Reno may also be highly automated, but the Nevada unemployment rate is even worse than California’s so Elon won’t have any trouble finding whatever labor he needs at bargain rates compared to California.

Keep in mind, also, that Tesla is now a public company. Elon has statutory fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders. Building a big production facility in California instead of Nevada would probably be actionable as a material breach of such responsibility.

Let’s start with population. Between 1900 and 1950, California’s population roughly tripled while that of Texas only did a bit better than double. California was running away from Texas, population-wise. Recently, it’s been the other way around. California’s population is still growing, but by only about 375,000 per year while Texas adds roughly 450,000 per year. Given that Texas is just a bit over 2/3 as populous as California, the different in percentage growth is even larger.

Americans are voting, as always, with their feet. More of them are choosing to park their boots in Texas these days than to park their Birkenstocks in California. It’s been a couple decades since California added a new Congressional district. After the next census, we’ll likely lose one or two. That has never happened before.

Then there’s the matter of employment, or its opposite.

The national unemployment rate was, as of June 2014, 6.3%. Among states, Texas ranked 16th at 5.1%, over a full point better than the national rate. California ranked 44th at 7.4%, over a full point worse than the national rate. Incidentally, of the 15 states that did better than Texas in unemployment rate, most were western and Great Plains Red states with small populations. Only three were Blue states, Vermont, Hawaii and Minnesota, and Minnesota’s Blue credentials are looking a tad iffy these days.

Of the four most populous states, Texas and California, as noted, led and trailed, respectively, at 16th and 44th with Florida ranking 29th with a barely better-than-national unemployment rate (6.2%) and New York 36th with a worse than national one (6.6%).

Breaking things down to metropolitan statistical areas, the Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps figures on 25 of these in Texas, of which 20 had unemployment rates as good or better than the national rate. One of the five that was worse than the national rate was Brownsville. So if Gov. Perry is “buying” jobs, he’s at least doing it where there is a genuine need.

There are 26 BLS metro stat areas in California. Only eight of these have unemployment rates equal to or better than the national figure.

There are 372 of these areas in the entire United States. Nine of the 10 worst unemployment rates on this list are for places in California’s Central Valley. All nine have unemployment rates over 10%. The worst-hit area on this list, El Centro, has an unemployment rate over 20%, one of only two BLS metro stat areas in the U.S. this badly off. The other is Yuma, AZ. There are no BLS metro stat areas in Texas with unemployment rates of 10% or more. California enjoys a near-monopoly on such places.

Other relevant stats:

Of the 100 BLS metro stat areas with the best unemployment rates, 11 are in Texas with Corpus Christi and the Sherman-Denison area just missing as part of a tie for 101st place. Austin and San Antonio are among large Texas cities on that top 100 list. The rest are medium to small cities in the West Texas fracking patch.

For California, the number in the top 100 is two. Napa ranked 57th and S.F. ranked 89th. San Luis Obispo and Santa Rosa were with Corpus Christie and Sherman-Denison as part of a 7-way tie for 101st place. The two biggest metro areas in Texas, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, are part of a 14-way tie for 108th place with two smaller Texas areas, Tyler and Wichita Falls, also in that group. The Silicon Valley area of California is in 122nd place. San Diego is 181st. L.A. is 293rd.

The lowest unemployment rate in California, 4.7%, is in Napa County north of San Francisco. S.F., itself, has the second-best unemployment rate in California, 5.2%, over a full point better than the national rate and over two full points better than the California rate of 7.4%. If you think things are peachy in California, it’s because you are living in the only part of the state where that is true.

The other six California locales with better-than-national unemployment rates are relatively small college towns like Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, the Sunnyvale area (Silicon Valley), Oxnard and Santa Rosa. The last of these is, like Napa, at least partly a “bedroom” area for people actually employed in S.F.

The only large California metro area, besides S.F., with an unemployment rate better than the national rate is San Diego. Even there, the margin is just two-10ths of a point.

Los Angeles, far from “doing well,” has a rate that matches the California average of 7.4%. This is, relatively speaking, a recent improvement as the L.A. rate was lagging both the national and California state rates for a long time. But it ain’t good. I know. I live in L.A.

