Intel CEO: Silicon Valley is California's Life Support
Paul Otellini had some harsh words to describe the economic situation of his home state.
"I was born and raised here. I’m fifth or sixth generation. It’s one of the nicest pieces of real estate on the planet, and we’re so close to screwing it up, it’s pathetic," Otellini was quoted saying by the Wall Street Journal. "I’d like to be bullish, but I worry that we have to hit the abyss before we can fix things, and I worry that the abyss will be more like Greece." He mainly complained about the enormous housing cost, and high tax rates as well as traffic that is testing the patience of Californians every day.
In a conversation with Republican Congressman Tom Campbell at the Intel Capital Global Summit, the executive clearly showed how unhappy he was with California's government and mentioned that if it wasn't for Silicon Valley, the state would probably be deserted.
Silicon Valley would still create the magic to keep people in California, even if he said that Intel has not created one job in more than a decade in California. On California's financial system he noted that "every now and then we get an IPO that fills the state’s coffers and they feel they can push the ball down the road. I feel we have to go through a dark time to fix this." A dark time would be about as bad as a crisis as we see today in Greece, he said.
Campbell, obviously enjoyed the discussion, especially since Otellini said that he would support him if he ran for governor.

Oh, right, this story is about Otellini. Pardon my language, but Otellini is full of shit. Silicon Valley outsources it's jobs overseas or at the very least out of state. They won't run any business out of Cali because it's far cheaper to run business out of nearby Nevada. All they do is live there. Don't even start on the traffic Paul, you've probably never ridden a BART in your life.
Oh, right, this story is about Otellini. Pardon my language, but Otellini is full of shit. Silicon Valley outsources it's jobs overseas or at the very least out of state. They won't run any business out of Cali because it's far cheaper to run business out of nearby Nevada. All they do is live there. Don't even start on the traffic Paul, you've probably never ridden a BART in your life.
What we need is to stop with the whole Middle East fiasco and start drilling our own oil that we own in our own country. California's gas prices have suddenly rose from ~$4.50 to ~$5.50 in just one night and there is already people stealing ATM cards and gas.
This needs to end now and no one in the government is helping it one bit.
Ca. is a joke. We've been doing nothing but gobbling up agricultural land and building houses but we haven't been working to build sustainable jobs. We think that we can live is this housing bubble and that people will keep buying keeping the market moving. Without dropping some of these taxes and getting back some of the tech industry jobs we had and other industrial or manufacturing jobs we aren't going anywhere.
As for Mr. Otellni, I believe he is part of the problem. The number of breaks his company gets, the help the state gave Intel in building itself up. His statements remind of GM not too long ago. GM used to argue the same thing concerning its influence over not just Michigan, but the entire US. Now, I won't say that California would do particularly well without Intel, but California will survive even after Intel or Silicon Valley goes away.
Drilling for oil will do nothing to solve our problems. Any oil drilled here would be sold on the global market, so unless we magically add a large percentage to the global market, at best you drive it down a few cents. Tankers will literally re-route mid voyage to the highest bidder, hence the global market aspect of oil. Our money would be much better off being invested in new technologies that have the capacity to change the way we do things (will take decades to accomplish, but better to start now then when it is an imminent problem). Truth is the President and government have little to do with gas prices; its a facade people use to point their fingers at politicians to get elected.
Here in California Jr (Maryland) we throw away 3 million a year on a useless Bay Bridge advertising campaign featuring Pixar characters, 1 million on weather monitoring equipment for that bridge that isn't as good as checking weather.com, 5 million on take-home government cars and servicing them, and lots more. There are so many little feature creep things that need to be cut. Hell, we even buy slots machines for casinos! I'm sure it's the same in CA with regards to waste. So much can be done to fix things. Politicians are the problem, not 1%'ers or the economy or revenue or outsourcing.
Plan B: Drain deep sea oil within less than a decade. SCREW THE FUTURE GENERATION!
Yeah effing right. They spend way more than they take in. Give them more and they'll STILL blow every dime they take in and then some. With that said, I don't defend companies that dodge taxes, even though pretty much all companies do so to varying degrees. But to act like the taxes will come down just because all companies are paying in full, that's way beyond optimism.
What a horrible attitude! What happens in 10 years then? If this is how you approach life, does anyone ever bother to help you?
The problem is much worse than they lead on it to be...
However, I don't think its the life support for California. I live in the great city of San Diego. Here we have a balanced budget and loan the state money. Our city leadership makes the tough calls of not building a public works in order to keep the budget balanced and keep a large cash reserve. Its simply the finest run top 10 populace city in the country. They even get a clue when the populace votes down a sales tax increase by having a backup plan to keep the budget balanced. At this point it would be a great day if San Diego seceded from California and formed a city-state.
Only city in the country who has such a good football team and won't build them a new stadium because there isn't enough money in the budget for it.
We can cut the entire US military, and it would no balance the federal budget.
You're right, but with that kind of logic I sure hope you aren't anyone's CFO. Even if you stopped all discretionary spending it would take 12 years to pay off the debt. Considering 2012's military spending is over $700 billion, you'd make a decent enough dent after a few years.
It's actually been brought up several times*, unfortunately, you get the democratic problem of winner take all based on population. Southern California will never let northern California go.
*220 times according to wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_California