guest COMMENTARY

Musk’s Exit Effects on California

As Covid descended on California in March and April of this year, economies began to shut down and the debate raged over what businesses were deemed “essential.” There was a rather public dialogue 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 (Socialist) Latina Democrat, “F*ck Elon Musk!”

At that time, we had no idea how much that tweet… and that attitude… would cost us.

Elon Musk rather calmly threatened to leave the state. The Governor was arrogantly dismissive, saying “Elon Musk isn’t leaving California anytime soon!”

Six months later, Elon Musk has leftCalifornia. Hehassold(orisin process of selling) all his personal real estate in the state. He is now a resident of the state of Texas. He has 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 irony of in-your-face progressive/ Socialist democrats forcing Elon Musk to give up on California? Musk came to this state as an immigrant and proceeded to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through Solar City and Tesla than all the “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 benefitted the consumer, the environment, and his shareholders. He should have been 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, most 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 will pay in California state tax this year, but it would surprise no one if he paid the most of any individual resident.

Next year, he will be a much happier resident of another state and pay a small fraction of the taxes squeezed out of him and his employees while in our state.

The damage 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. continued from page

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. In the last few weeks, 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.

That is not to say this was all caused by one arrogant and explosive, sneering, leftist, tweet. Plenty of other factors are in play.

• Companies are

realizing they don’t need a highly centralized HQ, their employees can be productive from wherever they choose to live.

• The outrageous high

cost of living in the bay

area…

• Government's

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 of stepping over syringes and feces in the streets of San Francisco.

But the fact remains, CA state income tax is the highest, CA’s ranking for “business friendliness” is lowest, and we have elected hardcore USAhat i ng leftist representatives who happily — often to the cheers of their leftist supporters — lob crass, schoolyard, vulgar f-bombs at the people who are paying the freight.

Half, 53.6%, of the tax in this state is paid by less than the top 1% (the top 0.91%), and many in that category are realizing they can easily make their living from anywhere.

Try to add up the lost tax revenues of having the second wealthiest man in the world and the executive teams of great companies, international giants like HP and Oracle, depart the state.

UP DATE: ELON MUSK IS NOW THE RICHIST MAN IN THE WORLD We’re talking tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue every six months. Not to mention the philanthropy, which is gone too.

Any Progressive/ Socialist or Communist/ Marxist agenda only has value if someone can pay for it.

The next time the state raises your taxes to make up for the millions — millions — of taxpayers who have been run out of CA, try not to use the 6th Grader language employed by Ms. Gonzalez.

But maybe no one would blame you if you did…