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California overtakes Japan to become the world's fourth largest economy
- udev4096 1y agoAnd Japan is still the most peaceful place to live!
- suraci 1y ago[flagged]
- atarian 1y agoAnd then China steps in to protect California from getting annexed by the United States.
- oblio 1y agoChina isn't annexing Germany any time soon, for example. California could afford a solid defensive military.
- hurray-sandbag 1y agoIf California separated from the US, most of California would separate from California and rejoin the US. Read about the "State of Jefferson" movement, etc. The Coastal cities in California are really a completely different place from the rest of the state, and the rest of the state is pretty dissatisfied with this union.
- zippyman55 1y agoThe people in Jefferson County come off as pretty loony.
- oblio 1y agoThat thing only has an estimated 3 million people, and that's including a lot of Oregon. Surprisingly, those Coastal cities have a lot of people (common theme in the US).
- hurray-sandbag 1y agoThose Coastal cities have lot of people, yes, but not a lot of land. It also isn't just north California, but also the east. Here, check out this map. https://www.politico.com/2024-election/results/california/ https://www.politico.com/2024-election/results/california/ It seems reasonable to expect all of the Trump-voting areas to stick with the United States. This would end up being more of a Hong Kong type situation, and less of a Taiwan-type situation. Without having any of it's own agriculture, and without being able to act as the middle-man for all of the trade between Asia and America, California would find itself in an extremely precarious situation.
- hurray-sandbag 1y agoAs soon as California left, it would be a very small, weak territory with almost no military capacity. And it would be home to some of the most important natural resources around, deep water ports in particular. Imagine that California was a separate country today. Military conquest by America would be an obvious course of action. The real outcome of this would be the transformation of the coastal cities into non-state US territories under military control, without no voting rights or citizenship. And that actually might be a pretty good outcome?
- swarnie 1y agoOne good earthquake and you might get your wish.
- suraci 1y agowhy, i don't want anyone to get hurt
- Mountain_Skies 1y agoOtisburg is going to be the new place to be.
- AngryData 1y agoThat would be silly, California is what it is today because it is part of the United States. The ports by themselves bring in a lot of money and being another country introduces two new borders that the United States would want to avoid and go around. It also has a lot of money in the financial sector, which would gain significant extra barriers and costs with the rest of US businesses if it wasn't part of the US. Plus the only places where you get majority support for that sort of thing in more dense urban areas and losing large chunks of the state's landmass would definitely hurt the California economy.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoTaiwan is not free.
- wordofx 1y agoWhy?
- platevoltage 1y agoThe USA won't even commit to referring to them as free.
- suraci 1y agoI suppose it’s because there’s a political massacre happening there. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3306215/taiwan-braces-ruling-dpp-backs-recall-campaign-bid-retake-control-legislature https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3306215/tai... https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E7%BD%B7%E5%85%8D https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E7%BD%B7%E5%85%8D (Chinese) https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202503280015 https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202503280015
- wordofx 1y agoDoesn’t look like political massacre.
- VincentEvans 1y agoIt may have been a subtle joke. Eg US would then consider it a break-away territory and president would declare a timeline of bringing back into the fold.
- ex-leper 1y agoCome over here and visit during election season. Even in the country town where I live there are traffic stopping rallies by multiple polical parties.
- RobRivera 1y ago>Like Taiwan I see what you did there.
- kryptiskt 1y agoCalifornia's economy is so big because it's part of the American economy. California gets credited for Google, but most of the suckers clicking on ads and making Google rich aren't in California, most of Google's workers aren't in California. Cutting off California from that would be way dumber than Brexit.
- derelicta 1y agoI personally yearn for the balkanisation of the US. That's unironically why I think a TEXIT would be very beneficial to the rest of the world. The more the Empire fights itself, the weaker it is, and the freer the world becomes.
- ksajadi 1y agoI wish we had the same outsized influence over the US federal policy as well.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- NewJazz 1y agoWhat, 12% of the population, 14% of the economy. 2% of the voting power in the Senate. Pretty similar for Texas, New York, Florida. Malapportionment is a disease. https://prospect.org/features/senatorial-privilege/ https://prospect.org/features/senatorial-privilege/
- Manfred 1y agoTying economic output to political power gets hairy pretty quickly. You incentivize states to put economic outcome before the wellbeing of the citizens and give states with rare natural resources more power than those that rely on value produced by a workforce.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dyauspitr 1y agoTying population to political power definitely makes sense though.
- platevoltage 1y agoI wouldn't say the US Senate and Electoral College make much sense.
