I work as the VP of real estate for a fortune 100 company. When we look to expand in a market there is numerous items on my checklist - but the first two and most weighted are tax rates and unions. Both weigh heavily on our firms profits - that is why we have moved so much business out of states like California, Conn, Michigan and Washington. No taxes are not the only issue but if they are unfavorable to business development then we move on!

This holds true assuming everythign else is equal. Someone mentioned it earlier about educated population, etc.

Other factors to look at include population density. In the field of logistics, the owrst place to be is south dakota, Wyoming and Alaska. Reason being is all have no population...

Also would be interested in seeing this done on a metropolitian area basis. I know Dallas, Texas is hard hit by race politics, outright stupid ordinances, nanny state measures, lack of income of the people that live in the city limits, fact they don't speak english, and lastly crime.

Texan

The "odd balls" that created the commercially successful computer industry ran on microprocessor technology developed by Intel corporation that was pioneered by the space program and government funded research institutions. They may have been the ones to package the machine up and write the software but the hardware and all the physics and electrical engineering research that went into making silicon based transistors did not happen in the back woods or a garage. I assure you. The drugs you take were not created by college drop outs and the inventions you enjoy such as lasers, fiber optics, MRI machines, cellular phone technology, computer networking, and the Internet were not invented in garages either. These were inventions created by PhD and other researches at Xerox Parc Labs, DARPA, NCSA, Bell Labs, 3M labs, and countless other government, university and private research labs which we sorely lack today. Companies with Wall Street's blessing have shed their true R&D departments at an alarming rate. In today's world we don't fund research unless it is going to reward us next quarter or next year. Government funds have dried up and so now Universities partner with corporations and if promising research does not show promise for a block buster payday then that research is locked up forever due to NDA agreements between the researchers and corporations funding the research. It is never published so that other researches can use it as a starting put to further the research next year or even 10 years from now. This in turn causes researchers to spin their tires and do the same research over that has been done before by another group. This have been a serious problem in developing drugs to treat relatively small groups of people. It is not economically viable for corporations to come up with a drug for something only 10,000 people suffer from. And lack of funding has been stalling not only pharma companies but also bio-tech. How many world changing technologies can Georgia claim? Only a few and I would bet the majority of them have ties directly to Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, and Augusta Medical College.

Oil tax revenue from states still pumping it also affects it.

When it comes to high tech it has a lot more to do with infrastructure and highly trained jobs applicants than favorable tax code. Generally these hot technical areas become self sustaining such as Silicon Valley in CA, Boston, RTP in North Carolina, and Austin Texas. Simply being the "WalMart" of statehood with respect to taxes is not enough unless all you care about is "old industry" job creation such as manufacturing which is not a good bet long term and oil and gas which sustains the Texas market. It is an oversimplification of an old idea which was a founding concept of this country. Lower taxes = prosperity and that simply is not true when you need extremely reliable power grids, ultra fast communications, costly trading markets, high tech labs, high cost technical universities and highly educated workers. If you think the future is blue collar manufacturing, casinos, strip malls, and customer service centers then the low tax states are the way to go. If on the other hand you think the future of this country is about highly technical careers in emerging technologies then you cannot do it without a very good tax base and world class University System. And that costs a lot of money. And if you hold Texas or Alaska up as an example states with low taxes and great business revenue just remember oil money is why low educated businessmen from the middle east motor around in 200 foot ships and personal aircraft. Do you really think Google would have happened at the University of AK?