California surpasses France as world's 6th largest economy | Hacker News Reader

California surpasses France as world's 6th largest economy

cnbc.com

67 pointscodegeek72 comments

California was the 5th largest economy at one point in the 90's and early 2000's.

Better wines too [1] but that doesn't concern me. I was born in California and have decided that if Republicans end up destroying the Federal government, then I'd be fine with California, Oregon and Washington forming a new country called Cascadia. By the way, Cascadia would have the 2 or 3rd most powerful military in the world.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5013910.stm

The article is rather light on proofs and numbers.

Where is Europe's Silicon Valley?

France has a lot of things that Silicon Valley will likely never have, no matter what the size of its economy, not everything can be measured in money.

Europe doesn't have a Silicon Valley because every nation would want it to be in their backyard. But even if the concentration isn't there and the number of exits > $1B isn't as large (or the number of $1B and up companies isn't as large) we have plenty of solid performers.

Stockholm and Zurich would be my two contenders for a European SV.

There is only one Silicon Valley: the one in California. Nowhere else in the United States - or the world - has quite the unique mix of red-blooded capitalism, concentrated wealth, and a culture of innovation.

"Silicon Alley" (New York), "silicon roundabout" (London), and so on are simply natural, technologically focused extensions of the existing economies in those areas.

If you want to create a Silicon Valley in Europe, it will take decades until it can compare to Northern California.

> Nowhere else in the United States - or the world - has quite the unique mix of red-blooded capitalism, concentrated wealth, and a culture of innovation.

Now that you put it into a sentence, I find it less surprising that Switzerland is starting to brand itself as "Europe's Silicon Valley".

Until the 2014 referendum that might have happened but as it is it's off the table.

I think it could be done faster if the various countries could all agree on where they'd like it to be. And that won't happen. Germany would want it in Berlin, France in Paris, The UK (assuming they 'remain') would want it to be in London and so on. So no country would be willing to contribute the capital to help establish this on some other countries soil.

And then there is taxation, mentality, fragmented language environment and so on. I don't see it happening.

I think they could do it, each country will just need to have its own "SV" and the appropriate expectations. They will be smaller, but there could be ways to connect them.

Then it wouldn't be equivalent. SV has economies of scale working for it in many ways.

Israel is the closest. You have massive R&D centers for Intel (4 R&D sites, two fabs), Microsoft (2x R&D), Apple (2x R&D), Google (2x R&D), Facebook, Amazon (and even American startups like Magic Leap) all closer to each other than the distance between SF and Palo Alto.

VC presence in Israel is probably second only to SV and the rate of startups per capita by far exceeds any other country.

What Israel loses to SV is primarily cultural; no one gets the US consumer better than SV, that's why Israel is more focused on enterprise, security, semiconductor etc.

France attempted to do it, even putting it in an area with nice weather ;) After 40 years it's only about 20k-30k jobs there and nobody from outside ever heard about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Antipolis

Btw, the reason why they failed is a banking system that hates bankruptcies. If your startup fails, you won't get any credit (yup, better get a mortgage before starting a company) for at least 10 years (I think it was 20, but am too tired to search for references now).

That and labor laws that make it just about impossible to let someone go, financing with 'strings attached' (see 'dailymotion') and a whole raft of other differences.

"Nowhere else in the United States - or the world - has quite the unique mix of red-blooded capitalism, concentrated wealth, and a culture of innovation."

China is a serious contender to SV.

Northwest England. It created industry itself but has been relatively quiet recently.

Ha yes, it is sometimes useful to have a bit longer historical view of things.

There is nothing in Europe that can compete with Silicon Valley, but the closest ones would be London and Berlin. London feels a bit more corporate, while Berlin seems younger and wilder.

Let's wait a week to see if London is still in Europe.

Eurozone != Europe.

It's not going anywhere geography-wise.

Eurozone != European Union != Europe

Are the middle eastern migrants an economic liability for France? Wasn't Europe sold on the notion that a population influx would help the economy?

Many people aren't sold on that notion. I can't see how bring people from vastly different cultural backgrounds, many of whom won't speak the language are going to benefit the economy.

Are you familiar with a country called the United States? I hear they've done pretty well with immigrants from vastly different cultural backgrounds, many of whom don't speak the language.

