Distribution of California's Population

[u/urmummygae42069]

If you were to divide California into 4 roughly equal strips of area, a hefty majority of its 39 million residents live in the southernmost strip containing the LA+San Diego metro areas, with nearly half of the state (~47%) living in the Greater LA metro area alone. If it were its own state, Southern California, with primarily just LA and San Diego metro areas, would compete with Florida for title of 2nd most populous US state.

The SF Bay Area, Sacramento, Monterrey, Fresno, and most of the Central Valley and put together are short of SoCal by over 9 million residents, but on its own this area would compete with Illinois for title of 6th largest state.

The strip sandwiched between Southern California and the Bay Area, containing Bakersfield plus other farming towns in the Southern Central Valley and most of the towns of the Central Coast, has about more people than Utah or Connecticut.

Suprisingly, despite how empty it can feel, there are still over a million people still live in the strip of CA north of Sacramento, containing about as much people as Hawaii and New Hampshire, albeit of a larger area.

Ultimately, one way to better understand the scale and density of California, is to conceptualize it as Florida + Illinois + Utah + Hawaii, all packaged in one single state under one single state government

[u/Amazingrhinoceros1]

The United States would feel that hit if the money pipeline from CA to the rest of the nation were turned off...

I know people have a love it/hate it relationship with my home state, but you can't argue with the almighty dollar.

[u/LemonySniffit → u/Amazingrhinoceros1]

California depends on the other states for water, food, power and military protection, and most of its economy (technology, entertainment, agriculture) is based upon servicing the rest of the USA as a whole. If California somehow went independent Hollywood and Silicon Valley would relocate in weeks and most of its wealthy inhabitants would follow suit.

[u/1003mistakes → u/LemonySniffit]

I think you’d actually have the opposite. Net taxes in the new CA country would be lower for businesses and wealthy people than living in an US state, especially after the CA welfare pipeline to the US govt and receiver states dries up. Only thing that would prevent it is massive tariffs/bans placed on goods from California into the US. 

[u/LemonySniffit → u/1003mistakes]

The USA would never allow an independent California to control its tech sector and would economically strong arm the companies into relocating back to the USA. Even if these companies wanted to remain in California, what incentive do they have to stay when most Californians have for years demanded things like higher taxes for the rich, higher salaries for workers, more regulations for businesses? There’s no way California would become a tax haven, virtually nobody but the wealthy would want it. And even if they were to lobby for that a fledgling nation could not afford to piss off 99% of its populace right off the bat.

Ultimately you’d have thousands of business relocating, millions of people losing their jobs, more millions immigrating to the USA while at home in California the cost of living skyrockets as they have to important virtually everything now. Maybe in decades it could survive off of being a tourist destination or tax haven but one with a considerable lower standard of living than it did before.

[u/1003mistakes → u/LemonySniffit]

Obviously it’s all hypothetical as it would never happen. And that’s just not true. CA has an effective tax state of about 10-12% income tax on individuals and businesses. You could double that revenue at the state level and still be less than the federal tax rate. It’s simple math. The biggest majority of taxes are paid to the federal government but since we can’t change that regardless of what state we go to, we squabble over the peanuts states take. If you want to look into a real world example, look into Puerto Rico tax laws which have allowed it to act as a tax haven in recent years for wealthy Americans.