"She turns around to find her old room bare/Looks at the U-Haul, it has to fit in there"

Texas Public Policy Foundation vice president Chuck DeVore comments on California companies' migration to Texas. With the 4th best economic freedom ranking in North America, Texas boasts reasonable costs of living and business regulations. “Anti-free enterprise” California will continue to lose companies to Texas unless local politicians take action.

Even Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the California firm that literally kickstarted Silicon Valley in a garage in 1939, moved to Texas.

If California’s anti-jobs policies, its high taxes, capricious regulatory enforcement, and blackout-inducing energy policy can chase out the company that launched Silicon Valley, is any business, large or small, immune from pressure to move? Unless a company must directly serve the California market, such as a fast-food chain, the answer is a resounding “No!”

Texas is well-positioned to continue to poach companies from states that prize tax revenue over jobs. Every year, Canada’s Fraser Institute ranks the economic freedom of the states and provinces in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in its Economic Freedom in North America index. California ranked the 4th-worst in America, Texas, 4th-best—New York had the lowest economic freedom ranking.

This article originally appeared in Fox & Hounds Daily.

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