Everything’s going on out there a lot more than we think it is
I know, it’s hard for me to spot the differences. Remember when they tried to change their uniform color to indigo? That was terrible.
GOOD advice
Texas started falling in the rankings after CNBC added non-business related criteria to its metrics. Other publications still rank Texas as #1.
Do you think it is a coincidence that Republican controlled states in the South are offering incentives to businesses and Democratic states in the North are not? Political philosophies about the role of government and taxation are behind these policies.
The term “New South” was coined after the Civil War during a time of economic transition for the formerly slave-owning region. “The South has always been reinventing itself,” said Gavin Wright, an economic historian who studies the southern economy. “Every generation seems to have its ‘New South.’ "
In recent decades, warmer weather, lower taxes, looser regulation and cheaper housing lured companies and retirees. But this pandemic-era Sun Belt economic upswing is wider in scope.
“You could throw a dart anywhere at a map of the South and hit somewhere booming,” said Mark Vitner, a retired longtime economist for Wells Fargo who now heads his own economic consultancy, Piedmont Crescent Capital, in Charlotte, N.C.
Nashville, where asset-management firm AllianceBernstein relocated a few years ago, has become the country’s top real estate “supernova” in surveys by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute. Houston, Atlanta and Charlotte, longtime home of Bank of America Corp., rank among the top 10 moving destinations nationwide by Penske Truck Rental — all ahead of boomtown Austin.
And no one beats Fort Worth, the country’s fastest-growing big city in the latest Census Bureau data.
“We now have more employees in Texas than New York state. It shouldn’t have been that way,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon said to Bloomberg TV on a swing through the South earlier this year.
The I-26 explosion
Back on the South Atlantic coast, signs of explosive growth are everywhere along the Interstate 26 corridor that leads to Charleston, S.C., a 150,000-resident city with a rich, 350-year history. On this vital link to the port, sandwiched between sensitive environmental lands, electric-vehicle plants and master-planned communities are replacing forests managed by timber companies for decades.
On a March Friday evening, a couple dozen empty-nesters sipped chardonnay and bourbon at a newcomers club party in the Charleston suburb town of Mount Pleasant. Almost everyone seemed to be from New Jersey.
Beth Woods, 47, and her husband were eager to escape the COVID-19 shutdowns and shuttered stores up north, so they started making bi-weekly trips from Mount Olive, New Jersey, soon after the pandemic struck. Before long, they decided to make the move permanent.
“You could get your hair done, your nails done, you could basically live your life. And it has lower property taxes here, too,” Woods said.
A few feet away, Rosemary Taibi, 59, concurred. She and her husband slashed their property taxes to $2,000 from $16,000 after moving from Randolph, N.J.: “It’s a big difference.”
Northeasterners are moving here, but, more surprisingly, so are Californians. Employment in the Charleston metro area grew by 5.9% last year, twice as fast as the U.S. average. A Nevada company, Redwood Materials, is building a $3.5 billion EV-components plant 40 minutes northwest of Charleston, following a Volvo plant that opened five years ago.
Boeing employees assemble 787s inside the plane maker's main assembly building in North... Boeing employees assemble 787s inside the plane maker's main assembly building in North Charleston, S.C.(Gavin McIntyre / AP) Whether the growing conservative tilt on issues including reproductive rights could chip away at the influx of people willing to move to some southern states remains to be seen. There’s no evidence that it has slowed the flow of migration.
For now, more people translate into more congressional seats and more political power on the national scene. Over the past five decades, 12 states in the Southeast including Texas collectively added 33 more congressional seats, roughly the same number that the Northeast and Midwest each lost over the same period.
And Southerners now chair 11 of the 21 most important committees in the U.S. House, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Government.
At the 2022 midterm elections, Republican governors handily defeated nationally known Democratic opponents in Florida, Georgia and Texas, a blow to Democrats hoping that a more diverse mix of people moving south would turn the region purple, if not blue. That may still happen over the long term because shifting politics in states as big as Florida and Texas can take 10 or 20 years, said James Gimpel, government professor at the University of Maryland.
