California overtakes Japan to become the world's fourth largest economy

On a per capita basis, California still has some work to do. Washington, Massachusetts, and New York are all significantly higher. No one should get bonus points for having a large population.

California should acquire some nuclear weapons then.

California is anti-American and disloyal, because they voted for the other party. /s

Russia, on the other hand, supports the President, so they deserve to be rewarded.

>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.

On the one hand, yes, you're right, the EU is more powerful economically as a whole than as individual states. But on the other hand the individual states are a bit less unified than the US or China. So they are a bit more individual in the first place.

> 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_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.

>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. is it? I've only ever seen USians push the "country of europe" thing

The 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.

What, 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/

Tying 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.

Honestly 80% of California's problems are self-inflicted

NIMBYs limiting growth.

Crazy crime handling policies in SF (which are getting reverted now).

Cities outside the main centers (SFBA, LA, etc) dying.

Complete political ineptitude for things like HSR

No wonder they're losing population

In 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.

It's not even really that, I think; given that it's nominal GDP, it's likely mostly currency fluctuations, likely taken at end of 2024. If so, the nominal GDP situation has likely reverted, as the dollar has fallen about 9% vs the yen since the start of the year.

This is one of the reasons that nominal GDP isn't all that useful a metric.

Japan’s population will start declining faster than the US though xD we have maybe 10 years before basically the entirety rural population starts dying from old age.

>We've been held afloat by immigration but even that's running out.

'Running out' - cute euphemism for 'you're not welcome', and very much worser: 'deportation'.

The US has immigration

Have you looked in Temecula?

While 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.

I 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?

That 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.

California'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.

And then China steps in to protect California from getting annexed by the United States.

If 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.

>Like Taiwan

I see what you did there.

Taiwan is not free.

I 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.

One good earthquake and you might get your wish.