More Californians reverse course and head to Oklahoma

USA Today reports:

Former Hollywood producer Neal Nordlinger, raising funds for a technology venture a couple of years ago, was stunned when a partner suggested locating the start-up here in Oklahoma's capital and leaving Los Angeles behind: "I said: 'Are you blankety-blank crazy? Oklahoma City? It's a cow town.' "

That was then. Now Nordlinger is running a software firm here and preaching the virtues of the heartland — low costs, unclogged streets, friendly people. "It's a dream here," he says. "The selling price of a house here would not be the down payment on a house in L.A. ... People in L.A. do something for you because there's something in it for them. Here, they genuinely want to help you succeed."

Nordlinger, who co-produced the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies Last Action Hero and Junior, is part of a mini-exodus: Since 1999, the number of Californians departing the Golden State for Oklahoma has outnumbered those going the opposite direction by more than 21,000, a reversal of the Depression-era migration west that John Steinbeck described in The Grapes of Wrath. In August, Boeing announced plans to shift 550 jobs from Long Beach to its complex next to Tinker Air Force Base outside Oklahoma City.

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