It’s not surprising, Gimpel said, that so many top Republican candidates are based in the South, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as well as Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, both in South Carolina.
For now, though, Maurice Washington, who recently stepped down as chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party, likes what he sees. Over coffee and croissants in Charleston’s historic district, he said followers on his party’s social media sites jumped from 4,700 before the pandemic to almost 26,000, and he attributes much of it to all the transplants flooding here.
“They don’t want to raise their kids in places like New York and California. You get a lot of that,” Washington said.
Exacerbating Inequalities
For a century and a half, the South has struggled to overcome its position as America’s economic backwater. Even now, despite pockets of new prosperity, life across much of this region tends to be poorer and shorter than in most other parts of the country. Nowhere arguably does the legacy of slavery and segregation run deeper.
Washington has seen the changes — good and bad — up close.
The transplant-driven gentrification is pushing rents and home prices out of reach for many and hallowing out Charleston’s Black community, said Washington, who is African American. When he first joined the City Council in 1990, Blacks made up 42% of the population. It’s since been halved to 20%, according to Census Bureau data.
Across the Cooper River from downtown Charleston, African Americans of Gullah descent recently hauled a 119-year-old schoolhouse for African Americans to a spot two miles from Boone Hall Plantation, the still-operating plantation where some of their enslaved ancestors once labored. They’re preserving a bit of history lest it get bulldozed for a new highway. It hopefully will open to the public next year after extensive fixes, said John Wright, president of the African American Settlement Community Historic Commission.
“If you live in a community void of your culture and your history, then you’re no longer a community,” said Fred Lincoln, a board member on the commission.
In Nocatee, Fla., just south of Jacksonville, the inequalities and poverty still so prevalent in the South were hard to spot. The median sale price of a single-family home here has climbed 62% to $773,500 in three years, according to housing marketplace Redfin. Schools are considered tops in the state, and golf carts are so ubiquitous on local streets that a Publix supermarket has parking spaces for them.
Steven Hertzberg, a tech entrepreneur, moved from Sonoma County, Calif., with his family 15 months ago and now works out of The Link, a tech-oriented co-working space in St. Johns County that offers dance classes and yoga for families.
“Just drive around the neighborhoods here. It feels like you’re in Disneyland,” Hertzberg said. “You see teenagers winging around in golf carts, electric scooters.”
Here is the full article which goes into depth on a few examples:
Drive along the 240-mile stretch of the Atlantic coast from Charleston, S.C., through the grassy marshland of southern Georgia and down into northern Florida, and you’ll see one of the most profound economic shifts in the U.S. today.
Welcome to the New New South.
Electric vehicle factories and battery plants are overtaking pine forests in this region of antebellum architecture and shrimp and grits. More broadly, the entire South from here, north to Kentucky and west to Texas is where businesses are moving, jobs are being created and homes are being bought. The uplift isn’t happening equally everywhere, or equally for everyone. But the implications for the entire country are enormous.
The numbers tell the story.
For the first time, six fast-growing states in the South — Texas, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee — are contributing more to the national GDP than the Northeast, with its Washington-New York-Boston corridor, in government figures going back to the 1990s. The switch happened during the pandemic and shows no signs of reverting.
A flood of transplants helped steer about $100 billion in new income to the Southeast in 2020 and 2021 alone, while the Northeast bled out about $60 billion, based on an analysis of recently published Internal Revenue Service data.
The Southeast accounted for more than two-thirds of all job growth across the U.S. since early 2020, almost doubling its pre-pandemic share. And it was home to 10 of the 15 fastest-growing American large cities.
Corporations are also flocking there, with a record number of firms moving south after the pandemic, Census Bureau data show.
Dun & Bradstreet was one of them.
The company, founded 182 years ago by abolitionist Lewis Tappan, was until recently headquartered in Short Hills, N.J., its location a major plus for a financial-information firm with close ties to Wall Street.
But in 2021, the company decamped for Jacksonville, Fla., on the southern edge of that 240-mile coastal band.
