CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2020, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CALIFORNIA CARRYING THE NATIONAL ECONOMY”
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2020, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CALIFORNIA CARRYING THE NATIONAL ECONOMY”
Upon
hearing about his impeachment and the allegations that President Trump has told
more than 15,000 documentable lies during his almost 1,100 days in office, his
supporters generally have one major rejoinder: The economy is doing great.
That’s
been true for most of the Trump presidency. At the same time, Trump and his
more ardent backers consistently claim the liberal Democrats who control
California politics are destroying the “California Dream” and wrecking this
state.
But now figures from the
federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce
debunk all that.
It
turns out California is carrying the national economy. Gov. Gavin Newsom in his
state of the state speech the other day called California “the envy of the
nation.” Maybe that’s one reason so many non-Californians enjoy taking cheap
shots at the still-Golden State.
If the country is doing well,
that’s mostly because this state is doing far better than most of the rest of
America. Never mind that real estate and energy cost more here than anywhere
else. Despite its admitted problems, California still produces far more than
its fair share of goods and services and is largely responsible for keeping the
U.S. economy tops in the world.
You can
see this better than anywhere in the BEA’s new list of U.S. counties with more
than $100 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) – the combined total of all
goods and services produced in any one nation, state or locale. The BEA’s
figures were published as 2019 ended, while congressional hearings on Trump’s
impeachment were in full swing. Perhaps he didn’t know they were coming, or he
might have ordered them held up or altered, as he has other government reports
unfavorable to his pet causes.
Two of
the five most productive counties in America are in California, plus seven of
the 23 counties with more than $100 billion in GDP. Together, Los Angeles and
Santa Clara counties alone produce more than one-fifth of the economic activity
of the 23 healthiest counties in all of America.
What’s
more, of those 23 counties, only seven are in states Trump carried in 2016,
including two Texas counties – Harris (Houston) and Travis (Austin) that are
Democratic islands in the Texas Republican red sea.
Which
makes the contrast between places with the best economic performance and those
with the most political power in the national capital a clear-cut example of
the tail wagging the dog.
Los
Angeles County, for example, produced $711 billion in GDP in 2018, more than
the combined total in Dallas County, TX, Maricopa County, AZ (Phoenix), Fulton County,
GA (Atlanta) and Philadelphia County, PA. Half of those counties (Fulton and
Philadelphia) went strongly against Trump.
Equally
significant are the BEA’s comparisons of California county GDPs and those of
other nations. Los Angeles County’s productivity, for example, is comparable to
Switzerland’s. Santa Clara County, home of Silicon Valley, produces more than
the entire nation of Pakistan, which has about 100 times as many residents.
Orange County, third in California, has comparable output to Portugal and San
Diego County as much as Greece. Alameda County produces as much as Ukraine and
San Francisco about as much as Kazakhstan.
Clearly,
a large population and workforce is only part of the story. Productive
workforces like those at leading companies in Los Angeles and Santa Clara
counties, like Google and Sony Studios and Snapchat and Hewlett Packard and
Hulu, spin off huge amounts of economic activity not directly related to the
work of those companies.
This
takes the form of restaurants, car dealers, tire shops, gourmet groceries and
even farmers’ markets, which purvey abundant fruits and vegetables in both
counties.
For
Trump to take credit for any of this is plainly absurd, since the very folks
who voted against him now provide his principal claim to success.
But
that won’t stop the president. Unless the organizations that track his many
lies and half-truths are completely wrong, it is not the least bit unusual for
him to claim credit for things he didn’t do or that he had little or nothing to
do with.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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