Bye, bye Carl’s Jr.: Parent company CKE moving California HQ to Nashville

[SVPete]

Bye, bye Carl’s Jr.: Parent company CKE moving California HQ to Nashville
March 9, 2016
capoliticalreview.com
By Stephen Frank

We know that tech companies are leaving California. Campbell’s Soup has left California. Now, Carl’s Jr, the burger joint founded in Orange County, with headquarters, now, in Carpinteria, is moving to Tennessee. In the first year alone, the company will add 10% to their profit—Tennessee does not have an income or corporate tax. The cost of housing and energy is much less than in the former Golden State.

“CKE said relocation, slated for early next year, is tied to the company’s success at re-franchising company-owned locations. Roughly 90 percent of restaurants are franchise-owned, including restaurants near corporate offices in St. Louis and Santa Barbara counties.

CKE is speaking in euphemism. If their store ownership restructuring has reduced their office space needs, there is no shortage of smaller office spaces in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, or Orange Counties. CKE isn't just saving $$ by down-sizing their corporate office space, they're also saving considerable $$ by getting the Hades out of business-hostile California.

[thundley4]

They could have moved to Illinois. Oh wait, never mind. It's just as bad as California. 

[SVPete]

CKE also owns Hardees, which are more common east of the Rockies.

[thundley4]

CKE also owns Hardees, which are more common east of the Rockies.

I've seen lots of Hardee's but never a Carl's Jr. We're just now going to get a Chik-Fil-a about 35 miles away.

[Chris_]

Welcome to town.

I want to like Hardee's, but their burgers are lousy.

[SVPete]

Hardee's was in AZ for a time back in the 1970s, well before they were bought by CJ's corporate parent. Hardee's had bought a small regional chain there, "Cindy's" IIRC. Back then Jack in the Box was owned by Ralston Purina, so eating at J in the B back then was eating Purina People Chow, .

I wish Libs and Progs would be honest enough to realize and admit that no business really pays a tax. Businesses pass taxes on to their customers in the prices they charge and their product and service quality. IOW, when taxes go up (or when government increases minimum wage), businesses increase their prices, compromise their quality, or employ fewer people. Or they go out of business or bankrupt if government-imposed overhead makes the business insufficiently- or un-profitable.

Libs and Progs either don't understand business economics or do but are dishonest. Since things like taxes, regulatory costs, and minimum wages tend to hit small businesses harder, the trend is that government drives small businesses out (or into mergers), leaving a few large businesses in each marketplace. Large businesses - "Big ______" - are easy to demonize and easier to unionize. Ultimately, big businesses are easier targets for fascist government control or Marxist government confiscation (different flavors of socialism, but the same end result, a government-run economy).

[SVPete]

AS ANOTHER COMPANY MOVES AWAY
By Steven Greenhut
spectator.org
3.10.16

In 2011, I reported on a California Chamber of Commerce event, where CKE Chief Executive Officer Andrew Puzder “complained about the permitting process here, where it takes eight months to two years to open a new restaurant compared to an average of 1 1/2 months in Texas.” Then there are all those lawsuits, and work rules that force companies to pay overtime based on daily, rather than weekly, hours. He was mulling a move to Texas then.

Granted, CKE is moving its headquarters, not its restaurants. But the point is well-taken. There is a cottage industry here that denies industrial-era work rules and a maddening regulatory process make any difference to business owners. The idea that there’s a business exodus is just right-wing nonsense, they insist, and they point to research purportedly showing that businesses aren’t really leaving.
...
That high cost of living, by the way, is largely the result of government land-use restrictions that artificially drive up the cost of developable land. It’s also why California has the highest poverty rate in the nation under the U.S. Census Bureau’s new formula. You’d think folks who claim to care about the poor might think more deeply about this.

A recent study found about 10,000 California businesses “disinvested” in the state over seven years, meaning they moved, closed down, or shifted jobs out of state. Business researcher Joseph Vranich relied on public records. His report includes a long list of companies and what happened to them. He only included “disinvestments” clearly tied to the business climate.

If my (very) mental Math is correct, Vranich's study of public records means that something like 1400 CA businesses a year move partly or entirely out of CA. Such moves are not done lightly: the moves were for serious reasons; those jobs are not likely to come back to CA any time soon, and probably never.

[thundley4]

AS ANOTHER COMPANY MOVES AWAY
By Steven Greenhut
spectator.org
3.10.16If my (very) mental Math is correct, Vranich's study of public records means that something like 1400 CA businesses a year move partly or entirely out of CA. Such moves are not done lightly: the moves were for serious reasons; those jobs are not likely to come back to CA any time soon, and probably never.

Pretty much can be said of jobs that leave the US for foreign countries. It takes radical changes in tax laws, business regulations and every thing to convince a company to return.

I've seen here in Illinois where the state has cut deals with major companies to get them to stay.  The sad thing is, liberals complain when it gives the company tax breaks, because the state is broke.

Liberals don't understand that high taxes and other costs are what drives jobs away in the first place.

[DLR Pyro]

another stupid idea by the bonehead California democratic legislature is to levy a 2 cents per oz tax on sugary drinks and to use the estimated $2+billion dollars in revenue generated from the taxes to "educate" the poor dumb soda drinkers in the state. 

Alarmed by an obesity epidemic, two state lawmakers on Tuesday proposed a "health impact fee" of 2 cents per ounce on sugar-sweetened sodas and other drinks sold in California.

The proposal by Democratic Assemblymen Richard Bloom of Santa Monica and Jim Wood of Healdsburg would add 24 cents to 12-ounce soft-drink cans, to be charged at the distributor level.

The more than $2 billion expected to be raised each year under the tax would be given to counties, cities, community-based organizations and licensed clinics to create and maintain obesity and diabetes prevention programs. The money would also go toward providing safe drinking water and creating oral health programs.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-soda-tax-20160308-story.html
And if you think that most of that $2 billion windfall is not going to some slushfund that has nothing to do with obesity and diabetes prevention programs then you probably think that obama is the greatest President this Nation has ever had.

My question is, if I wander into a Carls Jr, or Micky D's and want to purchase an unsweetened Ice Tea, how are they going to know not to charge me the soda tax?  And if I don't pay for the soda tax, what's to stop me from filling my cup up with evil sugary goodness at the self service beverage counter?  Will each location have a soda police watching out for violators to the bogus tax?

On another vein in this rant about California, My wife and i drove to Phoenix this past weekend to watch the Angels and Giants play at Spring Training.  When we left Phoenix yesterday, I filled up my gas  tank at a Circle K for $1.57 a gallon.  Back in California, gas is going for around $2.70 a gallon because of all the B.S. taxes they tack onto the gas.

[thundley4]

I filled up my gas  tank at a Circle K for $1.57 a gallon.  Back in California, gas is going for around $2.70 a gallon because of all the B.S. taxes they tack onto the gas.

Damn. Even here in the People's Republic Of Illinois, gas is slightly under $2/gallon.

[DLR Pyro]

Damn. Even here in the People's Republic Of Illinois, gas is slightly under $2/gallon.

In addition to the glowbull warming nonesense taxes we also have some bullshit winter/summer blend formula that refineries are required to provide to "save the planet" and that jacks up the cost of gas as well.

[thundley4]

In addition to the glowbull warming nonesense taxes we also have some bullshit winter/summer blend formula that refineries are required to provide to "save the planet" and that jacks up the cost of gas as well.

I'm kind of surprised that Pelosi never thought about pushing those winter/summer blends for the entire country. You know, to spread the cost around the whole country.