Jacksonville lacks the money and star-power of Gable Estates, Fisher Island and other elite South Florida enclaves. Part of downtown is vacant and lifeless. Surrounding Duval County suffers from the state’s highest crime rate. And, despite locals’ fondness for steel-truss bridges, they and the big seaport give Jacksonville an industrial feel not found in Florida’s more glamorous cities.
What Jacksonville does have is a powerful lure for companies and people looking to work for them. In Dun & Bradstreet’s case, that included a $100 million package of cash and tax incentives.
Chief Financial Officer Bryan Hipsher said the firm would’ve gladly stayed in the New York area. But the offer in Florida was too good to refuse.
“You feel very wanted, right?’’ Hipsher said in an interview from the new palm-fringed headquarters, minutes from the beach. “You feel very welcomed, clearly.”
The average employee here has an annual salary of $77,000, 25% above the national level, and well outstripping most local salaries. Still, many roles pay roughly 15% below the average at the former New Jersey headquarters.
Jacksonville grew so fast that it surpassed San Jose in population last year. Good schools, including the University of Florida an hour and a half away, help provide a high-quality employee base, Hipsher said. Today the firm is still busy hiring — it’s a little less than halfway to its goal of 500 workers.
Not far away, the Jacksonville branch of the Mayo Clinic, the world-famous medical center based in Rochester, Minnesota, is growing along with the city. A new oncology building is going up and last year, it added 2,400 employees, bringing the total here to 9,000.
The company’s move highlights the forces that have sent 2.2 million people migrating to Florida and across the Southeast in the past two years — roughly the size of Houston.
Trying to post it but I keep getting an error. Not sure if there is a character limit
[Axios] Unsold electric cars are piling up on dealer lots
There's a growing mismatch between EV supply and demand.
The nationwide supply of EVs in stock has swelled nearly 350% this year, to more than 92,000 units.
That's a 92-day supply — roughly three months' worth of EVs, and nearly twice the industry average. For comparison, dealers have a relatively low 54 days' worth of gasoline-powered vehicles in inventory as they rebound from pandemic-related supply chain interruptions. In normal times, there's usually a 70-day supply. Notably, Cox's inventory data doesn't include Tesla, which sells direct to consumers.
Some brands are seeing higher EV inventories than others.
Genesis, the Korean luxury brand, sold only 18 of its nearly $82,000 Electrified G80 sedans in the 30 days leading up to June 29, and had 210 in stock nationwide — a 350-day supply, per Cox research. Other luxury models, like Audi's Q4 e-tron and Q8 e-tron and the GMC Hummer EV SUV, also have bloated inventories well above 100 days. All come with hefty price tags that make them ineligible for federal tax credits. Imported models like the Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Nissan Ariya are also stacking up — likely because they're not eligible for tax credits either. Tesla's price-cutting strategy could be taking a toll, too: The once-hot Ford Mustang Mach-E now has a 117-day supply. Ford says that's the result of ramped-up production in anticipation of stronger third-quarter sales.
The article is paywalled, but it goes on to say this:
“Fecal matter washes into the ocean from a variety of sources, including urban development, sewage overflows, factory farms and livestock operations.
To reduce contamination, the report recommends major financial investments to stop sewage overflows and runoff pollution. Environment Texas noted that a massive infrastructure package passed in 2021 provides $11.7 billion for sewage and stormwater projects, but the EPA has estimated the need is roughly $271 billion.”
So lot of sources, and funding to fix it is limited.
Macs on Main in Grapevine continued to be a great value with a 3-course steak dinner for $39
[DMN] Most Texas beaches pose safety risks due to high fecal bacteria levels, report says
Roughly 90% of Texas beaches tested positive for fecal bacteria at least one day in 2022, making them potentially unsafe for swimmers, according to an...
Environment Texas tested 61 beaches across the state. Of those, 55 tested positive for fecal contamination at least one day, meaning they exceeded the safety threshold set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Eight beaches exceeded the EPA’s threshold more than 25% of testing days.
Those beaches include Cole Park in Corpus Christi, which tested positive for fecal contamination on 54% of days, Ropes Park in Corpus Christi (41%), and Texas City Dike in Galveston Bay (28%), according to the report.
