"How did you lose all the money?" "Slow at first, then very quickly."
> Companies based here are some of the most profitable in the world.
Cat's out of the bag. Most of the tools needed to form companies that are ridiculously profitable are online for anyone in the world to use (AWS). If they're not, the cloud providers are working tirelessly to put them there.
California was the hotbed of innovation due to concentrations of learning from higher institutions in tech. That's all distributed now.
> If as many people wanted to live in California as want to live in Texas, it would be cheaper to live here too.
Don't underestimate the crippling effects of powerful NIMBY's, over burdensome regulations and the CCC to dramatically increase cost. http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2013/03/another-california...
Also, Texas' population is increasing faster than California. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/05/22/texas-la...
2045 is when California loses it's title: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/07/texas-could-have-a-hig...
> the average California household also makes more
And get less: https://taxfoundation.org/real-value-100-each-state-2016
Which is why you now see a huge migration of middle class leaving.