Medical equipment maker ResMed, which in November said it might move to a tax-friendlier and regulation-lighter state such as Texas, last month decided to keep its headquarters in San Diego, according to the publication Medbill. The company decided it would be disruptive to move. San Diego didn't give the company and new inducements, says the company, which cautions that California's business climate of high taxes and rigid regulations remain a concern.

In January, the organization Good Jobs First summed it up: "What states euphemistically call 'business recruitment' is often nothing more than the pirating of jobs by one state from another. This piracy is bankrolled by property, sales and income tax breaks, land and infrastructure subsidies, low-interest loans, 'deal-closing' grants, and other subsidies...The dark flip side of subsidized job piracy is 'job blackmail,' politely called 'retention incentives.'" That's the phenomenon of a city bribing a company to remain.

When Texas Gov. Rick Perry visited San Diego not long ago, he boasted that about one-third of the companies moving to Texas were from California, notes Good Jobs First. Perry woos companies by boasting of Texas's lack of regulations. But lack of regulation was clearly a cause of the recent massive explosion in West, Texas that killed 14 people and injured 160.