Guest Post by Simon Black
Today’s the day.
Across the Land of the Free, and much of the world, local governments are finally starting to allow businesses to re-open and employees to come back to the office.
Offices in New York City opened this morning for the first time in months, after Comrade Mayor Bill de Blasio’s politburo finally approved the policy.
The Republic of CHAZ, formerly known as Seattle, was approved for ‘Phase II reopening’ on Friday, both by state health authorities as well as local warlords.
Other major cities and anarcho-communist enclaves around the world have been slowly re-opening over the past few weeks. And so far one key trend is obvious:
A lot of people aren’t showing up.
New York City’s major Wall Street banks, for example, are still keeping most people at home.
Goldman Sachs only expects 10% of its workforce back in the office, and those are all ‘volunteers’. Morgan Stanley has less than 10% of its workforce nationwide at the office.
Citigroup expects 5% of its workforce back in the office over the next few weeks, and JP Morgan isn’t requiring anyone to return to work right now.
Companies in a variety of other industries have taken a similar approach.
Microsoft, Disney, Twitter, Mastercard, Facebook, Nationwide Insurance, Google, Amazon, Square, CNN, Slack, Sales Force, PayPal, Shopify, and Apple are among countless others who have told employees they can keep working from home.
And many of those changes are permanent; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has said that potentially half of his company’s work force could end up working remotely forever.
Twitter and Square have told employees they can work from home “indefinitely”. Nationwide Insurance announced a permanent transition to working from home.
The CEO of banking giant Barclays called crowded offices with thousands of workers “a thing of the past”. Morgan Stanley’s CEO expects his bank to need “a lot less real estate” in the future. Disney’s chairman said his company will reopen “with less office space.”
This is a pretty obvious trend– there will continue to be a LOT of people working from home.
And if you can work from home, you can work just about anywhere within reason.
We talked about this briefly last week– I told you that I expect a massive trend in migration from high tax, high cost urban places to lower tax, lower cost suburban and rural places.
And the reasons are obvious.
Plenty of people have been miserably cooped up in shoebox-sized apartments for the past three months due to local lockdown restrictions. And now they’re finally realizing– ‘if I don’t need to go to the office anymore, I don’t need to be in this city anymore…’
Plus they’re wisely thinking about the future.
Sure, maybe medical researchers find the miracle drug to treat Covid-19. Or they develop a vaccine that Bill Gates will personally inject into each and every one of us at gunpoint.
But then what happens if Covid-20 hits? Or an antibiotic resistant superbug is unleashed upon the world?
Or people simply decide they don’t want to raise their children in a place where arson, vandalism, and looting are considered acts of heroism?
This is not a passing trend. It’s a way of life.
It’s unlikely that cities will become ghost towns… but people who understand what’s happening are really starting to consider new places to live.
The arithmetic is quite simple. Someone can trade a $5,000/month hamster cage in Manhattan for a 4,000+ square foot home with water views and a spacious yard in sunny Florida, and still have plenty of extra money left over… with the added benefit that Florida has no state income tax.
This logic makes five places very interesting for prospective migrants.
Texas, Florida, Nevada, and Tennessee are four states with warm weather, plenty of wide-open spaces, cheap living costs, access to big city amenities, and no state income tax.
We’ll talk about this a lot more in future letters because there’s a LOT to digest– from the decline of office property (WeWork has already started skipping some rent payments) to the ridiculously low mortgage rates available to investors.
But before we get to that, there’s a fifth place worth mentioning– and that’s right here in Puerto Rico.
Lately there’s been a surge of prospective residents who have arrived here over the past few weeks looking at property.
I live in a fairly high end, luxury resort, and most of the residents are investors and entrepreneurs. One of my neighbors, for example, is a prominent hedge fund manager, another is an acclaimed tech entrepreneur, and another is a former pro-athlete who built a highly successful sports business.
I’m fairly close with the executives in my development, and they told me there’s been a flood of people from the mainland (mostly from New York) who are trying to get out of Manhattan as quickly as possible.
And they’re looking very hard at Puerto Rico.
That’s because, in addition to the great weather and time zone (Puerto Rico is currently in the same time zone as New York), the tax incentives are unbeatable.
New Yorkers who move to Florida no longer have to pay city or state income tax. And that can easily save 10%.
But as we’ve discussed many times in the past, bona fide residents of Puerto Rico who meet certain conditions are exempt from US federal income tax as well.
Puerto Rico’s tax incentives can reduce your business profits tax to just 4%, and individual tax to ZERO… plus you can live on the beach and never be cold again.
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“I live in a fairly high end, luxury resort, and most of the residents are investors and entrepreneurs. One of my neighbors, for example, is a prominent hedge fund manager, another is an acclaimed tech entrepreneur, and another is a former pro-athlete who built a highly successful sports business.”
– Simon Black
Sounds like your neighbors and buds are properly real tools: hedge fund managers?; tech entrepreneurs? former pro-athletes?
Nonsense jobs for the fantasy economy.
