Texas is planning to make a huge public investment in space

"Further investment will cement Texas as the preeminent location for innovation."

See full article...

 

[tonylurker]

As an added refinement, real estate transactions in Texas are not public records, so there is not even that to provide a dose of reality to assessments; it allows large expensive properties to more-easily remain undervalued for taxation.

Wait, what? I was completely unaware that there existed places where real estate transactions were not public records. Are there other states like this?

 

[PhilGil]

So a more serious talk. As a corporation I can't see why anyone would willingly invest capital in Florida, when you have a government that is willing to pass legislation to punish companies at the whim of a governor. While Texas hasn't started down this road it is certainly a risk with politicians like Abbot.

It is hard to leave once you're there, but are people really going to want to invest significant long term capital in a place where the government might try to personally punish your company.

Would incentives like these be worth the risk that operating in these states have to your workers and capital investments?

Short-term thinking. Business decision makers give zero thought to the long-term consequences of moving to a 3rd world state, as long as they get their tax breaks and next quarter's profits are up.

 

[normally butters]

Texas is going to have to fight the federal NEPA regime to allow more than 5 Starship launch operations per year from Boca Chica if they want to compete with Florida in the launch sector. Otherwise the Cape will become the center of gravity for Starship operations and assembly.

 

[iq00]

Boca Chica, SpaceX. How much say or influence does Mexico have on SpaceX operations, launches and risk of RUDs?
Currently at work, so can't do a lot of research into this, this will have to wait till later.
If Texas wants to invest more into space launch initiatives, can the Mexican government interfere?

 

[Photon_plumber]

So a more serious talk. As a corporation I can't see why anyone would willingly invest capital in Florida, when you have a government that is willing to pass legislation to punish companies at the whim of a governor. While Texas hasn't started down this road it is certainly a risk with politicians like Abbot.

It is hard to leave once you're there, but are people really going to want to invest significant long term capital in a place where the government might try to personally punish your company.

Would incentives like these be worth the risk that operating in these states have to your workers and capital investments?

Same question. After all the anti-people legislation in both Texas and Florida, I certainly know many companies have paused any expansions or thoughts of doing business there. They hate uncertainty, and the prospect that any good, needed employees may not exist.

 

[john napiorkowski]

Texas may not have a state income tax, but I pay more in property taxes than I do in federal income taxes. And that doesn't include state sales taxes. But, I don't have a real basis for comparison with other states to decide whether calling Texas a low tax state is accurate or not. I can tell you that it isn't just one property tax. There are at least half a dozen governmental agencies with property taxing powers on my house and it is a lot to keep up with who they are accountable to.

FWIW I paid less in overall taxes after moving to TX compared to when I was living in NYC. First 5 years here I was able to buy and pay off my home. So overall I've personally done better economically. But it will surely depend on a lot of factors, for someone else maybe not. Like it was worth it for me to be paying NYC taxes when my wife and son moved to the US because NYC had better schooling and overall support for new immigrants. And like you I see my property taxes are like 5 different entities sending me bills.

 

[Celery Man]

Texas is going to have to fight the federal NEPA regime to allow more than 5 Starship launch operations per year from Boca Chica if they want to compete with Florida in the launch sector. Otherwise the Cape will become the center of gravity for Starship operations and assembly.

They love “fighting” the federal regime, but this sounds like they’d have to do more work than “putting together stunts to jack off their base”, so I doubt they’ll actually be able to make it happen.

 

[Eng_wkzm]

Short-term thinking. Business decision makers give zero thought to the long-term consequences of moving to a 3rd world state, as long as they get their tax breaks and next quarter's profits are up.

BS. The last couple of years I was in a team which was building production sites for a large international (european ) company. We never cared much about tax breaks (although they are nice). We didn't give a bit about next quarters profit. What is important is the support and the relationship with local authorities, the local labour market, the competence of local suppliers, closeness to to your consumer markets and import /export regulations.

