Sunday, April 24, 2011

Why California is losing jobs

I found it interesting to read about a trip by Gavin Newsom to Texas to talk about jobs for many reasons:
  • There was a reference to business friendly climate -- less regulation and power costs. This is always good for business of course, but I didn't see the most important factor for starting a business, the cost of doing business. This is determined by many things like the cost of living (a business needs to acquire supplies and hopefully have employees who get paid). The cost of living also includes things like taxes where California has a high sales tax, income tax, DMV fees, property taxes [the rates are reasonable in the 1% range, however the overall costs of living driving the housing prices up and thus the property tax outlay is high]. There is already concern that federal income taxes are to high but when adding additional state only costs this reduces the competitive advantage of business. 
  • Why is the legislature just now realizing that business is moving or deciding on states other than California to do business ? This trend has been happening for many years and there have been some major job / employer losses, why did it take this long to see that there is something wrong. Of course, just pointing out that something is wrong doesn't address the issue so I am hoping something will come of this. 
  • It was interesting that Texas was selected to visit instead of Arizona and Nevada, both of which have enjoyed the increase in investments from being neighbor states to California. 
I know that answers to complex issues are rarely simple; however, I think states can learn from something the mutual fund industry (especially Vanguard) has known for years that the higher the cost of running the fund the better the fund manager needs to do to beat the market (and if you believe in the efficient market theory, then nobody ever continually beats the market). The best way to maintain a competitive advantage is to keep the cost of doing business low. Governments can do this by maintaining low tax rates (and also consider the cost of filing taxes -- more complicated means additional costs [flat taxes or revenue based taxes reduce the need for complex tax management].