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I have trouble seeing how the fifth largest economy by GDP in the world (11th per capita) can be fairly described as "poor". If that's "poor", then the word "po

I have trouble seeing how the fifth largest economy by GDP in the world (11th per capita) can be fairly described as "poor". If that's "poor", then the word "poor" doesn't mean anything. Edit: I'm not saying that the state doesn't have high inequality. It does, as does the US in general. I'm saying it's not poor. California is rich, but does not distribute that wealth equitably.

davinic 7y ago
Averages in this case are meaningless. The distribution matters more than the average. Never cross a river that is "on average 4 feet deep".
- pcwalton 7y ago
  Both matter. California has a high Gini coefficient (as does the US in general). That's a problem, and one we need to fix. But it's counterbalanced to an extent by high GDP.
cobbzilla 7y ago
Suggestion: Walk under a highway overpass, observe tent city, revise opinion.
- pcwalton 7y ago
  I live in San Francisco and observe homelessness every day. What I see is a rich state that is failing to distribute its wealth equitably.
  - unlinked_dll 7y ago
    It's not just homelessness. How would you live in this state making 50k/yr? 40k? The state is completely dystopian outside of tech, especially once you get out of San Francisco (hell I was there yesterday - place seems pretty damn poor to me) Just as an anecdote I live in a 650 sq ft 1 bedroom apartment. The previous tenants were a family of four. My good friend lives a block away - he's cycled through phases of 3-4 room mates in a run-down 2 bedroom apartment. There are millions of people in this state packed together like sardines and paying 40-50% of their meager income for that privilege. This state is riddled with economic inequality, we may not be a poor economy but we have an enormous number of poor people shouldering its weight.
    - pcwalton 7y ago
      There are plenty of people I know happily employed in the entertainment industry in the largest city in the state. "Completely dystopian outside of tech" is a total exaggeration.
      - unlinked_dll 7y ago
        I'm in the entertainment industry in that city. It's the most dystopian place in the state in my opinion. It pays worse and burns people out faster than tech from what I've seen. Some people get lucky and have a stable job with decent income. There are far more scraping by on the odd PA gig trying to make something happen. And the city itself is a dump outside a few outrageously priced neighborhoods.
        pcwalton 7y ago
        I mean, I was a grad student without much money in L.A. for over a year and quite enjoyed my time there. I don't see the "dystopia" at all, but to each their own.
      - pchristensen 7y ago
        How many of those people live in rent-controlled apartments, or bought their home a long time ago? There can be thousands of dollars monthly cost difference in identical houses from huge appreciation and very low tax growth.
        pcwalton 7y ago
        None I know.
      - not_real_acct 7y ago
        I'd be curious to know if they have kids. I think California is far more tolerable if you don't have kids. Without kids, you don't need a big place. A couple could live comfortably in California in a home that's 1000'. But once you have kids, you need to live in a zip code with good schools, and you need SPACE. That gets expensive.
  - at-fates-hands 7y ago
    Its not the distribution of the wealth that's the problem: Myriad state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200 percent above the poverty line receive benefits, according to the California Policy Center. California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and “other public welfare,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Unfortunately, California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients. The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse. And you know who gets hit the worse when we enact punitive "climate change" policies? The poor: Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon-dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. On some estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50 percent higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics, author of a 2015 Manhattan Institute study, “Less Carbon, Higher Prices,” found that “in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced ‘energy poverty’—defined