Despite all the critics, California could soon rise to the world’s 4th-largest economy. The state’s success will be judged by whether the Golden State outperforms the United States as a whole.
On the surface, California may have the worst public universities, but it’s hard to argue that the Golden State has outpaced the United States as a whole in terms of economic growth and job creation.
The last time a state with such a high unemployment rate did not have a significant economic growth rate was in 1942, the year the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor (see graph below).
The last time a state with such a high unemployment rate did not have a significant economic growth rate was in 1942, the year the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor (see graph below).
California consistently ranks in the middle of all states in terms of economic growth, as well:
The Golden State has been outperforming the nation in terms of economic growth in every single year that the Bureau of Economic Analysis has been tracking it from 1946 to today.
If you add up California’s economic growth in the first three-plus-years since the recession, it beats every single state save for Texas.
The most recent three-year period includes the second year of the recession, January 2009 to March 2010.
California’s economy is not only outperforming the nation as a whole but outperforms its peers, which is a much stronger argument, particularly considering that the Bureau of Economic Analysis is now downgrading California’s GDP growth rate from 2.5% to 1.2% in 2013.
Of course, this might be because the Bureau of Economic Analysis has been downgrading California’s GDP growth rate in the last three years.
Nevertheless, California is not only outperforming the United States as a whole — it is outperforming its peers.
The last time a state with such a high unemployment rate did not have a significant economic growth rate was during World War II.
California is only slightly better than the United States when it comes