 

[raschumacher]

Wait, what? I was completely unaware that there existed places where real estate transactions were not public records. Are there other states like this?

Apparently there are now ten such:
https://retipster.com/non-disclosure-states-map/
To be clear, ownership of a property in Texas is a public record, but how much the owner paid for it is not.

 

[FreeRangeOrganicSoyLatteCappuccino]

Wait, what? I was completely unaware that there existed places where real estate transactions were not public records. Are there other states like this?

Real estate transactions in Texas are completely public. You can look up the estimated value of any property online.

And the values go up and down with the market. So Texas tax revenues are doing well this year, but may plummet next year (as happened with California).

 

[Celery Man]

BS. The last couple of years I was in a team which was building production sites for a large international (european ) company. We never cared much about tax breaks (although they are nice). We didn't give a bit about next quarters profit. What is important is the support and the relationship with local authorities, the local labour market, the competence of local suppliers, closeness to to your consumer markets and import /export regulations.

Cool anecdote! Too bad most businesses don’t operate like yours.

 

[raschumacher]

Real estate transactions in Texas are completely public. You can look up the estimated value of any property online.

Uh-uh-uh: You can look up what the county assessor's office thinks it is worth. You cannot look up how much anyone ever actually paid for it.

 

[msawzall]

Short-term thinking. Business decision makers give zero thought to the long-term consequences of moving to a 3rd world state, as long as they get their tax breaks and next quarter's profits are up.

And in all fairness, until the last 10 years or so, Florida actually kind of tried to hide their complete ignorance of reality. Now they're proud to display it. Meanwhile, the retirees keep moving down there and just bury their heads in the first sand trap of their local private club's links.

 

[Urist]

Boca Chica, SpaceX. How much say or influence does Mexico have on SpaceX operations, launches and risk of RUDs?
Currently at work, so can't do a lot of research into this, this will have to wait till later.
If Texas wants to invest more into space launch initiatives, can the Mexican government interfere?

I'm guessing that the Mexican government has absolutely no say in what happens in American airspace. They might prevent any southerly launches from Boca Chica that would pass into Mexican airspace or waters, but I doubt that SpaceX would want or be authorized by the FAA to do that anyway.

 

[Dooderoo]

Two quotes to show what's going on in Texas:

"Texas AG enters Musk/Twitter fight by ordering Twitter to provide spam data
Paxton demands the spam data that Musk hasn't been able to get from Twitter."

"Texas Attorney General Paxton agrees to $3.3 million settlement with whistleblowers who accused him of abuse of office and bribery"

In other words, Pedo-Elon found a corrupt state with a far right lunatic administration that's doing his bidding.

 

[Celery Man]

give it a rest. Texas gets a once in a century storm and grid isn't prepared. Rest of country has a laugh.
Turn to 2023 and the Northeast gets a record storm. The same jokers that smugly droned on about how prepared they were for any winter storm get to watch their neighbors freezing to death in cars and on the streets.

Lmfao. Like you flag humpers know anything about a Nor’Easter. Two storms aren’t always the same.

Also, did their Senator fly off to Cancun right before the storm? And did they later blame their teenage daughters (like a big honest man would) for why they were in Cancun while their constituents dealt with the storm?

 

[Frank C.]

Same question. After all the anti-people legislation in both Texas and Florida, I certainly know many companies have paused any expansions or thoughts of doing business there. They hate uncertainty, and the prospect that any good, needed employees may not exist.

Not quite the right business atmosphere if you want to attract quality employees. Inevitably, such harmful legislation will prevent some people from setting foot in the state. Businesses see this. The pause is real.

 

[normally butters]

Boca Chica, SpaceX. How much say or influence does Mexico have on SpaceX operations, launches and risk of RUDs?
Currently at work, so can't do a lot of research into this, this will have to wait till later.
If Texas wants to invest more into space launch initiatives, can the Mexican government interfere?

