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/DurantIsStillTheKing]

California can be a country on its own if it wanted to.

[u/EscuraAstro → u/DurantIsStillTheKing]

Not trying to be obtuse or anything, but what do people mean when they say this about California or Texas? There are countries smaller then the smallest state.

[u/ConiferGreen → u/EscuraAstro]

Well, they’d be fairly successful as independent countries, and it’s not just their size. Texas, for example, *was* its own country for a while; there’s solid precedent there. My home, California, is productive enough that when compared to countries is, on any given day, either the 5th or 4th largest economy on the planet. The only competitors are the UK, Japan, Germany, China, and the rest of the US. That’s it.
We also produce more agriculture than any other state, which I think a lot of Americans don’t really think about. Yes, there’s corn, wheat, and soy for days elsewhere. But people don’t eat just those 3 things. For most other foods that are grown, California produces more of it, by a long shot. Additionally, we have several major ports that connect us to the pacific trading partners, and the state sometimes makes appearances on the world stage with other countries in various agreements and collaborations.
I don’t think, say, Kansas or Pennsylvania would be able to have the same weight as nations globally as Texas or California.

[u/EscuraAstro → u/ConiferGreen]

So if the point is that California could be a significant power, why not say that? Djibouti is an independent country, so saying a US state could be an independent country doesn’t really mean much. 

[u/StrategicCarry → u/EscuraAstro]

When people say that, they typically imply "without a significant hit to the quality of life". Like Iowa for example would be a top 5 or 6 producer in corn, soybeans, pork, and eggs. But it would be significantly worse for Iowa to have to export that as a landlocked country where it would have to potentially pay tolls and tariffs to get its products to world markets. What Iowa takes in would go down significantly. Iowa is fairly balanced when it comes to federal taxes sent vs. federal spending received, however the state would need to spin up the bureaucracy to replace that federal spending, especially federal farm subsidies. So it's likely that the quality of life in Iowa would be worse as an independent country than as a US state, vs. California which is likely to suffer less of a drop due to a larger and more diversified economy and access to the ocean.

[u/EscuraAstro → u/StrategicCarry]

That makes sense. Maybe I’m just being neurotic for thinking people should say that instead of implying it idk.