and Washington impose much more reasonable tax burdens. But too many local politicians succumbed to the civic insanity of 2020 and concluded that police are the problem with public safety. Reading Maxine Bernstein’s heartbreaking new report in the Oregonian newspaper, one would think she is describing a visit to a war zone, not a beautiful American city
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