John Coogan

Much like Miss Langley, they are losing to Texas.

On May 27th, Exxon Mobil shareholders approved a plan to cut the oil giant's ties with New Jersey and reincorporate in Texas, where it has long had its headquarters.

It's not alone.

According to CBRE, a property firm,

at least 184 companies shifted their headquarters to Austin, Dallas, or Houston between 2020 and 2025, among them Tesla, a car company, and Caterpillar, a maker of construction equipment.

Texas is steadily establishing itself as America Inc.

's new center of gravity.

No state receives more business investment or is adding more people to its population.

From 2020 to 2025, it created roughly a fifth of all net new jobs in the country.

In the early 2020s, Texas was luring remote workers fleeing high taxes, exorbitant house prices and bad policies in America's coastal metropolises while benefiting from the Biden administration subsidies for green energy and chip making facilities.

Now the state's dominance in energy has made it a major beneficiary of the data center boom.

Meanwhile, its technology and finance ecosystems have been deepening.

This summer, it will ring its first standalone burst, the Texas Stock Exchange, joining outposts of the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ already operating in the state.

Donald Trump has called the New York Stock Exchange's new branch an unbelievably bad thing for his hometown of New York, even if his social media venture was the first business to list on it.

So that's a very funny thing, but he was obviously giving that in the context of New York is defined by its exchanges and in the context of just New York, the city, losing out to Texas or New York state losing out to Texas in any way is bad for that state, I suppose.

The state's appeal is to yuppies.

To yuppies is growing with every stream of a country song.

I've been listening to a lot of country songs.

Joe Weisenthal plays in a country band, blues band.

Who knows?