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Comment by r_singh | Hacker News Reader

Not surprisingly, there's 5 places in California where the top 1% has more wealth than in 1928. Which means that the ratio of income of top 1% to income of bottom 99% is higher than it was in 1928. Which is a sign of rise in income inequality.

I would be really interested in studying the breakdown of wealth within the top 1% in all the places listed. In my experience (here in India at least), most people in the top 1% are just as worried [about income inequality] as the rest of us. It's the people at the top 20% of the 1% that can live anywhere, but sure, journalists can still call them the 1%.

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I’ve always wondered, where did California’s wealth originally come from? Was it the gold rush that started it all?

The Gold Rush did indeed make a lot of people wealthy. Not the gold itself, but rather land speculation and the business bubble.

When I randomly recall old wealth families that I’m aware of, they pretty much all started from local business tycoons (newspapers, railroads, essential consumer products, etc.) that usually diversified through real estate. No different than the rest of the US.

and no different from a lot of the rest of the world

California is an amazing place in so many ways.

It is the gateway to asian trade, Mediterranean climate, resource rich, has great ports, chokepoints east that make scaling business like railroads easier, etc. It was also empty during modern times.

it was also empty during modern times

Except for all of the people who lived there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_Californ...

100% with you on the "we can't just pretend like people weren't living here just because they weren't white" BUT, from your article:

"Prior to European contact, California Indians had 500 distinct sub-tribes or groups, each consisting of 50 to 500 individual members."

Assuming that all 500 tribes were 500 people, that's only 250,000 people. Relative to the geographic size of the state, that's a pretty low population density. And many of the the areas of large growth wouldn't have been useful to a pre-industrial civilization, since they required so much labor and technology to exist (like say, pumping in water from 4 neighboring states in order to meet the needs of the population).

Let's settle on "It had a relatively low population of Indigenous people to area" instead of "it was empty", and call it a day?

Even as a remote outpost from the world, the population of indigenous people in California was devastated by epidemics before substantial numbers of europeans arrived there. Smallpox alone probably wiped out all densely populated areas.

They certainly weren't treated well, and I make no excuses for that, but the place was essentially empty by the time California started hockey-sticking.

The initial burst of wealth began with the gold rush and was extended with the transcontinental railroad, but the basis for California’s modern wealth, all the way from San Diego to San Francisco, was the military industrial complex. Hollywood is a major industry in Southern California for sure, but Hollywood didn’t turn California into an economic juggernaut, the Pentagon did.

That same defense contract money and influx of tech talent is largely responsible for the foundations of Silicon Valley as we know it today.

Huge amount of very profitable agriculture is one source of wealth, for sure.

Now yes, but that took time/energy to create. California wine was a joke until the 70's, and it's dairy industry didn't catch up with Wisconsin until the early 90's (despite massive size differences in the two states).

Hollywood played a part in the pre-silicon valley days, although I don't know how much that contributed relative to agriculture/trade.

...It wasn't always wealthy. My family has been around Marin for generations, and my aunt bought a nice house in San Jose for like $14,000 years ago. What it's worth now that everyone wants it...yikes.

The initial pulse was gold, as you suggest. The state motto is “eureka”, referring to gold. Gold was discovered in 1848, statehood followed quickly in 1850.

Agriculture and railroads followed the gold.

The weather, natural resources, size, and topography are all along the most desirable for many, many people.

Escape patent enforcement from the east coast?

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