Sylvan Beach Park in La Porte tested positive for fecal contamination 21% of days, and Galveston’s Seawall Boulevard at 25th Street tested positive 26% of days.
Nationwide, 55% of beaches exceeded the EPA’s safety threshold at least once last year, according to the report. Roughly 84% of Gulf coast beaches tested positive at least once.
Swimmers should check TexasBeachWatch.com for water quality reports, avoid swimming with open wounds and near storm drain outfalls.
Americans Are Fleeing Blue Northeast for U.S. Southeast: Bloomberg
More than 2 million people and an estimated $100 billion in wealth relocated to the Southeast United States in 2020 and 2021, according to an Bloomberg analysis released this week. From Bloomberg: For the first time, six fast-growing states in the South — Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and T...
For the first time, six fast-growing states in the South — Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee — are contributing more to the national GDP than the Northeast, with its Washington-New York-Boston corridor, in government figures going back to the 1990s. The switch happened during the pandemic and shows no signs of reverting.
A flood of transplants helped steer about $100 billion in new income to the Southeast in 2020 and 2021 alone, while the Northeast bled out about $60 billion, based on an analysis of recently published Internal Revenue Service data.
[NBC DFW] Texas Wants to Know: When will construction on Interstate 35 be complete?
Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, aggregated from sources all over the world by Google News.
In Waco, four years of construction just finished on part of the interstate. The Waco Herald-Tribune reported in mid-June that the final phase of construction on Interstate 35 in Waco could start as soon as 2024.
"We thought there would be this big break in between. And, you know, I think we're all just like, 'Rip the band-aid off and let's get it done,'" Baylor University assistant vice president of media and public relations Lori Fogleman said. "I think we all know our alternate routes. We know what the construction does with that, and what happens when you improve infrastructure through the city. I think we are all ready for that one last area to be done."
But as we look further south to Austin, where a $4.5 billion dollar project is slated to begin in 2024, not everyone thinks adding more lanes is the most efficient way to go.
"A boulevard with bus lanes, bike lanes, and some car lanes would actually move a lot more people," said Adam Greenfield, board president of the group Rethink 35, which advocates for a different use of the land. "Highways are actually very poor. Movers of large numbers of people because cars are very space inefficient. They lock up in congestion. That's a basic-level bug that they have."
Yes, a tax system which forces the most efficient use of land would be best not only for residents but the local governments as well.
Can We Desalinate Water without All the Mess?
A new generation of small, modular, mobile, wave-powered devices is looking to tackle desalination’s biggest problems head-on.
Desalination is an idea that keeps reappearing in the Golden State, where overdrawn groundwater and shrinking reservoirs are critical problems. On a superficial level, it seems simple: take the salt out of the abundant salt water just offshore. But typical desalination facilities are big, expensive to operate, and environmentally unfriendly, especially when the resource-intensive process is powered by fossil fuels. The Carlsbad desalination plant in Southern California, for example, sits on 2.4 hectares of land and uses 246,156 megawatt hours of electricity per year—equivalent to the usage of roughly 23,000 homes.
Oneka’s experimental water desalination device isn’t like California’s other desalination plants: it’s a 6.5-meter-wide buoy. The small footprint is a bonus, but the device’s main advantage is that it’s ocean powered. As the buoy moves back and forth with the waves, it draws water through a filter and then through a reverse osmosis membrane, which removes the salts and other tiny particles. “Surprisingly simple,” says Smith.
When I did post-doctoral work at West Point in 1999, William Westmoreland addressed our program. The general was tired and worn, not just from having served...
Some excerpts:
Sales tax emphasis is the wrong strategy for the future. By 2028, every baby boomer will be over 65. Statistically speaking, this means that every boomer will have cut their spending by 40% on average. This is the generation most devoted to brick and mortar retail transactions. Keep in mind that millennials prefer to shop online and members of Generation Z are more than twice as likely as millennials to do so.
I could list countless lost opportunity costs of cities that instead choose to have large boxes remain empty or parcels undeveloped. The most common reason: the uses selected are the ones the market wants (storage, multifamily, or industrial), but are not boujie enough for decision-makers. Take the bird in the hand — pretty soon there are not going to be new birds.