as energy expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all households.” A Pacific Research Institute study by Wayne Winegarden found that the rate could exceed 17 percent of median income in some areas. “The impacts on the poorest households are not only the largest,” states Winegarden. “They are clearly unaffordable.” The fact California is a one-party state is also a huge cause: California’s de facto status as a one-party state lies at the heart of its poverty problem. With a permanent majority in the state senate and the assembly, a prolonged dominance in the executive branch, and a weak opposition, California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price. The state’s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of economic prosperity that drove California to its golden years. https://www.city-journal.org/html/california-poverty-capital-15659.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/california-poverty-capital...
Rebelgecko 7y ago
Just because the economy is big doesn't mean that everyone is getting a big share of it
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Welcome to inequality. Not everyone will get some crazy rate in SV. The guy who serves your latte, or cares for elderly parents should be able to afford to live and eat somewhere. Many will be stuck well below the poverty line.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  What! That's communism. People should be able to have a decent life, working one job full time? Next you'll say a single accident shouldn't be able to destroy your life because of the cost of the medical care.
sremani 7y ago
What? The poverty rate in California is high and California also has significant welfare population, for 10% of US population share, California has 20-30% share for Welfare (fact-check me here). Outside of the elite coastal town, interior California has lot of poverty and the other aliments.
pchristensen 7y ago
California is rich, but California has a huge % of and total # of people that are poor. Also, they don't look poor by national standards, but they are poor when the expenses of living in CA are taken into account.
rayiner 7y ago
I didn't say it was "poor" I said it was "one of the poorest states." When we compare countries, we generally look at PPP-adjusted GDP per capita. For California it's about $48,000 (2009 dollars). That's poorer than the national average of $50,577. It's about the same as Lousiana at $47,869. So when you take out the distributional concern by looking at the average instead of the median, California goes from being in the bottom 10 to merely being in the bottom half. (The analysis above combines this list of GSP-per-capita, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per..., with this list of price deflators, https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/%24100%20Map-state-01.png https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/%24100%20Map-sta...).
- pcwalton 7y ago
  We're not going to solve the debate over whether to use nominal GDP or PPP-adjusted GDP here, but let's just say that it's hardly settled which is more reflective of a country being rich or poor. I also don't know if I'd trust the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation to provide an unbiased estimate of state PPP. Doing a Google search for "GDP PPP of US states" and clicking through some citations brings up a very different set of rankings that WaPo cites [1]. It places California in the top 15 along with the other economic powerhouses, right between Switzerland and Norway, not exactly known for being poor countries. UBS [2] says that Los Angeles has the highest purchasing power of any major city in the world! Who's right? Clearly it highly depends on one's methodology. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/if-the-uk-was-a-u-s-state-it-would-be-the-second-poorest-behind-alabama-and-before-mississippi/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/i... [2]: https://www.ubs.com/microsites/prices-earnings/en/explore/?category=Domestic%20Purchasing%20Power&indicator=General_Domestic%20Purchasing%20Power_Net%20(New%20York%20%3D%20100)&split=false https://www.ubs.com/microsites/prices-earnings/en/explore/?c...
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    The WaPo (actually The Spectator) methodology is clearly inapplicable, because they adjust for average US PPP, instead of within-state PPP, which doesn’t make sense if your goal is to compare different states to one another.

