California Now 4th-Largest Economy Globally

[Webster]

Hey DeSantis & Abbott: Put that below in your pipes and smoke it!

Don’t look now but California is thriving - Digby's Hullabaloo

It's now the #4 economy in the world I think that you can extrapolate from that that it's also a ginormous contributor to America's wealth. Check it out: Gavin Newsom is as familiar as anyone with the media narrative of earthquakes, persistent wildfires, droughts, homelessness and...

digbysblog.net

I think that you can extrapolate from that that it’s also a ginormous contributor to America’s wealth. Check it out: Gavin Newsom is as familiar as anyone with the media narrative of earthquakes, persistent wildfires, droughts, homelessness and companies fleeing California to Texas for a tax- and regulation-free lifestyle. This is nothing new. California’s governor recalls a 1994 Time Magazine cover story citing “a string of disasters rocks the state to the core, forcing Californians to ponder their fate and the fading luster of its golden dream.”

And yet, “the California dream is still alive and well,” the state’s 40th governor said in a Zoom interview a month before his probable reelection.

He’s not wrong. California’s economy has proven relatively resilient, first through the pandemic and now through the current period of elevated inflation. So much so, that the Golden State’s gross domestic product is poised to overtake Germany’s as the fourth largest in the world after the US, China and Japan. It had already leapfrogged Brazil (No. 7) and France (No. 6) in 2015 and supplanted the UK (No. 5) in 2017. Although many of California’s current figures won’t be published until 2023, estimates suggest the state may have already caught Germany, with at least one forecast implying California is ahead by $72 billion when considering the state’s recent growth rate.

California’s trajectory is most transparent in the growing divergence between its 379 companies with a market value of at least $1 billion and the 155 publicly-traded firms based in Germany meeting a similar benchmark. Whereas corporate California revenues and market capitalization rose 147% and 117% during the past three years, Germany mustered inferior gains of 41% and 34%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The margin of Germany’s nominal GDP of $4.22 trillion over California’s $3.357 trillion last year was the smallest on record and is about to disappear, with Europe’s largest economy barely growing in 2022 and forecast to shrink in 2023.

“All this data continues to belie the dominant narrative and illusion” of California’s “best days being behind us,” Newsom said. “As somebody who’s grown up in California, I feel pride in California’s resilience, leadership, its entrepreneurs, its formula for success that goes back over half a century,” he said, highlighting the state’s “conveyor belt for talent.”

 

[Webster]

@Nebulous, as someone who lives in California, thoughts on the above?

 

[Bluezone777]

I think you only nedd to look at the condition of the state with all of its problems and realize they might be the 4th largest economy globally but they paid a heavy price for it that I don't think was worth it. There is an saying I heard once which goes "don't be jealous of someone's success until you know the sacrifices they took to get it". I think that saying applies here.

 

[MrDawn]

It's a state that's become accommodated for wealthy people. Everyone else hangs out at skid row when they run out of money.

 

[Nebulous]

@Nebulous, as someone who lives in California, thoughts on the above?

I think if our economy is so strong, they can afford to lower the prices of everything, but will they? No.

It's a state that's become accommodated for wealthy people. Everyone else hangs out at skid row when they run out of money.

I’m not wealthy. If I lost my job I’d just get another one, won’t see me on skid row.

 

[Webster]

won’t see me on skid row.

As long as you got us (and @tonychu!) you'll never be on Skid Row.