[Windflier]

I work for companies that make high end machinery for industrial and consumer markets. Most of them have shifted production to places like South Carolina and Texas, but find themselves unable to move R&D out of California. The pool of talent just isn’t the same elsewhere, and it is an industry-recognised issue.

I'll grant that state of affairs, and just add that most of the jobs and income producing activities for these companies reside in their production divisions, which increasingly are being located in states other than California.

I'm sure the easy access to R&D talent is a boon to those high tech companies in California, but those positions represent a small percentage of the real jobs those companies offer -- jobs which are mostly located in other states. In that wise, the presence of these well known firms in California is of little value to most of the citizens there.

[James C. Bennett]

I agree.

What I meant was that if California and its people who contribute to technology suddenly vanished, a lot of those companies whose manufacturing operations are outside CA would wither away.