Now, on to a few other points:

we welcome immigrants from every culture and value diversity

As Dana Carvey used to say, “Well, aren’t we special! Seriously, how is L.A. not at least as diverse as S.F.? What S.F. seems to value more than diversity is talent. A lot of said talent in recent decades has come courtesy of the H1-B visa program of which the Bay and Silicon Valley areas are lopsidedly disproportionate beneficiaries. the H1-B program is, in essence, a modern version of indentured servitude in which oh-so-politically-correct mostly white entrepreneurs with degrees from all the right schools get to exploit the cream of the foreign dusky masses without having to actually leave the U.S. or expose themselves to exotic tropical diseases as used to be necessary. How progressive!

many young people today, especially the creative ones, do not want to live bland monocultures

Except the pretentious monoculture of S.F. hipsterdom, apparently. When you define “diversity” strictly in skin color terms, you tend to miss the ways in which your highly melanin-variable social circle tends to be just like you in nearly every other important respect, including the tendency toward dubiously appropriate self-congratulation and self-regard. I worked for Levi Strauss in S.F. and overseas for awhile when I was about the age I suspect you are now. I speak from personal experience.

it’s my understanding that few of Schwab’s employees are choosing to go with the company’s backoffice to Texas and those that do are unlikely to be the most creative

Could be true for all I know, though my experience of backoffices is that creativity isn’t very high on the list of qualities employers are usually looking for. But Schwab’s move to Texas does point up the hollowing out of S.F. Your city has virtually no middle class left. Increasingly, there are just the well-to-do and the poor – California having about an eighth of the national population but at least a third of its welfare clients.

The great mushy American middle is getting out of Dodge (S.F.) as fast as they can pack their U-Hauls. “Reverse Okies” I call them. Nor is S.F. alone in this. Given that L.A. is much larger, we probably have more such departures in absolute terms than you do.

These economic refugees range from RIFed middle management down to the blue collar-ish white collar types like the cubicle drones at Schwab. Actual blue collar types, who work on factory floors or in warehouses, are even scarcer on the ground in S.F. The progressive elite has little or no need for them and doesn’t want them around.

we have great public transit at a time that many young people are choosing not to learn to drive and are migrating back into the inner cities (according to the latest census, some 20% of young people are not learning to drive

Hoo boy, where to start? How about with my daughter? She didn’t get a driver’s license until after she was 25. Why? Because she had become a happy, subway-riding urban hipster? Not exactly. It was because, up until recently, she was long-term unemployed and living with my wife and me. She couldn’t afford to drive. She couldn’t even afford the significant increase in insurance rates that would have been required to put her on our policy. She still lives with us and doesn’t yet own a car, but she has a license now and a job, though her wages wouldn’t cover living on her own or getting her own car – she uses one of our two aging beaters. She does pay for gas, insurance and repairs. Financial independence these days seems to be a process, not an event.

Nearly all of your vaunted 20% are exactly like my daughter. If you are delusional enough to think this statistic prefigures some sort of progressive-led renaissance of urban smart set living, boy have you got another think coming! These people are getting wise to where Great Depression 2.0 came from and who decided, in the middle of it, to foist Obamacare mandates on them. Politically, I think a lot of Millenials are just waiting to gut Democrats like trout when they step into voting booths this Fall. YMMV.

Now, about that “great public transit.” S.F. is tiny and hemmed in by geography. Public transit probably does work better there than most places. New Yorkers like to brag on their public transit too. Me? I’ve ridden BART and I’ve ridden the New York subways. I’m not impressed. I’ve also ridden the Washington Metro. Not impressed with that either.

When I was much younger I rode street cars, buses and subways in Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Milan. Much closer to being impressive, especially given the alternative of trying to navigate a car through the chaotic narrow streets of a typical European city.

The European systems are superior because they are much denser than American transit systems typically are. One was rarely more than 100 yards from some sort of transit stop in Europe. They’re a lot scarcer in the U.S., especially here in L.A. L.A., you’ll probably not be shocked to know, sprawls a bit. There’s very little light rail and subway. Even bus transit often involves walks of a quarter mile or more at each end.

