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Texas may soon have more people than California — here’s why

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More than a half century ago California passed New York to become America’s most populous state. It was not only first in population, but an industrial, agricultural, and technology behemoth that also provided most of the nation’s entertainment.

Today that primacy is threatened as never before, most powerfully by Texas, whose pro-business policies, low taxes and growing technical skill are propelling its economy.

People are voting with their feet.

By 2050, for example, Texas is now slated to pass California in population, driven both by both immigration and domestic migration. Its economy is growing far faster, and it is now the headquarters of many former Californian companies.

This year, for the first time, Texas passed California and New York as a headquarters for the nation’s largest companies. Even the establishmentarian Economist recently proclaimed the Lone Star State is “America Inc.’s new centre of gravity.”

What should concern us are the reasons for this shift. After all, people don’t move to Texas for better weather or scenery. Or for reasonable policies on issues like abortion.

Nor is it that Texas has smarter people. Four of the nation’s leading engineering schools are located in California, including Stanford, Caltech, UCLA, and Berkeley — compared to one Texas school.

Texas did not manufacture California’s decline. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the blame is “not in the stars but in ourselves”.

Start with the mindset. For much of the past 100 years, California provided the nation’s dreamscape. LA differed from the East Coast intellectual........

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