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Stupid Headlines – California World’s Fourth Largest Economy
YouTube recommends various videos, especially in the news section. One that caught my eye a moment ago is: “California becomes the world’s 4th-largest economy, surpassing Japan.” And the splash image is a woman/news talking head next to a table with a list of the four largest economies in the world:
- United States — $29 trillion
- China — $18.7 trillion
- Germany — $4.6 trillion
- California — $4 trillion
Can anyone else spot the problem with this story? How about that table? I could be convinced to look at the individual states as competing with nation states. But, if you’re pulling it out that way, wouldn’t California be third? Otherwise, you are counting it against itself in number one on the list. Or is that $29 trillion redacted to pull California out of it? Has California declared independence? Has it been kicked out by the other states? Either this news station is lacking clarity, or I have missed some news, big news.
Seen any other silly stories you would like to share?
Published in Journalism
An apples-to-apples comparison, whereby all other countries would be broken down into their sub-national parts (states, provinces, territories, etc.) as well, would result in California’s rank as #1.
Probably, but there is no valid argument for doing so in the case of most countries. I’m an adherent of “These United States,” rather than “The United States,” so I can see doing it with us. Germany? No. China? Maybe in cases like splitting off Tibet.
Why would it be invalid to, say, compare the GDPs of the 16 German states to those of the 50 U.S. states?
Germany’s “federal” government seems to be much stronger and more unitary than ours is supposed to be. They seem to have a lot more power to form and unform their states, for instance. We could not break up California without the state legislature’s permission. Nor could we merge California, Oregon, and Washington without the three state legislatures’ permission. Our original thirteen (or fourteen) states were independent countries that came together creating a limited umbrella layer. Germany were formed by pressure from the outside less than a hundred years ago after they lost a war.
But you certainly can compare subdivisions of other countries to our states. Go ahead. There is nothing to stop you. It seems like gallons and pints to me, though.
I am currently reading a biography of Calvin Coolidge, and am struck reading included quotes from documents written by Coolidge and his contemporaries referring to United States as a plural collective.
Stupid headlines in media is such a target-rich aspiration that one could fill multiple posts a day.
Just yesterday, Daily Beast headline: “JD Vance Ripped for Embarrassing Gaffe During Vatican Visit.” Subheading: “A White House publicity stunt revealed the vice president’s glaring faux pas.”
Several paragraphs of the article about a photograph showing Vice President Vance in the Sistine Chapel despite a rule barring photography in the Sistine Chapel.
Eleventh paragraph of the article: “A source close to the situation told the Daily Beast that the Vatican gave special permission for the photographer in question to take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel.”
So very near the end of the article is the line that undoes the entire premise for the headline, subhead, and first ten paragraphs. Stupid headline indeed.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vance-ripped-for-embarrassing-gaffe-during-vatican-visit/?utm_source=twitter_owned_tdb&via=twitter_page&utm_medium=socialflow&utm_campaign=owned_social
[Edited to add link]
It’s how it should be.
During covid I was impressed with how independent their states were. A few of them are more protective of their separateness than others, but that’s true in the US as well.
True. I was thinking that question might make it a fun post.
Too typical. Or I remember when the New York Times was reporting on various finds of WMD in Iraq while on the editorial page, they had screeds about how there were none.
It’s not a stupid headline. It quite clearly shows that the economy of California surpasses that of all nations of the world except the entire USA, China and Germany. What’s the fuss?
The fuss is that these US as a whole were part of the comparison on the chart. We could slot all of the states in if we wanted. Texas falls between Italy and France. New York falls between Canada and Italy. Florida’s economy is bigger than Mexico’s. But saying California is the fourth largest economy in the world behind these US, which contains California, is silly. It’s either part of these US or not.
I can only repeat what I wrote, the headline shows that CA has the fourth largest economy in the world. It’s true and it’s not at all obscure.
I say we vote on it.
