Talk:Economy of California
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[edit] California as an independent nation
The World Factbook would place California in tenth place after (1)United States, (2)European Union, (3)China, (4)Japan, (5)India, (6)Germany, (7)United Kingdom, (8)France and (9)Italy.
see link below http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html
The World Factbook uses PPP dollars to compare economies, which is something they come in for a lot of criticism by economists for. PPP valuations are not good measures of such widely varying economies as those of the U.S., Japan and Europe versus those of China or India.
Market values may fluctuate, but they represent real current costs, which is especially important for an economy like China's which is wholly dependent on trade. It doesn't matter if you can purchase a Big Mac for 1/5th the amount in China that you would pay in the United States (which is roughly how China's GDP is inflated to the #2 spot by the World Factbook) if the majority of your economic growth relies on purchasing commodities at MARKET VALUES from other nations in order to create goods that are then sold at MARKET VALUES to other nations.
I should also mention that referring to the United States as "the combined United States" is rather unusual.
Article seems kind of biased & makes vague generalizations. I didn't finish reading because of that.
The first line with "dominant force" needs elaboration, but it's not really appropriate language anyway. It ties to the GSP which is 17% of the U.S. GDP, while only having 12% of the population. One could also go on that despite that, Californians have slightly less than the U.S. average to spend on retail(read that from Cal. Dept. of Finance). That would be due to, mainly, the high cost of housing.
Why mention the imbalance of payments (taxes, spending) in regards to the Federal Government, in the opening 2 sentence paragraph?
The shortcomings are okay. Almost all the articles in Wikipedia are unprofessional and have poor writing.68.180.38.41 06:57, 19 December 2006 (UTC)68.180.38.41 07:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Housing
Please expand the housing section (particularly the housing bubble section).
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (January 2007) |
[edit] economy of CA / agriculture
How is it true: 1. Agriculture is no. 1 sector in CA generating about $27bn revenue. 2. Exports of computer electronics is about $40bn.
aren't these 2 statements contradictory?
if one reviews BEA and CA government sites for statistics, it's easy to verify that agriculture is by no means the largest sector of CA economy.
- AGREED! Let's see, the $27 billion quote for the agriculture industry is a TINY chunk less than 2% of the CA gross state product. The Intel Corporation alone, which actually employs more workers in Oregon and Arizona than California had nearly $40 billion in revenue last year. I'm fairly certain there are California industries larger than agriculture IF the $27 billion quote is correct. Agriculture products are very simple and cheap and thus require massive volume to actually add to a large revenue number. I'm SURE many areas of the service industry (restaurants, retail) have much larger revenue than $27 billion. And if there are less than 50 industries defined, then LOGICALLY at least one of them must be more than 2% of California's GDP and thus larger than agriculture...
- Of course, you can always arbitrarily define "industries" to all be very specific (like computer/electronics industry is split into integrated circuits, database software, optical storage, mainframes, etc all as separate industries) while leaving agriculture (including crops, livestock, genetics, etc) as one massive catch-all industry and that may win the crown by cheating... -Rory77 12:12, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Attention needed
I added this parameter to the banner because of the comments above. This article clearly needs a better lead paragraph. The information is too disparate, with no flow from one section to another. The EoC category needs to be populated, as well. USDOC's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by State, 2005 looks like a good source of data to address the Ag v. Tech GDP issue. If this looks like a good idea, perhaps somebody who knows how could format this a little better. I'll come back and add the rest of the data, if nobody else does first, and move it to the article.
Population and area
| United States | California | % of U.S. | rank in U.S. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Population (July 1, 2006, estimates) | 299,398,484 | 36,457,549 | 12.2% | 1 |
| Area | 3,718,695 sq mi
9,631,420 km2 |
158,302 sq mi
410,000 km2 |
4.3% | 3 |
GDP in Current Dollars, 2005 [Millions of dollars]
| Sector | United States | California | % of U.S. | rank in U.S. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 12,409,555 | 1,622,116 | 13.1% | 1 |
| Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting | 119,066 | 23,132 | 19.4% | 1 |
| Mining | 213,574 | 9,685 | 4.5% | 5 |
| Utilities | 238,908 | 24,906 | ||
| Construction | 593,535 | 76,487 | ||
| Durable goods manufacturing | 868,438 | 95,590 | 11.0% | 1 |
| Non-durable goods manufacturing | 628,103 | 61,559 | 9.8% | 1 |
| Wholesale trade | 733,090 | 92,548 | ||
| Retail trade | 828,634 | 113,903 | ||
| Transportation and warehousing | 362,247 | 37,577 | ||
| Information | 578,345 | 107,120 | ||
| Finance and insurance | 1,011,548 | 120,795 | ||
| Real estate, rental,and leasing | ||||
| Professional and technical services | ||||
| Management of companies | ||||
| Administrative and waste services | ||||
| Educational services | ||||
| Health care and social assistance | ||||
| Arts, entertainment, and recreation | ||||
| Accomodation and food services | ||||
| Other services | ||||
| Government |
--Hjal 23:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
