That doesn't address my original point at all. My original point was that all the laws passed in those states have been driving the cost of living up and median standard of living down, while consistently stripping away the rights of individuals.

You can tout Wall Street all you want but not many out side of your city see them as a good thing, most of the country sees them as a parasite with too much political power and way too little oversight. SEC, Secret Service, FBI, and DOJ be damned none of them have gone after them with any rigor.

You also don't have a good grasp on your own cities history. There as a time when manufacturing and textiles was its biggest industries. Yet you managed to drive them all out. If we decide to stop sending you food and gas you city comes to a stand still. Then you can have hungry entrepreneurs on every street corner...

Competition drives the cost of living up. We can explain this with supply and demand.

As far as the industrial history, yeah, service economy, information age, yadda yadda.

And I agree on Wall St, I pretty much despise them. But if you're going to preach unfettered capitalism via low taxes you should be worshipping it.

Competition generally drives prices down. Governments involving themselves in the marketplace generally drive prices up.

That sounds like supply-side competition, which does drive prices down.

When talking about competition over housing, you have a somewhat fixed supply but high competition on the demand side. In that case, prices go up.

Uhhh, "old school" Houston and Dallas metro areas are #1 and #2 respectively in job growth in the nation.

While Austin may be an "exciting" center of research and technology, it's hardly a "job creation" engine -- at least not directly.