Remix clone Hacker News

toomuchtodo 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Original title "Tulsa Remote's $10k Question: Why Paying Remote Workers to Relocate Returns $4.31 per Dollar" compressed to fit within title limits.

Analysis:

The Effects of Tulsa Remote on Inducing Moves to Tulsa: Estimates and Implications - https://research.upjohn.org/up_technicalreports/50/ | https://doi.org/10.17848/tr25-050

Abstract:

Tulsa Remote is one of the largest of over 100 remote worker attraction programs in the United States. Since its beginning in 2018, the program has provided generous incentives ($10,000 for moving to Tulsa and staying one year), along with accompanying networking services and incentives to encourage entrepreneurship, to over 3,000 Tulsa Remote member households, selected out of tens of thousands of applicants. Tulsa Remote’s purpose is to promote economic development in Tulsa. Tulsa Remote members spend more locally and generate fiscal benefits, as well as start up businesses and help make Tulsa more attractive for high-tech job growth. These benefits depend on the degree to which Tulsa Remote actually induces Tulsa moves. What percentage of approved Tulsa Remote applicants would not have moved to Tulsa “but for” the incentive offer? Using data on applicant households, including both approved and not approved by Tulsa Remote, this report estimates Tulsa Remote’s “but for” rate. Using a variety of models, this report estimates a “but for” rate of 58–70 percent, averaged across all member households. The report then enters these “but for” estimates into a regional econometric model that simulates the effects of Tulsa Remote on the per capita incomes of the original Tulsa residents. In the baseline estimates, the benefits to original Tulsa residents, in higher incomes, are over four times the program’s financial costs. Simulations also show that benefits go up with the following: a higher “but for” rate, a higher retention rate, higher wages of Tulsa Remote members, higher entrepreneurship effects among Tulsa Remote members, and increased housing supply to accommodate the induced population growth. The program’s support activities and other policies accompanying the program (e.g., housing supply policies) are at least as important as the incentive payments and the selection process for membership in Tulsa Remote.

▲

bediger4000 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do we know why folks with these jobs weren't already in Tulsa, or why a bounty was necessary to attract them?

▲

apothegm 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Aside from relatively low COL for a major city (and assuming no roots in the state), why would anyone want to live in Tulsa at all?

I say that as someone who’s spent a non-trivial amount of time there, too.

The weather is miserable in summer, marginally less miserable in winter (depending on your climate preferences). It’s a car-dependent big box wasteland hellscape even near the city center. The intolerance I encountered was astonishing. It has little to offer in the way of culture, and even less in the way of beautiful natural spaces. It would be borderline uninhabitable without aggressive air conditioning and similar modern “conveniences”.

Basically all is has to offer is endless room for suburban sprawl. But so do dozens of other American cities.

I’m sure there are some people who love it there.

	▲	pavel_lishin 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've visited Oklahoma a few times, while living in Texas, and I currently live in New Jersey. If I didn't have a family to support, I would confidently state that I would prefer to be homeless here than live in Tulsa. And in general, I'm surprised that $10k significantly moves the needle for anyone. $10,000 is not that much money for a move - unless you have very few personal effects, moving house can easily cost ten thousand dollars, when you factor in a vehicle or moving service, the cost of disposing of and/or acquiring new things, things like fees for moving into a new place, etc.

▲

7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]