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Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

Money goes to where it's treated best and people vote with their feet.

I know people thumb their nose on the state, but Florida is open for business.

But the real secret is Puerto Rico and their incredible tax incentives for software companies.

Florida is not a good environment for companies that have female employees, as due to FL's draconian anti-abortion law, state surveillance of pregnancies is now required as miscarriages past 15 weeks now need to be treated as potential homicides.

A swing to the Right will often cause a swing to the Left. In Florida, registered Republicans lead Democrats by less than one percentage point as of August 2022, and there are more than 10M women in Florida, half the population, and only 4.5M senior citizens, less than a quarter of the population. It is my optimistic belief that DeSantis' days in politics are numbered, mostly due to his association with a certain mentally ill and criminally-inclined one-termer president, but also because his "semi-fascism" isn't really working for him either. The Republican playbook is to prevent (usually minority-member) Democrats from voting by any means necessary, but this just can't keep working successfully forever.

And speaking of Puerto Ricans, where do you think all the Hurricane Maria refugees went?

At least 50K of them moved to Florida, but it's no sure bet they're Democratic votes. Neither of the two main Puerto Rican political parties fit the Democdatic-Republican binary of national politics.

I mean, comparing San Francisco and Florida is crazy. One is a medium-density place with one of the best climate on earth and vaguely decent state politics, the other one is a soon-to-be-sinking-in-the-water mostly red state with cities that are just suburbs with crazy traffic and stupid laws.

People don't live in SF because they want to live in a detached SFH and stay inside most of the day, I could do that anywhere in the US.

California climate is nice indeed. But Florida has some amazing beaches and nature and nice weather most of the year.

I feel you on the density. But reality is most of California is also suburbia. In Florida there are some smaller towns with some walk/bike-ability.

The real real secret is Portugal, can't beat 10 years tax-free on foreign income.

If you're aUS citizen or permanent resident, the US will still tax that (beyond the Foreign Income Tax Credit).

Yeah, that law needs scrapping. Feel bad for the seppos getting double dicked on tax.

This made me curious so I googled. It looks like you need to still pay tax in the other country (DTA), so, for example, as an American, I'd need to pay tax in America. Ofcourse I could get the FEIE but that only solves the problem for the first 110k USD. If you're paying 0% on more than 110k, where are u from? I guess most countries don't have worldwide taxation so you would just pay 0% in Portugal and 0% in the other country. Thanks for helping...

This problem solves itself as I can't say I have seen many remote jobs that truly pay a US salary but allow you to live abroad permanently. Many people say they support location-independent salaries but reality says otherwise. Portugal has so low living costs you can live like a king on half of that, many german pensioners live there drawing a 1.5k pension a month and they eat at restaurants for basically every meal. I know someone who hasn't turned on the oven at home for 17 years. That said, southern europe is not so 'anti-alised' as parts of US, but it's pretty nice, the quality of life is amazing. Lisbon even has its own Golden Gate Bridge, called the '25 de Abril' Bridge.

"The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal" from last week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32677473

I almost mentioned Portugal but decided to keep it domestic.

The Puerto Rico tax deal is the best available for US citizens, still.

I was looking at Florida as a place to move to. After evaluating everything, I have no confidence in the State government to do well for families which means that I would likely end up putting my kids in private school which is not cheap. Also, Florida Man/Woman.

Florida could be a real option vs SF but not with Fascists in charge.

Do you consider all people who are politically conservative to be fascist or just Trump supporters?

Trump supporters and their (potential unwittingly) ideologic leanings seem to tick a lot of the boxes: "Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy."

Source: https://wikiless.org/wiki/Fascism

Speech codes, redefinition of words, 2nd Amendment infringements, byzantine and contradictory government approval processes, centrally-planned price floors and caps... The CA legislature literally just passed a bill last week criminalizing wrongthink from doctors that don't agree with Ministry of Truth's definition of misinformation. California is a great place, but I'd take Florida's legislature any day versus the big brother government we have here.

Good grief, is anyone right of center considered "fascist" now?

When you use political power to replace political enemies, what do you call that?

Try stepping out of your mothers basement every once in a while and chat up somebody who doesn't share your same zip code. Of course that means you might learn that your neighbor (across town) is actually more tolerant than you are.

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