Yeah, they even have a state called California which gets quite a few people from Mexico coming in across the border. Many of them speak little or no English. I hear it is doing okay.

You will be getting a wall soon enough.

If we do too good of a job of keeping out Mexicans, we will have serious food shortages. There will also be other areas that suffer -- like upscale landscaping that seems to be mostly maintained by Mexican workers -- but the whole food shortage thing worries me lots more.

So, I hope we don't get too clever about it.

A wall all along the US/Mexico border is a fantasy. It's the grown up equivalent of promising to put soda in the drinking fountains when running for class president.

So where do you suggest all these people are going to work as you seem so sold on the idea? Many countries in the South already have high unemployment.

Also heard about US/Mexico borders, green card quotas, h-b1, etc. You practice immigration quotas (which may be smart), we do not. I would be interested to see the outcome of a massive muslim immigration in the US.

Look up Dearborn Michigan

"As of the 2010 census the population of Dearborn was 98,153. The racial and ethnic composition was 89.1% Whites, 4.0% black or African-American, 0.2% Native American, 1.7% Asian, 0.2% Non-Hispanics of some other race, 4.0% reporting two or more races and 3.4% Hispanic or Latino.[14] 41.7% were of Arab ancestry (categorized as "White" in Census collection data)."

Sorry, 50k is not massive, let's talk about a couple of millions.

The Muslim influx was a result of colonial France. Britain has a sizeable Muslim population which is doing relatively well. The problem was discrimation and non-integration. Muslims (of North Africa) are unfortunately INA similar position as blacks in the USA.

The only common factor being their economic status.

But the Arab French have integrated culturally and are highly successful artists, athletes, businessmen, etc. Its only a matter of time before they deliver on the promise of immigration.

P.S. I'm a Muslim of South Asian origin born in Saudi Arabia.

Sorry, but we do have quotas. We're just not vocal about them.

edit: No, we actually don't, my mistake. But there seems to exists unofficial expulsions and regularization quotas to meet every year.

There are almost no migrants from middle east in France, all of Asia makes up for 15% of the immigrants in France (and they are mostly from Turkey and China).

Isn't Turkey considered Middle East? Wikipedia says it is.

It is, and 3.8% of all immigrants fits my definition of "almost none".

After re-reading your post, it doesn't actually make sense.

Hmm, I didn't break down the numbers in my first post indeed. Asia (with Middle-East included) is 15%, Turkey is just 3.8%, and no other Middle-East country seems to reach 1%.

So France has quite few immigrants from the Middle-East.

"There are almost no migrants from middle east in France"

two posts later,

"So France has quite few immigrants from the Middle-East."

The middle eastern migrants were a result of their colonialism. Recent immigrants (post 2008) are largely from poor European economies such as Spain, Portugal and from China.

Europe and France are two separate entities. France was at one point the most populous of European States but lost out to Germany and Russia before the World wars. Its population growth is relatively new post WW2 and independence of their colonies.

Actually it shows how unequal the US states are in terms of economic power, the average US state is on number 31, California on number 5.

Which begs the question, which is the worst doing state in the Union?

(Answer: it is Vermont)

All it shows is how unequal the US states are in terms of population. California has the biggest economy simply because it has the most people.

Not exactly true. Even if Texas (the no. 2 U.S. state by population) had the same population as California it would still have a smaller economy.

Sure, but the difference is much smaller. The state with the highest GDP per capita beats the state with the lowest by a factor of about 2, whereas the difference in population between biggest and smallest is about a factor of 66.

Texas versus California is a particularly bad example of this, with Texas's GDP per capita less than 1% lower.

Per capita: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per...

That is true, I didn't look for per capita but the absolute number.

Also, if you take per capita, California isn't the biggest economy in the US, it's Delaware or if it were a state: Washington, DC.

> Which begs the question

No, it doesn't - http://begthequestion.info

It's not even Vermont, he just wanted to trash it.

I didn't. When I thought about it, my guess was West Virginia. But I was wrong, in absolute number as per capita.

Being a non native in English I'm really grateful for this comment. I've never really understood this BTQ expression.

Hopefully the parent of your post was joking - the site he linked to is a "joke" site - but either way, it's misleading and unhelpful (particularly to non-English speakers) to pretend that "begs the question" was used incorrectly there by tehabe. It wasn't.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/beg-the-q...

