ELON MUSK DECIDES NOW IS A GREAT TIME TO FORCE HIS EMPLOYEES TO MOVE TO TEXAS
In the year of our Lord 2021, millions of people regard Texas as an uninhabitable hellscape they’d sooner die than set foot in. In addition having to worry, at any give moment, about running into Ted Cruz, living in the Lone Star State today means having to contend with an insane law that allows people to carry a gun without a license, training, or background check; rampant voter suppression; a governor who wants the pandemic to never end; a barbaric law that bans abortion at six weeks with no exception for rape or incest; and a government that defends forcing pregnant people to travel out of state to exercise their right to choose by claiming it’s been great for commerce. (Yes, SB8 has been temporarily blocked—more on that later.) In sum, people currently living in Texas are no doubt considering making a run for it, and people living elsewhere are thanking their lucky stars.
Then there’s Elon Musk. One of the richest people in the world, with a net worth of roughly $200 billion, Musk personally moved from California to Texas last year in part because he didn’t like that local officials were taking the coronavirus seriously. (Calling the restrictions implemented to stop people from dying “fascist,” a week after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, he predicted that there would be “close to zero new cases” in the U.S. by the end of April 2020. Later, he violated lockdown orders and reopened his California factory, where hundreds of new COVID cases followed.) And now, because when you’re rich you don’t actually have to care about anyone but yourself, he’s decided to make Tesla employees move to Texas too. Per the Daily Beast:
Elon Musk announced during a shareholder meeting on Thursday that Tesla will move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas, weeks after the governor boasted that the billionaire likes the state’s “social policies.” Texas last month enacted a restrictive new abortion law that bans the procedure in pregnancies that are more than six weeks and and deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who assists in providing one. In reaction to the law, another billionaire, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, publicly offered to relocate any Texas employees who are concerned about access to reproductive care. Musk went in the opposite direction.
“I’m excited to announce that we’re moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas,” the world’s richest person said during the shareholder meeting. The electric car maker is currently headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Tesla has already established a factory in Austin, and much of the business of Musk’s other main venture, SpaceX, happens in the Lone Star State, as well.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/elon-musk-move-to-texas
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