California's population and economy are bigger.
And no offence, but aside from BBQ, I don't think anything is "better" in Texas. Maybe you should travel more.
I've lived in NYC downtown for years, NJ and CT also, lived in San Fran and LA for 3 years, lived in Denver and St. Louis for a couple of years, and eventually came back to Texas again. I've been to 43 states more than many times for business and pleasure. And the 7 left, will also be discovered in my lifetime for sure. May be you should visit more places to find out more about the local culture, economy, infrastructure, etc, etc before commenting and making yourself look like a naive person in front of the readers?
The crap hole I used to own in San Fran and then in LA, worth $ 2 million, gave me a 6000 sqft home with a library and two pools, and half an acre worth of back yard with a 5 car Garage in Texas, in an area filled with the CEO's and CFO's of companies like Exxon, Fidelity, etc, etc.
In California, the only comparable city is Beverly Hills. While every other big city in Texas is like this, infrastructure wise. You could land a helicopter in my back yard. While in California, even Ambulances can't get into people's chicken box homes on time
.
Life is measured with the quality of living. Not due to the fact that one lives in an expensive chicken box, has little outside life due to mortgages being too high, and they pretty much box in for years to create equity or a better living standard.
You remove the Tech sector out of California and then you'll have Water Melons, Wheat and Rice to sell to others as that's what was originally big in Cali outside of the Hollywood. If you remove the tech sector, your real estate will drop by 60%. But these aren't the factors in Texas as their model post Oil based economy is everything. So Texas isn't solely depending on one or two things to stay up economy wise. It has the highest numbers of thriving businesses and most startups out of Austin (that's right, more compared to Cali). In the next 5-7 years, Texas will become the second largest state economy (after NY) and people, and quality of living wise.
I also see cars with Cali and pretty much all other states in Texas in large numbers (North Texas has the highest migration in the country, top 3,4,6, and 10th cities to move to, are in Texas so people are moving to Texas for a reason in such large quantities). Btw, Sugar-land isn't real Texas as majority of Indian and Pakistanis live there. Its truly a lower class neighborhood of Houston!! Check out the other side of Houston starting from Kirby st up. Or Dallas, Ft. Worth area, etc, etc. Numbers of migrants and quality of life speak for itself.