The FAA can and does post NOTAMs that overlap into neighboring Flight Information Regions such as Mexico's, including for previous Starship SN prototype flights.

 

[raschumacher]

give it a rest. Texas gets a once in a century storm and grid isn't prepared. Rest of country has a laugh.
Turn to 2023 and the Northeast gets a record storm. The same jokers that smugly droned on about how prepared they were for any winter storm get to watch their neighbors freezing to death in cars and on the streets.

So far Texas has had two "once in a century" storms in this century, in 2010 and 2021. Nearly three hundred people died for lack of power and heat over multiple days in the 2021 storm; the grid was, by ERCOT's own estimate, less than a half-hour from complete collapse. This was not because icing or wind brought down some low-voltage power lines. This was because gas wellheads and pipelines froze up, and power plants shut down for lack of fuel and/or because hydraulic controls froze up (even one of the two nuclear reactors at Comanche Peak). And oh by the way, the financial consequences will remain for years, and not just in Texas:
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy...sotans-to-pay-for-texas-deep-freeze-problems/
Texas power producers and its grid, under the loving watchful eye of state government, were and largely still are utterly unprepared for cold weather. It's absurd.

 

[PhilGil]

The shitty thing about property and sales taxes is that they are regressive: low-income people pay a far larger fraction of their income for them than do high-income people.

Hence why income taxes (which, when graduated, are the least regressive form of taxation) are so unpopular with the right.

 

[msawzall]

give it a rest. Texas gets a once in a century storm and grid isn't prepared. Rest of country has a laugh.
Turn to 2023 and the Northeast gets a record storm. The same jokers that smugly droned on about how prepared they were for any winter storm get to watch their neighbors freezing to death in cars and on the streets.

Kicker is, some administrations learn from their mistakes. Texas seems to flaunt them.

 

[Reynold]

So a more serious talk. As a corporation I can't see why anyone would willingly invest capital in Florida, when you have a government that is willing to pass legislation to punish companies at the whim of a governor. While Texas hasn't started down this road it is certainly a risk with politicians like Abbot.

There are plenty of examples of other state governments, blue ones included, that have legislation and regulations and state attorney generals targeting companies and entire industries. The federal government is at least as culpable.

Any large company invests in lobbyists in large part to try to (1) get warning of, and, if possible (2) block legislation that could hurt or kill their business. I would consider it irresponsible of the company owners not to do that, government risk has been a very real one since at least the Wickard vs. Filburn Supreme Court decision. Given the roughly 4000 new federal regulations approved every year, lobbyists obviously don't always win, nor should they.

Regarding Texas's poor infrastructure, which others have mentioned, I can tell you that NJ has some of the highest taxes in the country, and when hurricane Sandy hit, they were interviewing out of state utility workers helping fix the lines saying that NJ had the most obsolete electrical grid they had ever encountered. CA, of course, is famous for having electrical grid problems even during relatively normal summers. Less than a week separated legislation they passed to end sales of gas powered cars in favor of electric (speaking of targeting industries) and them issuing a notice that people shouldn't charge their electric cars during the day because they don't have enough electricity for even the small number on the road now. Nobody invests in infrastructure they way they should, unfortunately.

More on topic, I wonder if SpaceX can be considered somewhat like the Hewlett Packard of Silicon Valley? Certainly many people from SpaceX have moved on to high profile positions with other space companies, as happened with HP in the early days of Silicon Valley. That $350M investment may actually pay off long term.

 

[jhodge]

If your are rich enough to have that luxury. If you make minimum wage and all of your income is spent on rent, food, and transportation, you can't pay less in sales taxes. You can't save what isn't left and you get taxed at a higher rate than those who make more and have the luxury of choosing the "cheaper option".

Food (groceries, not eating out) isn't subject to sales tax in many places (most, I think), and neither is rent.

 

[ranthog]

So far Texas has had two "once in a century" storms in this century, in 2010 and 2021. Nearly three hundred people died for lack of power and heat for multiple days in the 2021 storm; the grid was, by ERCOT's own estimate, less than a half-hour from complete collapse. Texas power producers and its grid were and largely still are utterly unprepared for cold weather. It's absurd.

