California

Oracle is the world’s second biggest software company. It is also an anchor tenant of Silicon Valley — or rather it was. Last week, the company moved its HQ from California to Texas. Meanwhile, Oracle’s legendary founder, Larry Ellison, will be working from home, which in his case is the Hawaiian island of Lanai (most of which he owns).

Oracle isn’t the first tech giant to walk away. Elon Musk is also moving to Texas and taking Tesla’s company HQ with it. Peter Thiel has already expressed his frustration with Silicon Valley property prices — though has yet to quit California completely.

An exodus sparked by high taxes, coronavirus lockdowns, and regulations has driven California’s population growth rate to a record low, which is projected to cost the state a seat in Congress and an electoral vote.

“This is a real sea change in California, which used to be this state of pretty robust population growth,” said Hans Johnson, a demographer at the Public Policy Institute of California, regarding the net migration loss, which has now occurred three years in a row. “It hasn’t been for some time now. But it’s now gotten to the point where the state is essentially not growing population-wise at all.”

In an irony probably lost on General Motors, California has banned until further notice the sale of the Chevy Camaro SS and ZL1 — the high-performance versions of the Camaro — on the basis of “concerns” about the effect on the environment of brake pad emissions.

It’s hard to say the word “innovation” and not think of California. Technology has paced the state’s growth in everything from agriculture and oil to housing, entertainment, and aerospace. California has always been the harbinger of the American future, the promise of ever-greater economic and social progress.

Yet increasingly, many of today’s innovators are fleeing the state.

This is becoming an all-too-familiar refrain. XYZ Company pulls up stakes in California and expands or moves to Texas or Tennessee. But even for the arrogant California commissars in Sacramento, who have seen more than 13,000 companies leave on their watch in the last few years, this one has got to hurt.