davinic 7y ago

Averages in this case are meaningless. The distribution matters more than the average. Never cross a river that is "on average 4 feet deep".

pcwalton 7y ago
Both matter. California has a high Gini coefficient (as does the US in general). That's a problem, and one we need to fix. But it's counterbalanced to an extent by high GDP.

cobbzilla 7y ago

Suggestion: Walk under a highway overpass, observe tent city, revise opinion.

pcwalton 7y ago
I live in San Francisco and observe homelessness every day. What I see is a rich state that is failing to distribute its wealth equitably.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  It's not just homelessness. How would you live in this state making 50k/yr? 40k? The state is completely dystopian outside of tech, especially once you get out of San Francisco (hell I was there yesterday - place seems pretty damn poor to me) Just as an anecdote I live in a 650 sq ft 1 bedroom apartment. The previous tenants were a family of four. My good friend lives a block away - he's cycled through phases of 3-4 room mates in a run-down 2 bedroom apartment. There are millions of people in this state packed together like sardines and paying 40-50% of their meager income for that privilege. This state is riddled with economic inequality, we may not be a poor economy but we have an enormous number of poor people shouldering its weight.
  - pcwalton 7y ago
    There are plenty of people I know happily employed in the entertainment industry in the largest city in the state. "Completely dystopian outside of tech" is a total exaggeration.
    - unlinked_dll 7y ago
      I'm in the entertainment industry in that city. It's the most dystopian place in the state in my opinion. It pays worse and burns people out faster than tech from what I've seen. Some people get lucky and have a stable job with decent income. There are far more scraping by on the odd PA gig trying to make something happen. And the city itself is a dump outside a few outrageously priced neighborhoods.
      - pcwalton 7y ago
        I mean, I was a grad student without much money in L.A. for over a year and quite enjoyed my time there. I don't see the "dystopia" at all, but to each their own.
    - pchristensen 7y ago
      How many of those people live in rent-controlled apartments, or bought their home a long time ago? There can be thousands of dollars monthly cost difference in identical houses from huge appreciation and very low tax growth.
      - pcwalton 7y ago
        None I know.
    - not_real_acct 7y ago
      I'd be curious to know if they have kids. I think California is far more tolerable if you don't have kids. Without kids, you don't need a big place. A couple could live comfortably in California in a home that's 1000'. But once you have kids, you need to live in a zip code with good schools, and you need SPACE. That gets expensive.
- at-fates-hands 7y ago
  Its not the distribution of the wealth that's the problem: Myriad state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200 percent above the poverty line receive benefits, according to the California Policy Center. California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and “other public welfare,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Unfortunately, California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients. The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse. And you know who gets hit the worse when we enact punitive "climate change" policies? The poor: Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon-dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. On some estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50 percent higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics, author of a 2015 Manhattan Institute study, “Less Carbon, Higher Prices,” found that “in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced ‘energy poverty’—defined as energy expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all households.” A Pacific Research Institute study by Wayne Winegarden found that the rate could exceed 17 percent of median income in some areas. “The impacts on the poorest households are not only the largest,” states Winegarden. “They are clearly unaffordable.” The fact California is a one-party state is also a huge cause: California’s de facto status as a one-party state lies at the heart of its poverty problem. With a permanent majority in the state senate and the assembly, a prolonged dominance in the executive branch, and a weak opposition, California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price. The state’s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of economic prosperity that drove California to its golden years. https://www.city-journal.org/html/california-poverty-capital-15659.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/california-poverty-capital...

Rebelgecko 7y ago

Just because the economy is big doesn't mean that everyone is getting a big share of it

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Welcome to inequality. Not everyone will get some crazy rate in SV. The guy who serves your latte, or cares for elderly parents should be able to afford to live and eat somewhere. Many will be stuck well below the poverty line.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
What! That's communism. People should be able to have a decent life, working one job full time? Next you'll say a single accident shouldn't be able to destroy your life because of the cost of the medical care.

sremani 7y ago

What? The poverty rate in California is high and California also has significant welfare population, for 10% of US population share, California has 20-30% share for Welfare (fact-check me here). Outside of the elite coastal town, interior California has lot of poverty and the other aliments.

pchristensen 7y ago

California is rich, but California has a huge % of and total # of people that are poor. Also, they don't look poor by national standards, but they are poor when the expenses of living in CA are taken into account.

rayiner 7y ago

I didn't say it was "poor" I said it was "one of the poorest states." When we compare countries, we generally look at PPP-adjusted GDP per capita. For California it's about $48,000 (2009 dollars). That's poorer than the national average of $50,577. It's about the same as Lousiana at $47,869. So when you take out the distributional concern by looking at the average instead of the median, California goes from being in the bottom 10 to merely being in the bottom half. (The analysis above combines this list of GSP-per-capita, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per..., with this list of price deflators, https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/%24100%20Map-state-01.png https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/%24100%20Map-sta...).

pcwalton 7y ago
We're not going to solve the debate over whether to use nominal GDP or PPP-adjusted GDP here, but let's just say that it's hardly settled which is more reflective of a country being rich or poor. I also don't know if I'd trust the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation to provide an unbiased estimate of state PPP. Doing a Google search for "GDP PPP of US states" and clicking through some citations brings up a very different set of rankings that WaPo cites [1]. It places California in the top 15 along with the other economic powerhouses, right between Switzerland and Norway, not exactly known for being poor countries. UBS [2] says that Los Angeles has the highest purchasing power of any major city in the world! Who's right? Clearly it highly depends on one's methodology. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/if-the-uk-was-a-u-s-state-it-would-be-the-second-poorest-behind-alabama-and-before-mississippi/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/i... [2]: https://www.ubs.com/microsites/prices-earnings/en/explore/?category=Domestic%20Purchasing%20Power&indicator=General_Domestic%20Purchasing%20Power_Net%20(New%20York%20%3D%20100)&split=false https://www.ubs.com/microsites/prices-earnings/en/explore/?c...
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  The WaPo (actually The Spectator) methodology is clearly inapplicable, because they adjust for average US PPP, instead of within-state PPP, which doesn’t make sense if your goal is to compare different states to one another.