Chicagoan here: DON’T TELL PEOPLE ABOUT US. We like it the way we are. On the plus side, our COL isn’t crazy, but we can get (at least in the tech sector, which I’m in) just about coastal wages. I’ve checked out my compensation (I’m a director at a Big 3 automaker), via just-below-FAANG big companies in the Valley, and I’m paid competitively against them. So, in a big way, I have a better quality of life than I would in SV. And having worked in SV during the .com boom, I’m much happier being here and not surrounded by techbro assholes (which is the main reason I left to come back to the Midwest, where I’m from).
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In the short term perhaps. But an unreliable power grid, dependent on fossil fuels, isn’t exactly business-friendly, to name just one infrastructure issue. And as others have pointed out, employee-hostile can become business-hostile very fast.
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I guess threatening to kill women over non-viable pregnancies can really take the shine off a place.
The appeal of Texas over California was that it was more affordable, but the tech companies very act of relocating there did to Texas what they had previously done to California’s real estate prices. They’re going to have to find a brand new state to make unaffordable, now.
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Texas actually has a surprising amount of solar power, which is especially useful during heatwaves. IDK if that has come from state-level initiatives or household level stealth generation.
Social conditions are a different thing, of course.
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Right around 2002 or so, Rocketdyne’s parent company made no secret of their plan to relocate Rocketdyne Engineering and Manufacturing to Alabama. I don’t know if anyone in Manufacturing voiced any concerns about being relocated, but outright anger (and personal fears) displayed at Engineering departments’ regular meetings and inter-department lines of communication and along Rocketdyne’s eternally healthy ‘grapevine’ reached the parent company; they scrapped their plan. Rocketdyne; still in San Fernando Valley, California.
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And wind, too, but government policy seems to be strongly against renewables.
I don’t have any particular knowledge of the situation. I’m just going by news items like these:
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In this survey of historical extreme wet bulb temperatures, the green dots mark where it’s as bad as it gets in the U.S. — including South Texas
With global warming, we might expect all of “Tornado Alley” to suffer humid heat disasters
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The supposed exodus of people moving from CA to FL is wrong. People are leaving FL in packs to get back to, or establish, residency in CA.
California gained more residents from Texas than from any other state at around 42,000.Nov 21, 2023 (US Census). So, your whole theory of people leaving Blue states for Red is BS.
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[citation needed]
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yeah, but it’s still the per-capita issue that makes it lag. as the second most populous state, texas has a lot of people.
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Western Texas also has lots of wind power (sadly not near any population centers). The primary power problem with Texas is that they are not connected to the rest of the USA’s national electrical grid (ERCOT stands alone).
Social conditions are a different thing, of course.
Ditto about social condition issues.
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Detroit’s plenty dystopian enough, thangkew!
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Are those Alexander Keith’s?
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Yes, I believe so.
I think the picture was taken in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland many years ago.
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Winter has the bunny of approval.
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Doesn’t seem to like snowmen much though.
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If only the snowman had heeded the warning. 
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loves them a little too much maybe.
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