penny500

Your business-friendly state is the envy of many Silicon Valley leaders and entrepreneurs I know.

So where's the proof that they lied? Quote the text.

Oh, please. I've been here for years. I'd rather stay anonymous.

California, once one of the friendliest states to do business in, has turned into a nightmare. The entrepreneurs I know are already looking for exits to Austin.

This is like me saying Obama is a collectivist - which is a hallmark of communism.

It makes me ignorant, so let's not be ignorant.

Saraid216, I don't have the burden to prove. I didn't make any claims that people "lied". But since I'm being nice, here you go:

http://www.factcheck.org/bushs_16_words_on_iraq_uranium.html

You're seriously going to have to cite your sources (objective, peer-reviewed only, please) instead of relying on anecdotal data presumably from your experience working in the sector.

So basically Republican economic policies are all evil, now? There is virtually zero empirical proof that any of their policies work economically?

I'm afraid HN is slowly progressing into Reddit.

Burden of proof is on you to prove that. Objective sources only, please.

State income taxes could be the deal breaker. It was for me.

So? My point still stands. The best secondary schools, like Andover, Exeter, Harvard-Westlake, St. Paul's, Horace Mann, to name a few, are privately-run.

"Can we talk about poverty? In many communities in America schools are the only places students can get something to eat."

I've worked with inner city youths, and that is completely false. If that were true, we'd expect a very skinny poor population. Instead, a large percentage of America's poor are overweight.

America's demographics are far from homogeneous. Students in Palo Alto need a different approach than students 30 miles away in Oakland. You're dealing with different cultures, values, English-speaking abilities, math levels, reading levels, and on and on.

America's top schools are privately-run (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Andover, Exeter, etc). If we eliminated private schools, does the author expect better test scores?

Why assume that person is an expert? Can he prove causality, or is he confusing correlation with causation? I see no methodology. Why do students in Singapore, for instance, achieve among the highest test scores in the world with a merit-based system? Shouldn't you expect different results if the author's thesis is correct?

It doesn't work that way. Students in South Los Angeles, for instance, need a different curriculum than students in wealthy Cambridge. Students at the former still struggle with English, while the latter are scions of Harvard and MIT.