When one is young, one doesn’t mind walking in cities. Hell, in Europe, in my 20’s, I did it a lot just for sport. Only took the tram or the tube when I was tired or couldn’t afford the time needed to walk all the way to some distant place or when it rained or snowed.

I’m no longer young. Walking a city block or more to get to a bus stop no longer appeals. Being a potential target of criminal dacoits going and coming is even less appealing. But being such a target is well-nigh mandatory for aging urbanites who can’t afford cars. Also true of many much younger, often “diverse” women who work as nannies, maids and such.

Cars are great. Driverless cars are going to be even better. Progressives need to understand why 19th Century public transit was quickly supplanted, most places, by 20th Century private transit and why we’re not going back in the 21st Century.

for the first time in some 70 years, more poor people live in the suburbs than the inner cities

For the first time in 70 years we are suffering through a decade-long Great Depression. Your stat is not a consequence of poor people moving to suburbs. It’s a product of people already in suburbs losing their jobs and falling out of the middle class. I’m one of them. I’ve got plenty of company.

you can read that your way as an elite, or you can read it my way that creative people would simply rather not live in a place like Stockton or Texas

Right. I’ll share that with all my elite buddies down at the Wal-Mart and the Smart & Final the next time I’m rubbing elbows with the movers and shakers who hang out there. I’ll tell them you say, “Hi!”

Given Stockton’s unemployment rate (10.5%), I wouldn’t want to live there either. Frying pan? Fire? Texas is a different story. I’d like to move but lack the means.

Even so, Texas is not without charms to the left of wing and the “creative” of bent. Have you never heard of Austin? I’ve heard they think even more of themselves there than you do in S.F. They’ve got the urban hipster thing going, plus the Texas thing.

In the wider world, Germany’s “mixed” economy is doing at least as well as the United States’ (and in many measures, they’re beating the pants off of us).

The current German unemployment rate is 5.1%, more than a full point better than ours. But the only other country in Europe with an unemployment rate better than ours is Norway at 3.2% Some whole countries in Europe, including Spain (25.6%) and Greece (26.8%) have rates worse than El Centro’s (22%), the worst in California. Most of the rest are near or above 10% including France (10.4%). Compared to the U.S., most of Europe’s national economies are more “mixed” than ours or even Germany’s. The Germans stand out because they work harder than other Europeans. The Norwegians have a thriving oil industry – as does, oh yeah, Texas!

In short, there’s a place for the Stocktons and Texas’s of the world, but along with many of today’s youths, I certainly would not want to live in them.

Good thing it’s still a more or less free country so nobody can make you (“It was terrible I tell you! They beat me! They degraded me! They made me move to Texas!“).

Your ideology is simplistic, at best.

Yours, of course, is simply turgid to bursting with subtlety and nuance.

I gather that you are young, work in the software industry and are doing pretty well. I hope it lasts for you. My own experience was that there were few people in software who lasted much beyond 35 unless they were management. Good luck to you.

It is the (mostly) southern Republicans who so blithely talk free market, no government subsidies, government out of our lives, out of one side of their mouths while trying to move money from CCiCap to SLS out of the other. That is unambiguously hypocritical.

Bill Nelson (D-FL) co-created the Space Launch System with Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). On the House side, Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) have for years bashed commercial space. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) had a track record to underfunding commercial space to divert money to the JWST and anything else related to Goddard.

About the only politician who has consistently stood up for commercial crew is Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Bill Nelson has half-heartedly supported commercial crew as part of grand compromise to assure everyone gets a piece of the pork pie.

ISS launch would not go over Florida at all. It could go over Louisiana, but first stage sep is 150 km downrange, and Louisiana is 500 km downrange from Brownsville.

For the record, I think SiriusXM was very unwise to give up on that orbit. It gave them better, more direct coverage, especially of Canada which is one of their major markets. I expect (and hope) that a future generation of satellites will return there. [Truth in advertising: I am a customer (listening to the BBC through their radio right now) and I own a large amount of Sirius stock.]

— Donald