California is moving to Texas

Guest Columnist - California Political News and Views - Cal Watchdog

By Kathy Grimes

(Updated: Thursday, March 04, 2010, 12:00 AM)

Californians used to sing I Love You, California. Now, the tune has changed and its Can't Get Enough of Texas.

The bad news stories about California businesses packing up and moving out of state are so frequent, people are almost blase to the reports. However, the daily reality of seeing shuttered businesses, foreclosure signs on empty homes even in upper-crust neighborhoods, and stores with diminishing inventory is not just a trend, its a stage-4 hurricane when the numbers are added up.

Californians are frequently heard quipping, Houston, we have a problem, except Houston is gleefully capitalizing on our problem.

According to the Census Bureau, an average of 3,247 more people per week moved out of California than into it, every week between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007. During the same time period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states.

William Voegeli, a visiting scholar at Claremont McKenna Colleges Salvatori Center summed it up in a November 2009 City Journal column comparing California with Texas: Before 1990, both states grew much faster than the rest of the country. Since then, only Texas has continued to do so. While its share of the nations population has steadily increased, from 6.8% in 1990 to 7.9% in 2007, Californians has barely budged, from 12% to 12.1%. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive net internal migration, in the Census Bureaus language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

Right now, just about any state that can keep taxes and regulations low is attractive to fed up California residents and business owners.

The state of denial by the states elected folks is palpable. In a recent Assembly Jobs and Economic Development committee hearing, an economics expert from the University of the Pacific testified about what's ahead for California, but he also said that he felt the statistics and stories about businesses leaving California was overstated. Several of the committee members heads bobbed in agreement.

What the Assembly members on the committee are missing is that California taxpaying residents and business owners have recognized that we aren't getting much in the way of services for our high taxes. California has become a state serving its government workforce better than its citizens.

Couple the ever-growing California government with Californians social welfare benefits and its a recipe for the inevitable hurricane. In 1996, when the Welfare Reform Act was signed into law by Bill Clinton, California had 21% of the nations welfare cases. Today, census data shows that 32% of all welfare cases in the United States are in California, even though we only represent 12% of the total U.S. population.

Of the 304 million Americans, 38.4 million reside in California and 1.3 million of those Californians are on welfare. California has more welfare recipients than the next eight states recipients combined. And California welfare recipients receive a monthly check that is almost 70% higher than the national average.

Adding insult to injury, California has been losing high-tech jobs to other states that have fewer regulations and lower taxes. Gino DiCaro with the California Manufacturers and Technology Association shares some examples:

German-based SMA Solar Technology recently opened a manufacturing facility in Colorado and not in California.

Tennessee just attracted a $1 billion solar manufacturing facility and 500 accompanying jobs from a German solar firm, Wacker Chemie. Tennessee put up a $50 million incentive package to recruit the high-wage company. A previously announced $1.2 billion investment from another solar firm, Hemlock Semiconductor, looking to produce solar products in Clarksville, Tennessee, helped Tennessee win the companies and much-needed private sector jobs.

California-based company Ausra, is changing its core mission to manufacturing solar supplies -- as opposed to building solar generation facilities -- and producing those supplies in neighboring state, Nevada. California couldn't be competitive for the manufacturing company, so Ausra moved nearby, providing high-wage jobs in Nevada.

Container shipping line APL recently announced it was moving its headquarters from Oakland to Arizona to take advantage of lower operating costs. CMTAs Di Caro asks, Can you imagine a shipping company moving to landlocked Arizona because the cost of doing business in California is too high? Its true and now California has lost a company that operates 130 ships worldwide that had its headquarters in the Bay Area for longer than California has been a state.

While Texas is attracting employers, businesses, green jobs, green manufacturers, high-wage employees and actually able to grow jobs, California seems to only be attracting more state and government workers, welfare recipients and is losing businesses, jobs and residents.

Californians do not want to live in Texas, Tennessee or Oregon. The economic crisis will undoubtedly result in sweeping changes at election time and hopefully give state legislators a Texas-sized boot in the butt.

Instead of California Dreamin much longer, many California residents and businesses could be in The Lone Star State of Mind. With a more intelligent and pragmatic approach to state politics, policies and economics, California, The Eyes of Texas are Upon You.