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Comment by encoderer | Hacker News Reader

"There’s a hidden diamond in the Midwest that contains an economy larger than California. Chicago to Detroit, down through Cleveland to Pittsburgh, bending through Columbus to Cincinnati, and coming full circle through Indianapolis back to Chicago."

Anybody have any info on this? Seems suspect to me. If you add large metro areas in that area, it looks to be around 25 million people. I'm sure there is a lot of manufacturing but this has to be BS right? I grew up in the middle of that diamond, and now live in the Bay Area, and I just cannot make sense of this.

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What this PR piece doesn't talk about is the huge oil and gas growth in eastern Ohio/western PA which is probably massaging these numbers quite well. Pretty much all of Ohio outside the major cities in this area is fracking country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gross_S...

Add up the states he cited...

Large parts of those states are not included in the diamond he outlined, but if you add them all up, all 5 states, it's about the same GDP as California.

But, 53.5 Million people vs 39 million in CA.

for the most part, outside of the major cities, the rest of the state is not generating much gdp

But there are major cities in those states not included in his Diamond. Most notably: Philadelphia, Springfield, Peoria, Lansing, MI, Grand Rapids, Mich, etc

Philly isn't in the Midwest, hell, it's almost in the Atlantic!

That was his point. The article said that a region it outlines has an economy bigger than California. But adding up the GDP [1] of all the states that overlap that region gives an economy about the size of California's.

Philly is in a state that overlaps the region, but is not in the region. Hence, adding up the state GDPs overestimates the GDP of the region by at least the GDP of Philly.

[1] technically, I believe it is actually called the GSP (Gross State Product) in this case.

They're effectively comparing the entire Rust Belt... A nontrivial land mass... 5 whole states to 1.

California's a pretty damn big state. The total area of those five states is only ~70% more than California, and that's counting all the central and northern bits of Michigan that definitely aren't part of this, and eastern PA.

California is a big, but generally unpopulated state.

Approaching 40 million, that population is divided, generally, as: half in the Los Angeles - San Diego region, half the remainder in the San Francisco - San Jose region, half the remainder (5 million) between Sacramento and Stockton, and the remaining 5 million throughout the rest of the state, mostly still within the southern Central Valley (particularly Bakersfield).

See: counties by population, showing 23 counties of fewer than 100k population. Over half the state's population is in 5-6 counties: Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Santa Clara.

https://www.california-demographics.com/counties_by_populati...

I dunno... the polygon the author drew is only about half the area of California.

On the other hand it's kinda cheating to put the major cities at the corners.

I'd say the equivalent to the SF Bay Area surrounding area would be Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, and San Diego. One could definitely argue those areas are even more vibrant than the combination of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati Chicago, etc.

The map was confusing. They say the edges of this diamond include Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, so I imagine they are bundling them into this claim. But in the picture of the diamond they're excluded, making Detroit probably the most interesting city inside it.

Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati all sound better than Detroit. A lot better.

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