Is Texas Our Future?

(Photo: Rachel George)

In last week’s TIME cover story, the prolific Tyler Cowen argues that “Texas Is Our Future”:

So why are more Americans moving to Texas than to any other state? Texas is America’s fastest-growing large state, with three of the top five fastest-growing cities in the country: Austin, Dallas and Houston. In 2012 alone, total migration to Texas from the other 49 states in the Union was 106,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since 2000, 1 million more people have moved to Texas from other states than have left.

As an economist and a libertarian, I have become convinced that whether they know it or not, these migrants are being pushed (and pulled) by the major economic forces that are reshaping the American economy as a whole: the hollowing out of the middle class, the increased costs of living in the U.S.’s established population centers and the resulting search by many Americans for a radically cheaper way to live and do business.

The full article is gated, but here’s a good summary of Cowen’s arguments.