Sure, the altruistic officers of the company don’t care at all about getting a 10 to 15 percent pay raise overnight by dint of relocation. And sending their kids to schools that actually work. And having available to their families a strong and viable university system versus one that’s imploding. Right. Let’s just go by what is in the press release.

By the way, the folks tending feeding trough just across the Potomac and down at the Pentagon love doing business out West — it makes for pleasant junkets. You don’t score any brownie points in these parts for locating in a midrise along the Dulles toll road.

Only 300 employees? I suppose that the consultants, outside counsel, contract support personnel and subcontractors will all remain out West as well. And in the future the business will emphasize growth 3,000 miles away from the decision makers instead of 30 miles. Of course, that’s human nature. WAKE UP!

Cheers

Northrop didn’t move due to taxes. They moved to be close to the feeding trough of Washington DC. They’re still keeping roughly 30K employees here in Southern California and moving only about 300.

I checked the news on that move as soon as it dropped, as I have two close friends who work for Northrop here locally, and wanted to make sure they wouldn’t be adversely affected.

Thank you for sending the Northrup Grumman jobs our way!

Signed by,

A reader in Virginia — a low tax, pro-jobs state.

Yup. As a refugee from Massachusetts, I can say it’s the same there.

If there were a place that had a lower economic burden and many of the same intrinsic advantages that started to have the concentration of talent, then there would be a competition.

That is (at least part of) why Atlanta grew like a weed for a while, and why the Raleigh-Durham area and Austin are doing so well.

Not that the weather in Austin is as nice as Los Angeles (though I like Santa Barbara better), but the winters are mild and there is always air conditioning in the summer.

Of course, the pure inertia of having a bjillion dollars invested in corporate infrastructure means that this sort of competition happens in slow motion.

We have visited some places which by any popular measure are bleak and uninviting. Yet the residents are happy. Their parasites are much less developed. Smaller population seems to translate often into more individual liberty.

So we are attempting to adjust our taste of what is desirable. We are trying to learn to like landscape and weather that the masses do not.

Time will tell if we are successful.