They like that cash in their pocket more than our politicians wish were the case

From What Americans choose when they vote with their feet by Ilya Somin. Lots of links supporting the central proposition as put forward by Tyler Cowen.

Why is Texas so popular? For a long time the state has had one of America’s highest murder rates and it has a high property crime rate. The weather is warm but it is not a calm warm-weather state, given the storms and tornados. Sometimes it is too warm, such as during the thirty-five straight days over a hundred degrees in July and August 2011 in the Dallas– Fort Worth area; worse yet, that wasn’t a record. Texas is skimpy on welfare benefits and Medicaid coverage, and 27 percent of the state has no health insurance coverage….

What Texas does have is very cheap housing and a decent record of job creation (you don’t have to credit this to any particular Texas governor, any more than you should blame governors for the high murder rate). In other words, if you live in Texas, your locale will offer C-grade public services but you may have more cash in your pocket than if you lived somewhere else. You have a better chance of finding a job and will surely find cheaper housing….

The cheap housing doesn’t just come from Texas’s having a lot of land; there is another factor, namely that zoning in Texas is relatively weak. For instance, Houston doesn’t have traditional zoning. You might find an office tower, a used-record store, and a whorehouse all right next to your home. Houstonians live with that, and since home prices are reasonable the relatively wealthy can insulate themselves from the less pleasant consequences of mixed-use neighborhoods. In any case, the absence of zoning makes the homes cheaper….

[H]ere is a more fundamental, apparently apparently obvious, and yet still underappreciated lesson: People really like extra cash in their pocket. They like that cash in their pocket more than our politicians wish were the case….

Since there is considerable net in-migration to Texas, I conclude that a lot of Americans would rather have some more cash than better public services. The other states experiencing significant in-migration are in the South and the less expensive parts of the West. For the most part, those are affordable states with decent job creation records, subpar public services on the whole, and cheap housing.