People forget that California for most of the 20th century was a better-governed and more orderly version of what Texas is today. It had the elusive combination

People forget that California for most of the 20th century was a better-governed and more orderly version of what Texas is today. It had the elusive combination of cheap land, low taxes, and lax regulations on one hand, along with strong infrastructure and educational institutions on the other hand. That combination was a huge draw for California until the 1990s. It’s the same reason northern VA became the tech hub of the mid Atlantic and not Maryland.