They are useless eaters in the NWO and the gangster overlords will appropriate all their loot, but after they bow down to the BLM, Antifa, Maoist and Trotskyites in your Puerto Rico hideaway.
Stay safe, Simon. It’s hurricane season out your way.
City dwellers… Stay away from SW Virginia. Everybody’s inbred, the food sucks, the schools are lousy, we dont want you here, we’re pissed off & we’re armed. Try Nebraska. I hear it’s nice this time of year & land’s cheap.
Ha, this rural NH boy is moving to the Lynchburg area next year. Start planning my welcome party. You can start by taking me bass fishing.
Sorry to have a tender of the fences leave,best of luck,and,will find someone like minded to replace,which,I doubt will be someone from the city!
Oh, come on, we can take city boy and dump him in the reservoir. Bass like structure. It ain’t south vs. north this time, it’s urban vs. rural.
Structure is key, replace Bass with Red, Snook and man grove snappers, now were talking excellent eating fish.
Rural is a good thing. I’m about an hour away. Have you spent much time in Lynchburg lately? The old guard is dying off & the new guard is rather dark &/or left handed academics even at Liberty. Still a little bit of hope but we’ll see. The surrounding area isn’t too bad yet. Some nice places in Campbell & Bedford Counties. Decent gun shows if they ever get started again.
I dont fish, a colossal waste of time, but we can go shooting if you’d like. I can teach you to hit multiple moving targets from a tower with 1 shot at 400+ yds. with a ratty old Italian military rifle. Cousin Oswald taught me how.
Haven’t been down in a few years. My son and his wife graduated Liberty a few years ago, and are going back for grad school. My son has an offer for an associate professor when he gets his masters. Sorry to hear about lefty academics even there. We are looking to be within an hour of Liberty, the wife wants to be close to potential grandkids. Multiple moving targets with 1 shot at 400 yards – now that’s some shooting! I see what you did there…
The problem with Puerto Rico is that it is…..well……Puerto Rico.
But it is a good place for the big city libs to move to. We do not want them coming here and demanding the government provide the same services they left behind.
FYI, TN has an entry exam, if you ever voted for a Democrat, you will not be allowed in.
I think I will borrow that one for future use, if you don’t mind.
Isn’t Puerto Rico full of Puerto Ricans?
Most of them left for NYC and Florida.
Don’t give the riff raff in the commie New England states and Commiefornia any ideas about moving to Tennessee. Remember, A man from Tennessee will sit 30 feet up a tree all day waiting to kill something. NE and Commiefornia riff raff included!
None,real yankees and rednecks have much in common,excepting you southern folks strange way of talking!
Don’t forget to mention that he will get there 2 hr before daylight and stay until dusk. We also have a lot of women folk who will do the same thing.
Ocean County NJ will be “booming”.
Urban Jews are moving out of Brooklyn and buying homes around the Six Flags area. One of the guys I work with does blacktop sealing of driveways in his spare time. When one well-to-do resident paid him well for some weekend sealing work he immediately got six more jobs – all Hasidic Jews. They took pains to tell him “… we’re NY Jews, not those Lakewood Jews.”
To me, the only difference is the NY Jews have more money. They’re going from the frying pan into slowly boiling oil. When the property taxes and fees rise in NJ to pay off the debt deficit, they will be the ones paying it, not me.
When the time comes they can have my house. In spirit, I’m already GONE.
Carpet Baggers beware: North Florida has billions of mosquitoes and horse flies so i’d be much better to continue on to south Florida.
Holy Christmas…the bastards are trying to haul me outta here they’re so thick.
By all means, pass my county on by!
Best not come here either… there is a border, Polar Bears and weather…
RiNS, any insight into the Maclean’s story about the N.S. shooter withdrawing $475,000 in cash into a duffle bag from Brinks,
in what some RCMP’s have said typically only happens to confidential informants of said RCMP?
Curious to your take on this.
https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-nova-scotia-shooter-case-has-hallmarks-of-an-undercover-operation/
Shocker, another FF.
Me too RiNS
Rins,no worries,well…..,til the “Day Of The Rake”!
Maybe it’s time to move to “The Rock.”
Labrador?
To those with progressive lib attitudes/love of taxes and govt. ect. make sure they feel unwelcome in your home town,treat em as the locusts they are!
Locust is too kind.
BB posted his phone number a few months ago
803-524-6861
You’re welcome
Some of the worst advice ever.
Instead of Fantasy Island, Puerto Rico = Welfare Island.
Florida has roughly 17 million born out of state residents, and it doesn’t need any more.
Simon’s columns are worse than Eric Peters columns and that’s no small feat.
Please do not mention TN in any future articles. Stick with Puerto Rico and let the libs move there.
The Libtards and Progtards should think about moving to – —
wait for it-
–Haiti!
More poor, stupid, and untidy Negroes than New Jersey and so much opportunity for do- gooders.
Even The Clinton’s like it.
How much do you want to bet these workers become contract workers within a short time? No benefits, no insurance, no paid time off. The writing is on the wall.