Boosting Economy & Protecting Silicon Valley

Supercharge the Silicon Valley to innovate for the next century

The California exodus continues to be a significant trend in 2024, driven by high taxes and living costs, leading to both individuals and businesses relocating. From 2020 to 2023, about 352 companies moved their headquarters out of California across various industries. Additionally, in 2021 alone, approximately 360,000 people left California, an increase from the previous year. Despite these trends, local congress representatives, including Ro Khanna, support higher corporate taxes, impacting Silicon Valley companies crucial for innovation and economic growth.

The main reasons for this exodus include the high cost of living, heavy taxation, a challenging business climate, quality of life issues, the flexibility of remote work, and the state’s political and social climate. States like Texas, Florida, and Arizona have become attractive destinations due to their favorable tax environment, lower cost of living, and business-friendly policies.

To address these challenges, a multifaceted approach is needed, focusing on tax reform, housing affordability, business regulation reform, infrastructure investment, enhancing quality of life, supporting innovation and startups, education and workforce development, public-private partnerships, promoting remote work, and ensuring political and social stability.

Looking ahead, there’s a pressing need to transform Silicon Valley into a Bio-Silicon Valley, focusing on next-century innovations such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and advanced medicine. This requires close cooperation with the government, local universities, and investors, along with federal support for startups through programs, tax incentives, and low-cost funds.

To keep Silicon Valley competitive, we must protect its vast intellectual property, propose strict IP security-related bills, and ensure federal funds are available to kick-start companies with low-cost facilities during their incubation period. Furthermore, a flexible tax treatment is essential for startups to compensate their employees innovatively, encouraging industry innovation and expansion.

Mitigating the exodus from California requires addressing the high cost of living, taxation, business climate, and quality of life issues through thoughtful policies and reforms. This includes reducing the tax burden, increasing affordable housing, streamlining business regulations, investing in infrastructure, enhancing quality of life, supporting innovation, investing in education and workforce development, fostering public-private partnerships, promoting remote work, and ensuring political and social stability.

For the USA to thrive as a country, we must protect the enormous intellectual property created by the Valley. I will propose strict IP security-related bills. Potential measures include: 1.) All technology transfers to any foreign entities, regardless of ownership, must undergo review and approval. 2.) University admissions of personnel and collaborations from certain countries in key research areas need to be scrutinized carefully. 3.) IP protection laws also need to be examined carefully, especially where patents on key technologies can be copied or transformed.

In and around the Valley, we need federal funds to acquire industrial parks to kick-start companies with low-cost facilities during the incubation period. In our district, we have many sites for such purposes, with Milpitas, Fremont, and Newark as candidates for these funds. These towns have land to host a variety of supply chain manufacturing support.

To attract a diversity of startups and help their employees, the government needs to be a creative partner. Startups compensate hardworking employees and investors in many innovative ways, such as stock options, stock purchase plans, and carried interest. Flexible tax treatment is required to unburden hardworking innovators. As companies grow and mature, we still want creative entrepreneurial skills to continue competing globally. I would support a program where an ’employee dividend plan’ is not taxed, making it continuously attractive for industry innovation and expansion.

Economy: It is a complex system, and improving the well-being of all requires a system-level approach that we in high tech are accustomed to thinking through. We have just experienced a significant inflationary period that has heavily impacted our younger population. The affordability of homes, especially in the valley, along with food, energy prices, and health costs, have soared about 30%, while wages have not kept up at all!

It will take many years before the balance of inflation and wages reaches an affordability equilibrium. We must adjust our policies to ensure Americans can live comfortably and economically moving forward. I believe this to be Congress’s primary purpose. Quick changes in the following policies are necessary:

1. Energy policy to include encouraging climate-compatible nuclear power.
2. Pass bills to reduce the national $34 trillion debt by half in 5 years and bring it down to near zero in 10 years. We need spending cuts and policies for higher economic and wage growth.
3. Reduce taxes on savings accounts for home purchases for first-time buyers.
4. Encourage California to reduce property taxes, especially for first-time buyers and seniors.
5. Pass merit-based immigration laws like Canada’s and ensure their strict implementation by all federal and local agencies to manage labor size and wage growth.
6. Correctly balance immigration policies with AI policies. My opponent supports massive immigration and yet backs AI regulations to preserve jobs. These are opposing forces! I don’t think the incumbent congressman understands the interaction between these two vectors.

With an MS in Computer Engineering and an MBA, plus over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and technologist, I understand the business environment well. I am the only candidate in the election with such qualifications, and I can help companies grow and remain in California.