politics

It’s not exclusive (in the sense that no economy in the U.S. is totally isolated) and companies relocate to Texas frequently. But there is a huge advantage to having physical proximity to the largest customer base in America and the tax credits that you can get for specific items and services.

Also California is one of those American cornerstones of worldwide and domestic mythology. It occupies a conceptual and environmentally appealing aspect of people’s minds and is a highly sought out destination. And Texas really doesn’t have the same sheen to it.

I see, so you understand that an economy exists, but not that it has many different interlocking pieces that can be examined in different ways. Let me see if I can break it down for you:

When you spend money at the store, when the store pays its employees, or when it buys goods from other vendors, are all examples of what is often referred to as "economic activity". This can take many different forms at many different scales, in much the same way that a walk around the block is not considered an international flight.

For example, you go to the store and purchase a head of lettuce to make a salad. The store buys that lettuce from a local vendor who gets it from a local farm. That entire chain of transactions would be considered part of the "local economy".

The fact that the US buys more than half of its aluminum from Canada would be considered "international economics" as the transactions involved take place between two different countries. In this way, you can examine different economics from as small a scale as you buying eggs from your neighbor who has chickens to the macro-economics of multinational corporations dictating the stupid price of RAM by effectively buying goods that don't exist with money that doesn't exist while handing the same 20 dollars back and forth to inflate their stock value to a disgusting degree. Hell, you can even pick out specific sectors, like with the aluminum example: when Trump started his pissing contest with Canada with tariffs, the American car manufacturing industry said that tariffs on aluminum would cause them to shut down plants within 6 weeks.

So when we talk about the economy of California, people are talking about the farms, the restaurants, the businesses that exist in the state. The people who work and live there, and the money that flows between them all. If these companies were to pull out of California, they'd be leaving all of that behind. Even ignoring the idea of the loss of sales, they'd also be losing the experience and skill of the people that they employ in the state, and the "value" of the property that they have there - whether that's real estate or more logistics based like renting storage for goods or the cost of transportation from a manufacturing facility in a new location.

Can you help direct me towards where you would like further clarification specifically? It sounds like you are confused about how the people of California is related to the economy of California. It also sounds like you’re not sure how billionaires’ businesses are tied to wealth or established businesses in California.

Amazon was just an example for the context of the conversation for how billionaires’ businesses would still want/need to play by California rules to do business in California.

Billionaires are not inherently separate from their companies. That much I want to lay out front and center here at the start. Bezos can easily move his residence to Texas or Colorado and pay taxes for the business he has in Texas or Colorado. He still owes income taxes to each state he personally does business in.

Now, Bezos might not tie a lot of business to his personal name so his own personal income taxes are probably not showing up as if it’s through multiple states. But Amazon itself is paying taxes based on where it conducts business. Amazon the company rubber stamps a paycheck and stock package to Bezos, of which he’s paying state and federal taxes based on where he lives for his paycheck. If his permanent residence is in a state where there is not state income taxes then his personal income tax statement would not be as high as if he had it paid out in Washington or California.