- bigstrat2003 1y agoI think they make an incredible amount of sense. The population centers don't deserve to dictate how the entire country works just because they pack a ton of people in. For the Senate, it's important to have a body where all the sovereign states get equal say, because after all they are supposed to be the primary unit of government. Not only that, but the fact that there's equal representation in the Senate is the social contract on which this country is founded, without which California wouldn't even exist. The electoral college is flawed but I also find it better than the alternative. It's important that the president should represent a wide variety of perspectives in the country, not just pander to the population of the n biggest cities and call it a day. The people living in small or unimportant states deserve to have a president who gives a damn about them, too. Ultimately I think both of these mechanisms are important ones to ensure that the country doesn't turn into a classic tyranny of the majority, which is something I value quite a bit.
- up2isomorphism 1y ago[flagged]
- NewJazz 1y agoHave you looked in Temecula?
- iagooar 1y agoI have probably never felt more insecure (and disgusted at the same time) in a Western country, the way I felt on the streets of LA. Not all of them, of course, some are obviously well guarded - which in turn makes me think the government and city council is not doing a great job really. Is the situation as bad in San Francisco?
- ninetyninenine 1y agoLA is freaking large. Depending on where you are some places are more disgusting then others while other places are completely pristine. SF is worse. But SF is also tiny.
- RobRivera 1y agoSF is better than I remember 6 years ago. Purely anecdotal
- Axsuul 1y agoLA is gigantic. There are more safe streets there than most major cities in the world.
- Aeolun 1y agoTokyo begs to differ I was going to use some numbers but because Japan doesn’t really do street names it wasn’t really comparable. Tokyo has 25k km of streets. LA has 9k miles. Edit: Missed the ‘most’, sorry.
- refurb 1y agoWhile a low effort comment, it does touch on an important topic. Imagine if CA was run with the kind of efficiency that Singapore or South Korea was run. Clean, safe streets. Modern infrastructure. Instead we get a state government that is going to waste the goose that laid the golden egg. The high taxes paid disappear in a black hole centered in Sacramento. CA reminds me of New Jersey. Other states used to be jealous of New Jersey's economy, yet the riches were frittered away by an inefficient government.
- pavlov 1y agoCalifornia’s GDP is now twice as large as Russia’s. Yet the President of the United States seems to spend a lot of time trying to make Russians happy, and zero time making Californians happy.
- Afforess 1y agoCalifornia should acquire some nuclear weapons then.
- kubb 1y agoThey should promise him a cut.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoAll our GDP is in software. We don't know how to make anything except AI and web apps. We wouldn't know what to do with a nuke.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoThe title almost implies that CA had some unnatural acceleration to put it past japan. I think it's more that japan has been declining. This won't last once the US population starts declining. We've been held afloat by immigration but even that's running out. Japan was ahead of the curve in terms of modernity. Looking at them is almost like looking at our own future.
- throwaway473825 1y agoIn 2023, Germany overtook Japan as the world's third largest economy. This year, India is projected to overtake Japan as the world's fourth largest economy. I wonder if the article has taken India into account.
- Axsuul 1y agoThe US has immigration
- platevoltage 1y agoJapan might want to consider it soon too.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- captainmuon 1y agoIt's funny that the list includes both California and the US. It would be interesting to compare economies of the same scale, regardless of legal status: If you are considering the US and China, maybe you should include the whole of the EU. And if you are looking at Germany, Japan, ... It makes sense to not only include California, but also to split up other countries. I'm curious how high up Guandong or Shanghai would be for example. The fact that the US and China show up as single countries (and not "continents"/regions) whereas the EU shows up as a bunch of "small" countries is source of a lot of inferiority complex in Europe.
- standardUser 1y agoThe EU is very frequently included in data comparing nation states, along with it's individual members. It's the only supranational organization usually included on those kinds of lists, though sometimes you'll see groups like the G20.
- simonask 1y agoThe EU is also the only organization of its kind on the planet. It's not a federal state, but it's also way, way more integrated and unified than something like the G20, OECD, etc. It's also the only thing that can work in Europe. Anything smaller would make Europe irrelevant on the global stage, and something much more invasive would erase Europe as we know it. The current mood in smaller European countries is that even though many are skeptical of French and German influence, our interests align most of the time, especially now that the US has succumbed to fascism and stupidity.
- Dagonfly 1y ago> I'm curious how high up Guandong or Shanghai would be for example Surprisingly far down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first-level_administrative_divisions_by_GRDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first-level_administra... California, Texas, England, New York, Guangdong, Jiangsu. Both with slightly smaller GDP than Russia, the 11th largest economy. More interesting is the PPP table where Guangdong is close to California.
- 1y ago
- maxglute 1y agoOr how JP "plummeted" from 6 trillion economy to 4 trillion because their FX went from 100:1 USD to 160:1 (at peak last year) now 140:1. Still eaking slow growth in yen terms. JP can still be 1/3 larger than california US compels them to appreciate. I think 140 is probably a good balance for JP exports (high tech) and imports (energy, commodities/inputs). Or Trump makes USD weaker.