Living cost

About 50 years ago when I live in Grand Forks my neighbor who was a professor at UND came to me one day all excited. He had just accepted a better job at Stanford. I told that I hope he got a substantial raise as the cost of living would be much higher and did he look at jobs in Texas or Florida. Not much has changed over the years and the contrast between San Jose and Austin still exist. If you are a computer wiz graduating today you have job offers across the country. If you move to California you have 13% state income tax vs no tax in Texas. In San Jose the average home price is just over one million dollars while in Austin the cost is $600,000. The average apartment in San Jose is $3,000 and in Austin it is $1,800. Many of the 100,000 millionaires that live in California are connected to the high tech business in Silicon Valley. They represent .5% of the population and they pay 40% of the taxes. Many of these people are looking to move and some big tech companies like Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard have already moved. As the wealthy drive up cost of things like housing the lower income groups are moving out of the state. The population that had been growing by 240,000 per year before 2010 is now declining at the rate of 180,000 per year. Something similar is happening in New York where the state income tax rate is 10.9% and the average house cost $700,000 and the average apartment cost $2,100. People are leaving New York State at 300,000 per year and many are moving to Florida where there is no state income tax. The average home in Florida cost $400,000 and the average apartment cost $1,000. Many of these people don't want to move but they cannot afford to stay.