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/beg-the...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beg%20the%20questi...

I understand that language is dynamic, and colloquial misuse turns into accepted use, and so nonplussed means unimpressed and disinterested means uninterested, but with this expression I will stand with the pedants and the original meaning.

Prepare for a long, frustrating stand. Professional writers and journalists misuse it 100% of the times I have seen it used. I have seen a single person in my entire life use it correctly, and it was a random forum post about something stupid like a video game.

Also, you can add "droll" to the long list of misused words.

I think the same way about droll as I do begs the question.[1]

I don't see the point of insisting the original/archaic meaning of a word is 'correct' if, in the English-speaking world we live in today, essentially nobody uses it or understands it in that sense.

[1] I certainly do not think the same about nonplussed, however. I've never heard that word being used for unimpressed before, but it appears to be simply an Americanism; one I hope never catches on elsewhere.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/nonplus...

Of professional writers, I find that droll is used correctly maybe half the time. Which is frustrating, because either definition is a polar opposite and has a pretty profound effect on a scene. It's only from context several sentences later do you figure out which definition they meant.

99% of English speakers do not understand it either, and misuse it constantly.

Maybe they use their own language perfectly fine and it's the meaning of the idiom that has changed?

Language can both be wrong to its original meaning and also accepted.

I gave up this fight a long time ago. I thought it was frustrating because it was so blatantly wrong and unclear, but someone once said something that convinced me to stop pointing it out. It's sort of two parts:

1. Language changes, which is fine

2. If someone says "It begs the question" and follows it up with the question it "begs" (which they almost always do) it becomes clear that they don't mean "begs the question" in the traditional sense.

Clearly they always mean to say "It raises the question", but "It begs the question" also makes sense if you think about it, though it's an awkward use of "begs"

Vermont is also the least populous state so that says little. Per capita, California does well but is behind states like Masachusetts, New York, New Jersey, etc. http://www.statista.com/statistics/248063/per-capita-us-real.... It's less rich than Delaware by about the same margin as its richer than Oregon.

Besides this discussion, if "begs the question" is good English or used correctly by me. I think to set state with the lowest GDP and "worst doing state" equal was wrong and incorrect.

Now I remember all the discussions I had if the GDP is actually a good indicator of the economy and welth of a nation, state, or territory.

Imagine the response were some terrible person to edit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Fifth largest, sixth largest, eighth largest -- it kind of does not matter. A single US state has a larger economy than the vast majority of nations. It's pretty impressive, but it isn't really news. This has been true for a long time. I have seen it said that "California is the American dream squared" or something like that.

It's code for California is doing well, there was a time under Gray Davis when it was falling down the rankings.

Still, it seems thin for HN. Even given that many people here live in California and HN is headquartered in California, it doesn't seem like something interesting, discussion worthy and meriting hitting the front page.

I mean, I like this little tidbit about California and have for years. But this isn't particularly substantive.

Yeah, its definitely Buzzfeed click bait, but there are other interesting indicators of California's growth. For example, California surpassed a number of states in average GDP per capita in the last few years. For example, in 2009 Illinois was ahead of California.

And, yet, here we are, discussing the clickbait -- me included.

(I mean, instead of something meatier.)

    Populations: France      66M
                 California  38M

> A single US state has a larger economy than the vast majority of nations. It's pretty impressive, but it isn't really news.

California's economy is impressive, but this comparison doesn't really show that. California has a larger population than all but ~15% of the world's nations[0]. Having a GDP larger than 50% of them isn't surprising.

At least 20 US states have a GDP per-capita greater than almost any other country in the world, except for a couple of incredibly tiny countries like Liechtenstein[1], and some countries with massive oil reserves (Qatar, Norway, UAE, etc.). On a per-capita basis, California ranks higher than Switzerland, only tenth in the US.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...

[1] 'per capita' is much less meaningful as a metric when there are several orders of magnitude difference between the denominators, and Liechtenstein has the population of what would be considered a medium-sized town in other countries.

> Having a GDP larger than 50% of them isn't surprising.

Huh? Being the 6th largest economy means it has a GDP larger than 97% of them. Or larger than 75% of the 15% with population larger than it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com