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Location: northern Vermont - previously NM, WA, & MA
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Perfect example would be look at Canada. For decades Montreal had the lions share of Canada's finance, commerce trade, and the largest economy. In the 1970's Quebec started making a lot of noise about secession. So a huge segemtn of the industry and economy in Montreal said see ya, and moved to Toronto.
So like others have said, other cities will absorb what's left. Chicago has plenty of office space and is eager to build more.
CA and NY are America's cash cows when it comes to tax revenue and the economy. My answer: the U.S. could make it without the two, but it would be a much poorer country.
On a parallel note, as a Californian I wish my state would secede and become its own country so that we wouldn't be weighted down by a lot of the idiocy spreading across the land these days.
Location: Austin, TX/Chicago, IL/Houston, TX/Washington, DC
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The Philadelphia/Los Angeles economy thread just reminded me of this one. After looking at the large unemployment rate, I thought about how important Los Angeles really is to the country and how it's developing more prominence, and then this thread came up as a thought and I wanted to correct the error from my earlier post(s).
I just read my idiotic post from when this thread was created to now.
And my answer is no.
The financial sector would take such a major hit, that is NOT recoverable entirely. I know Chicago can pick up the pace as it's 5th in the world and 2nd in the USA for that and Boston 14th in the world and 3rd in the USA. But how much of New York City can you replicate entirely?
You can't even put together America's 2nd & 3rd cities to get a New York City (I have tried- in a thread), so it's something that would tear the country down, not by GDP measures but by overall importance and economic leadership globally.
And California, enough said, the state would have what, the 7th largest economy in the world if it were a country. So there is no point in even going there, hopefully they will always stay apart of the USA.
Where does the gdp go when California and New York leave? The USA doesn't pull much weight without them.
I agree. I also think this is why other parts of the country waste so much time bashing California and New York. Obviously these two are huge and important to the rest of America even if they don't admit it, there is some envy going on.
I should hope that New York and California do not "secede" as they are already "succeeding" as centers of culture in this nation.
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America's Cash Cows?
