• EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 days ago

    People and businesses located in California buy goods and services, and produce goods and services that are sold both in the local region and abroad. This exchange of goods and services is frequently called an “economy”.

    The economic activity within the state of California would make it the 4th largest economy in the world if it were an independent country, and it is the largest subregional economy in the world.

        • artyom@piefed.social
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          5 days ago

          Being big does not make it exclusive. You can move to Texas and still buy and sell all the things in California.

          • sportsjorts@lemmy.zip
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            5 days ago

            It’s not exclusive (in the sense that no economy in the U.S. is totally isolated) and companies relocate to Texas frequently. But there is a huge advantage to having physical proximity to the largest customer base in America and the tax credits that you can get for specific items and services.

            Also California is one of those American cornerstones of worldwide and domestic mythology. It occupies a conceptual and environmentally appealing aspect of people’s minds and is a highly sought out destination. And Texas really doesn’t have the same sheen to it.

            • artyom@piefed.social
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              5 days ago

              were they don’t have to deal with all those pesky “regulations” because Texas is insane most of the time.

              Huh? I think you have those backwards. That’s precisely why there’s a giant migration to Texas. Taxes and regulations.

              • sportsjorts@lemmy.zip
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                5 days ago

                You’re right. I mindlessly write out that sentence. My brain is mush from work. It was part of another thought that exploded on takeoff.

          • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 days ago

            I see, so you understand that an economy exists, but not that it has many different interlocking pieces that can be examined in different ways. Let me see if I can break it down for you:

            When you spend money at the store, when the store pays its employees, or when it buys goods from other vendors, are all examples of what is often referred to as “economic activity”. This can take many different forms at many different scales, in much the same way that a walk around the block is not considered an international flight.

            For example, you go to the store and purchase a head of lettuce to make a salad. The store buys that lettuce from a local vendor who gets it from a local farm. That entire chain of transactions would be considered part of the “local economy”.

            The fact that the US buys more than half of its aluminum from Canada would be considered “international economics” as the transactions involved take place between two different countries. In this way, you can examine different economics from as small a scale as you buying eggs from your neighbor who has chickens to the macro-economics of multinational corporations dictating the stupid price of RAM by effectively buying goods that don’t exist with money that doesn’t exist while handing the same 20 dollars back and forth to inflate their stock value to a disgusting degree. Hell, you can even pick out specific sectors, like with the aluminum example: when Trump started his pissing contest with Canada with tariffs, the American car manufacturing industry said that tariffs on aluminum would cause them to shut down plants within 6 weeks.

            So when we talk about the economy of California, people are talking about the farms, the restaurants, the businesses that exist in the state. The people who work and live there, and the money that flows between them all. If these companies were to pull out of California, they’d be leaving all of that behind. Even ignoring the idea of the loss of sales, they’d also be losing the experience and skill of the people that they employ in the state, and the “value” of the property that they have there - whether that’s real estate or more logistics based like renting storage for goods or the cost of transportation from a manufacturing facility in a new location.

            • artyom@piefed.social
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              5 days ago

              None of that answered my question. Unless you mean to suggest that billionaires will pay $50M+ for California lettuce.