City leaders need to understand other uses pay off better in the long term. Retail is inexpensive to build — among the least expensive. Often, we see small retail buildings cost $3 million or less. You can expect lower and lower ad valorem taxes as well as the decline in sales tax.
Multifamily, however, is expensive to build. Typically, the taxable value is $250,000 to $350,000 per unit, or more. The value of these buildings holds up much stronger than retail buildings, despite how much people hate on multifamily.
Fed’s Goolsbee sees ‘golden path’ to lower inflation without a recession
Goolsbee said he's confident inflation can be tamed without a recession, even with additional rate increases likely.
Don’t forget Pablo, devourer of moonswatches
Ray Stevens never looked so delicious
Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday accused each other of plotting to stage an attack on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, long the subject of mutual recriminations and suspicions.
China recently passed a broadly written counterespionage law that has sent a chill through the foreign business community, as well as a law to sanction foreign critics.
This is what AI thinks a typical home in Dallas and Fort Worth looks like
Artificial intelligence and the housing market are two hot-button topics that have been the focus of discussion in 2023. One home services provider has set out to determine what a "typical home" looks like in every state and in the nation's 30 most populated cities using an AI generator, and the res...
Splash parks: so hot right now
Seems like every city in the state is building one. It’s fun for children, lower maintenance, and you doing have to hire lifeguards
With just 8% of new vehicles costing under $30,000, ‘it’s the least affordable car market in modern history,’ expert says
As consumer tastes change, carmakers are upgrading their lineups and scaling back on less-expensive cars.
By nearly every measure, buying a car has become extremely expensive.
Not only are new vehicle prices near an all-time high, but the interest rate to finance a purchase has also jumped dramatically. Now, fewer affordable new cars even hit the market, according to recent reports.
Today, new cars priced under $30,000 make up just 8% of the market’s supply, down from 38% pre-pandemic, car shopping app CoPilot found.
“It’s the least affordable car market in modern history,” said CoPilot’s CEO Pat Ryan.
Car shoppers like luxury
Well before the Covid-19 pandemic, consumer tastes had started to steadily shift away from sedans toward more expensive SUVs and trucks. Then, car buyers piled on options, such as high-tech touch screens, ambient lighting, 360-degree cameras and heated and cooled seats.
“There’s a war of features,” said Ivan Drury, Edmunds’ director of insights.
In response to increased demand, dealers began stocking more cars with all the bells and whistles, he said, and carmakers upgraded their lineups with high-end packages, or trim levels, and scaled back on less-expensive cars.
“It only makes sense to continue to ratchet up the price to offer more features and increase the size of the vehicle with each redesign,” Drury said.
Car prices near a record high
For new cars, the average transaction price was $47,892 in May, near an all-time high, according to Edmunds. Now, 10% of all vehicles sold cost more than $70,000, up from 3% five years ago.
On the flipside, there are fewer options available at lower price points. Just 0.3% of new vehicles sold cost less than $20,000, compared with 8% five years ago, Edmunds found.
That’s leaving more car shoppers priced out of the new car market, Ryan said.
How to get the best used car for the money
Instead of getting a new car, buyers on a budget are purchasing older cars with more mileage, which means their cost of ownership is going to go up, Ryan said.
“Those that have the least ability to pay are getting the car that’s going to cost the most to own.”
Is the only one I can stand watching with them. And I actually enjoy it
Astros overcome missing All-Stars for 5-3 victory and series edge over rival Rangers
Houston leads the 4-game series 2-1 against the AL West leaders
"Look at this pencil"
Milton Freidman’s famous example of a pencil to demonstrate the pricing system and global free markets
The recent rulings of the conservative-dominated Supreme Court are set to take center stage in the battle over the Senate majority, giving Democrats a better chance to keep control of the upper cha…
Some countries are scrambling to stop the floodgates from opening to mining companies.
It’s about more than immigration.
The union delivered notice of its strike, which was approved by members last month, earlier this week.
