People forget that California for most of the 20th century was a better-governed and more orderly version of what Texas is today. It had the elusive combination of cheap land, low taxes, and lax regulations on one hand, along with strong infrastructure and educational institutions on the other hand. That combination was a huge draw for California until the 1990s. It’s the same reason northern VA became the tech hub of the mid Atlantic and not Maryland.

> “At a minimum, relocating Paramount’s headquarters and other operations out of California would result in losses of 2,750 and 5,550 job-years in California across all industries and losses of between $1.01 billion and $2.03 billion in economic output between October 1, 2026, and September 30, 2031,” the county’s Economic Development Corporation wrote in a September 10 document.

Except it's NOT the County's Economic Development Corporation at all. It's an affiliated non profit.

And you know who funded the study that led to the document? I'll give you one guess: starts with a P.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-09-16/leaked-stu...