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What makes California so economically successful?
369 sats \ 14 comments \ @stack_harder 13h econ
I don't pay much attention to this, but I quite often hear about how California's GDP makes it the 5th largest economy in the world.
Now, mostly the general picture that has been formed in my brain by pop culture is a mixture of the Mamas and Papas and Beach Boys songs about surfing and sun.
But the second picture is the endless stories about it being a liberal shithole, home invasions, Skidrow, wildfires, and huge taxes.
So what makes CA the economic monster it is? Is it mostly a Hollywood and Silicon Valley network effect?
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63 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 11h
Great Weather. Beautiful terrain. Hollywood, some of the most amazing and prized real estate in the world, Silicon Valley, huge population that expects to live a privileged life, tourism. Plus it is the main ports for goods flowing from Asia, agriculture.
LA is the second largest city in the US so every major company has to have a presence there.
California has an amazing flywheel effect that all began because of the weather and "sun and surf" lifestyle you mentioned but they are doing a hell of a job of slowing the flywheel down.
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40 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 11h
Wow, @grayruby, for all the fun I make of Canada, you have such nice words to say about California, haha. I repent and from now on will sing only praises of the Great White North
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30 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 10h
I love visiting California. Just wouldn't want to live there. Maybe if I was super rich I would live in Newport Beach or Del Mar. I love those areas.
You can continue making fun of Canada. It's one of my favourite past times too.
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40 sats \ 0 replies \ @gmd 10h
Objectively to me it is worth a 12% tax to have such amazing weather year round.
It just hurts to see that money squandered so it feels twice as painful, like paying 25%. State DOGE is needed. Newsome is a snake.
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53 sats \ 6 replies \ @CliffBadger 13h
The shithole picture is correct. The GDP number comes from having a large population, and if you're a limosine leftist who can afford armed guards then California isn't so bad. The huge taxes don't apply to the film industry and other pet projects. It's the working class that gets driven into poverty to the point where they can't afford to move out. The birth tourism from wealthier immigrants probably helps with the economic stats also, because that means money is still getting spent even though it wasn't earned within the state.
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @stack_harder OP 13h
Limousine leftist might be my new favourite insult
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14 sats \ 4 replies \ @SimpleStacker 13h
I don't consider myself a limousine leftist but even us normal middle class people are paying for private security. Our neighborhood pays for a private patrol car to roam the streets due to a rash of breakins
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 13h
sounds a bit South Africa-esque
How are your feelings about the city in general?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 12h
It's just home now. We have strong community ties. To me those are more important than politics. Life isn't so intolerable for us, but we're also one of the lucky ones who were able to buy into housing when it was on sale after the 2008 crash.
If we were a younger family with no housing and no community bonds, I'd probably have sought to leave already
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 5h
Wow, seriously! That's hard core. Is it a large neighborhood, with minimal costs per household, or is it pretty pricy?
Do you think the security is effective?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5h
It's pretty affordable. Not minimally cheap, more than Netflix, but less than our utilities bill.
To be honest, I am not sure how effective it is, as that's something really hard to measure. But they drive around and if they see something suspicious they will come out and investigate, and they have the authority to perform an arrest of something in the act of a crime (though they are not police).
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 13h
The weather is great in California, so rich people choose to live there, despite the institutional issues.
That also leads to a prosperous agriculture sector that can withstand a lot of political costs.
Then, there’s the geography that makes it very suitable for a couple of giant ports.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BeeRye 10h
Ports, diverse agriculture, diverse energy production, great weather, epicenter of two technology growth cycles, lots of global tourist destinations.
CA has so much going for it that politicians are able to get away with the high taxes and bad governing outcomes..almost enables it.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 11h
Think of California as a slow descent from picture 1 to picture 2. Elements of both are present. Picture 1 was more prevalent 10-20 years ago, but it is sliding more and more into picture 2.
Big part of it is simply government mismanagement, and the people are also partly to blame because they do not understand how the government mismanagement leads to all these problems. instead, they want government to fix the problem, not knowing that they often are the cause of the problem to begin with.
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