The power grid was about 4 minutes from collapse, not a half hour. They got through more than half the grace period to bring grid frequencies back into spec before every generator in the state would start tripping off the grid. They came really fucking close to it, if they had a few more plants trip off or if one of the utilities was delayed in load shedding ERCOT may have become the first interconnect to ever do a black start.

On top of that, they found out a bunch of the black start generators in the state were not actually functional because of the storm.

 

[Eng_wkzm]

Cool anecdote! Too bad most businesses don’t operate like yours.

Don't thinks so. I can't speak for smaller companies and true multinationals (energy). But you work in a network (suppliers, planners, colleagues from other companies, joint ventures) and know how other companies operate. And what I know from European and Japanesse companies is that they operate like this. Especially when the standard business is running halfway normal, the next quarters profits are of zero concern. In opening a new production facility, only the long term prospects count,

 

[Rauth85]

Texas may not have a state income tax, but I pay more in property taxes than I do in federal income taxes. And that doesn't include state sales taxes. But, I don't have a real basis for comparison with other states to decide whether calling Texas a low tax state is accurate or not. I can tell you that it isn't just one property tax. There are at least half a dozen governmental agencies with property taxing powers on my house and it is a lot to keep up with who they are accountable to.

There are no low tax states. For normals. Govt gets their pound of flesh one way or another.

There are low tax states, IF YOU ARE RICH.

 

[msawzall]

So what you're saying is that people who SHOULD have known all about being ready for a Nor’Easter failed.

Also, I do not hump flags.

Failures happen. What you do after them matters.

And as far as what things which people are humping, Texas seems extremely concerned with that.

 

[ranthog]

There are plenty of examples of other state governments, blue ones included, that have legislation and regulations and state attorney generals targeting companies and entire industries. The federal government is at least as culpable.

Any large company invests in lobbyists in large part to try to (1) get warning of, and, if possible (2) block legislation that could hurt or kill their business. I would consider it irresponsible of the company owners not to do that, government risk has been a very real one since at least the Wickard vs. Filburn Supreme Court decision. Given the roughly 4000 new federal regulations approved every year, lobbyists obviously don't always win, nor should they.

Regarding Texas's poor infrastructure, which others have mentioned, I can tell you that NJ has some of the highest taxes in the country, and when hurricane Sandy hit, they were interviewing out of state utility workers helping fix the lines saying that NJ had the most obsolete electrical grid they had ever encountered. CA, of course, is famous for having electrical grid problems even during relatively normal summers. Less than a week separated legislation they passed to end sales of gas powered cars in favor of electric (speaking of targeting industries) and them issuing a notice that people shouldn't charge their electric cars during the day because they don't have enough electricity for even the small number on the road now. Nobody invests in infrastructure they way they should, unfortunately.

More on topic, I wonder if SpaceX can be considered somewhat like the Hewlett Packard of Silicon Valley? Certainly many people from SpaceX have moved on to high profile positions with other space companies, as happened with HP in the early days of Silicon Valley. That $350M investment may actually pay off long term.

Bullshit. It is not normal for a governor to decide he doesn't politically like a stance that a company is taking, and then to arbitrarily go after something completely unrelated the company does the way that DeSantis has done in Florida. I really fucking hate defending Disney, but what is happening to Disney isn't right.

I can't think of anything on par with what is going on in Florida today.

The government of course has a role in regulating industries. Creating regulations for industries and enforcing them is the job of the government. That isn't what is going on in Florida. Sometimes that means that you put in regulations that will kill off things, like coal power plants. But that is done for legitimate policy reasons and not because coal plants supported the state expanding the trade programs a the community colleges.

I don't think California has had a regular summer in a long time. They are heavily investing in new generation and fixing the grid to be safe in a climate it was never intended for. California screwed up pretty badly with deregulation, but it is far better off than Texas. It also is actively taking actions to fix those issues.

