Sunday, December 25, 2011

What happens when you over regulate and over tax businesses?

They leave.  In California's case, they leave big time.  Even if they are making money.  Take, for example, Waste Connections, a $3.6-billion company formerly located in the Sacremento area, but relocating to Houston.  Waste Connections is part of a clear trend.  According to a Fox News survey, 2,500 employers, accounting for 109,000 jobs, have left California in the past four years.  And many of them were making money.  Why did they leave, then?  To make more money, particularly in the long term.  It is costly to up and move, but businesses will make the outlay if it ensures long term profitabily.  As the Orange County Register points out in an Op Ed, "[t]he California Democratic Party's attitude long has been that businesses are basically trying to rip off the public, and the source of all wealth and advancement can be found in the public sector."   The response to the news by the Senate President upon hearing of the exit of Waste Connections, one of the State's larger employers, says it all:
State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, gave these clueless and snarky remarks in response to the news: "In this instance you have a company that is, in fact, profitable, making significant revenue gains in 2011 and 2010. That doesn't speak to a bad business climate here in California when a good company is able to thrive in that way. So whatever Mr. Middelstaedt's (company CEO) reasons are to leave the great state of California, I know I'm pushing back."

If you do not realize you have a problem, let alone that you are the problem, it is tough to fix the problem.

1 comment:

Borepatch said...

Remember when we were going to move to LA? Dodged a bullet, right there.