Whatever, Doc. It’s not that big of a deal. I find it lacking in rigor, but it is from the news media. I’m not saying that I expect more from them or that it was difficult to understand what they were trying to say.
Seen any lately that you do think are stupid or risible?
I don’t get why some people can’t seem to wrap their head around something like “If California were a separate country, it would have the world’s 4th largest economy.”
I’ve read an interesting article about the necessity of abstraction in the world of computers especially, and this seems to be an example.
And even if you subtracted the $4 Trillion of California, the rest of the US would still be #1. Although that’s not the point.
FWIW, if California’s $4T were subtracted from the U.S.’s $29T, the rankings in the OP table would remain unchanged. California would remain #4, not rise to #3.
But, if one separated out all fifty states plus other territories of these United States, California would be third.
But that would still actually be amplifying the problem you seem to want to avoid, since you wouldn’t also be separating the “provinces” or whatever of China, Germany…
What sense does it make to accept – or perhaps even insist upon – that abstraction, but not the original?
Do you somehow need it to be something like: “If California – and ONLY California! – were a separate country…”?
Were that what they said, I would not have a problem with it. But that is not what they said.
“California becomes the world’s 4th-largest economy, surpassing Japan.”
If we are mixing UN members with states like California, why couldn’t we also have continents? And why not the whole world? In that case, the table starts to look like:
Gee, now California is the ninth largest economy, because we’re mixing pints and gallons and barrels. This is not that difficult to see why the headline was bad. Of course, if one cannot read and thinks the headline was, “If California were a separate country, it would have the world’s 4th largest economy,” then one might have more difficulties than I can address.
It says that, but with fewer words than you seem to need.
Read the headline very carefully. Do not interpret it. Read what it actually says. I have no trouble understanding what they meant, but it is not what they said.
From The Washington Post on April 8, 1980: “The Uncommon Wealth of California”
This is how political arguments enter the conventional wisdom. It doesn’t make it true, it makes it accepted.
Watch arguments trickle from X to these pages. They don’t even have to take a direct path, it just has to become acceptable.
Except that they should have made it “seventh largest ECONOMY” rather than nation, was it not true?
The way they write headlines now, it would be “this state has the fourth largest economy in the world
” and you have to click through to figure out what they’re talking about. I hate it. Headlines used to reveal information, now they obscure it.
If we had today’s “journalism” in 2001 – “buildings hit by airplanes in east coast cities”.
The whole thing is a misleading. It was in 1980 when Reagan was using it and it’s misleading now.
Incoming and outgoing tax dollars are almost a wash in California, but let’s take the entire federal presence of the state and their economy looks much different. At the end of 2024 there were 151,000 federal workers in the state, which doesn’t include the military or the USPS, or contractors who rely almost exclusively on federal contracts.
The military alone accounts for almost 2% of the state’s GDP. (California is third on the Pentagon’s list for state spending. (Virginia and Texas are 1-2.)
Take all that away and California’s economy significantly shrinks.
Or the one we’ve actually heard, “some people did some things.”
We don’t want to separate out all the others and make them go away. Just California.
I can think of a few others.
The continual announcement of California being the 4th largest economy allows Lefties to expound on how “See! We in California really can afford to take in the world’s poor and desperately forgotten peoples.”
It is a large economy. But it is necessary to factor in that it holds some 40 million people. Also if one takes out the top companies like Google, Ebay etc, companies that we all realize will certainly not feed or house the immigrants at their own expense, it is not that remarkable an economy.
The Golden State also holds the record of the most homeless people of all the states. The largest segment of poor people. The least well educated of 1st through 12th grade students. (Okay Mississippi actually tops us at that measure.)
As far as your thinking, I don’t know how to parse out the factor that the state is also part of the nation.
BTW, the average Chinese person pays about one tenth of what we pay for housing. So with the continual “California is the greatest” refrain, we also end up with a lot of Chinese who immigrate here. Only after arriving do they realize that our “huge” salaries are diminished on a monthly basis by housing costs and taxes.