 

[Rauth85]

Two rather large questions/issues come up from this move.

1. Doesn’t an expansion of this sort require a bunch of people with STEM backgrounds, people who tend to lean progressive? Do they really want to move to Texas, when the political and social atmosphere is less than ideal, if not backwards to their beliefs?

2. All these progressives moving to Texas…they slowly start to change their demographics, to the horror of other texans?

Im sure the state govt is working on an "out of state" visa for these people coming in, which would not allow them to vote or own land.

 

[msawzall]

Bullshit. It is not normal for a governor to decide he doesn't politically like a stance that a company is taking, and then to arbitrarily go after something completely unrelated the company does the way that DeSantis has done in Florida. I really fucking hate defending Disney, but what is happening to Disney isn't right.

I can't think of anything on par with what is going on in Florida today.

The government of course has a role in regulating industries. Creating regulations for industries and enforcing them is the job of the government. That isn't what is going on in Florida.

I don't think California has had a regular summer in a long time. They are heavily investing in new generation and fixing the grid to be safe in a climate it was never intended for. California screwed up pretty badly with deregulation, but it is far better off than Texas.

Exactly. This is exactly what Obama was being accused of in "picking and choosing" which companies the government would subsidize with wind and solar power. Meanwhile, Trump went on a shit talking extravaganza on Twitter with various private companies and DeSantis has a personal vendetta against Disney and now it's crickets from the usual rightwing hypocrites.

 

[ranthog]

Exactly. This is exactly what Obama was being accused of in "picking and choosing" which companies the government would subsidize with wind and solar power. Meanwhile, Trump went on a shit talking extravaganza on Twitter with various private companies and DeSantis has a personal vendetta against Disney and now it's crickets from the usual rightwing hypocrites.

There is also the fact that there was zero substance behind the accusations thrown at Obama. Not even a whiff of corruption. Unlike the stench, the smoke, and the burning dumpster fire around Trump's.

 

[FreeRangeOrganicSoyLatteCappuccino]

Uh-uh-uh: You can look up what the county assessor's office thinks it is worth. You cannot look up how much anyone ever actually paid for it.

When there is an actual sale, the value of the property is automatically updated to that sale price. If a property isn't sold for years, then the assessed value of the property will be changed based upon the more recent sale of properties around it.

So yes, it's what the county assessor thinks the value is worth. But each property owner also has the ability to appeal any increase in property value/tax, once every few years.

Anyhow, point being, it's all pretty public information.

 

[Asvarduil]

Yeah, I didn't realize hypocrisy was a strategy.

GOP: Great at Overt Projection

Every accusation is a confession.

 

[Frank C.]

The power grid was about 4 minutes from collapse, not a half hour. They got through more than half the grace period to bring grid frequencies back into spec before every generator in the state would start tripping off the grid. They came really fucking close to it, if they had a few more plants trip off or if one of the utilities was delayed in load shedding ERCOT may have become the first interconnect to ever do a black start.

On top of that, they found out a bunch of the black start generators in the state were not actually functional because of the storm.

3 minutes, 46 seconds to be exact. Just a handful of seconds really to having to endure a 19th century lifestyle for the several weeks or months it would have taken to repair everything.

 

[graylshaped]

Try not to project your own political party's flaws onto everyone else.

Asking a GOP supporter to refrain from projection is more or less the point of the frog and scorpion tale.

They can't help it.

 

[Asvarduil]

Texans, the Pakleds of Earth.

MY HAT ISN'T BIG ENOUGH!

 

[graylshaped]

3 minutes, 46 seconds to be exact. Just a handful of seconds really to having to endure a 19th century lifestyle for the several weeks or months it would have taken to repair everything.

And their governor is floating the idea of launching a presidential campaign. It may be an interesting primary. DeathSentence is actively hostile to human decency. Abbot is merely incompetent.