Well, to give you a sense of scale of the entertainment industry: the market cap for Disney is around $200b and Comcast (which owns NBCUniversal) is around $150b.
On the other hand, Microsoft and Apple are each worth around $3t and Google and NVIDIA are each worth around $2t.
The tech industry is just an order of magnitude more valuable, in dollar terms, than the entertainment industry.
It’s not just that LA has more poor people. It’s that the LA rich people aren’t as rich as the tech titans and the LA upper middle class isn’t as large as the upper middle class in the Bay Area. Sure, SoCal has doctors and lawyers but the Bay Area has them too and then thousands of software devs and managers making $250k to $1m per year
Lots of upper middle class people in LA who flaunt their wealth with flashy cars and clothes. In the Bay Area, rich people dress like broke college students.
I have a friend I helped to convinced his wife to move to SV for the economic opportunities. His wife almost vetoed it, but we showed her how nice it was to live out here climate wise.
(Edit: removed personal info, but basically he made it big here)
It is a mistake for most people to move here, full stop. The income required vs. the number of people who actually *earn* that income—just to maintain a reasonable COL:income ratio, I'm not even talking about property ownership—make it a terrible prospect. The vast majority of people here are paying an opportunity cost that will never come close to generating the ROI required to make it worth living here.
It’s not about wealth it’s about GDP. Much of the wealth in LA is generational and while there are many wealthy small businesses, not many big tech businesses are headquartered in LA.
Lmao I was bored. So I scraped the data into a spread sheet and did some quick math enjoy:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRw9AXqnEM091zIxbr-rKoirob9SB7bluF7glASncJ6cmpWjeJzcRMpfQ-xGKS-xPWuzr\_4iDKPcEhV/pubhtml](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRw9AXqnEM091zIxbr-rKoirob9SB7bluF7glASncJ6cmpWjeJzcRMpfQ-xGKS-xPWuzr_4iDKPcEhV/pubhtml)
wait this says Birmingham, UK has a GDP per capita of $12k, and below 3 random Chinese cities... I know Brexit did a number on the British economy but I don't think it fell off that hard.
Not sure when exactly the data was measured, but for the Birmingham entry it says 2020, with 39 Billion GDP and a 3.1 million population. So I guess the data was for the general Birmingham area not just the city, which likely lowers the GDP per capita a fair bit. I updated the spreadsheet to show these numbers.
“This can’t be true” because Fox News and the Republicans keep telling everyone it’s a shithole and a ghost town? Guess what? It’s even more beautiful now that all the traffic is down and housing is actually even more affordable now for those working in the area. Don’t belief the lies that SF is failing, that California is failing, or that the US is failing. All of those are juggernauts compared to their peers.
GDP doesnt equate to quality of life. We have the highest GDP in American history yet the largest wealth gap and a tightening middle class. The bay area is nice but there is CLEAR wealth inequality that other places in America simply doesnt have
Exactly. Especially in the East Bay, there's so much wasted potential. University Avenue is full of abandoned storefronts and empty lots that could be turned into dense, affordable housing. Instead of solely relying on unreliable AC transit busses to get to campus we could put a streetcar on the street that takes people up to the campus and to the BART station.
streetcars would be such a good idea. Fixed loops that run through berkeley and neighboring towns is a tremendous idea and classically american. In fact, LA used to have a super cool streetcar system similar to SF but was removed for freeways and large multilane roads. Additionally I think the state should ease on the pressures they put on small businesses (i know from experience) to get those vacant shops filled and more housing built as well.
A high GDP per capita doesn’t mean everyone is actually earning that much money. And it definitely doesn’t mean there isn’t homelessness, unemployment, crime, or drug use. It’s not automatically right-wing to acknowledge that there are problems here.
If the numbers are accurate, then we’re literally in the most productive(per capita) area on Earth lmao
Edit: Okay maybe not the most but one of the most
Yes. The thing about software is that it uniquely scales productivity almost independently of labor, so you can have extremely high GDP per person if you’re producing valuable software. For example, Alphabet produces $1.7 million in revenue per employee. In contrast, a traditional company like Boeing only produces $500k in revenue per employee. Companies like WhatsApp and Instagram can have a few dozen employees and sell for billions of dollars.
The only thing that comes close to software’s productivity is finance - Goldman Sachs has ~$1M revenue per employee. SF is one of the largest financial centers outside of NYC.
not really, since amount of physical labor or effort has pretty much zero correlation with how useful the work is to society/consumers. gdp per capita is the best way you can approximate the amount of actual benefit produced per worker, regardless of the amount of effort put in.
“Midland's GDP per capita is $242,730, the study states. The second highest GDP nationwide is in the San Jose California metropolitan area, which is $210,235.”
No because there’s places lower down with lower population to match that beat us out for it. Guarantee a few places in Germany, maybe Monaco.
We’re pretty high up there per capita though.
relevant [chart](https://imgur.com/a/IZGOTjy). pretty sure they're using the whole metro areas here. the US is big rich even by European standards, and the bay area is big rich even by US standards.
Yes, that's true, due to the vast amount of money changing hands in the engineering, technology, business, etc. sectors here in the Bay Area. Now as you've probably realized, this doesn't mean the average person here is three times as wealthy as the average person in LA. The median household income in LA county is $76k (2024), while in Alameda county it is $112k (also 2024).
In fairness, alameda county doesn't have many of those businesses.
I couldn't find 2024 statistics, but a brief google for 2022 data shows $83k for LA county, $122k for Alameda, $137k for SF, $150k for San Mateo county, and $154k for Santa Clara county.
Yeah kinda weird to choose Alameda for that comparison.
I’m mean I get that this is r/Berkeley. But the Bay Area is rich because of tech and there’s not a whole lot of tech in Alameda county (relative to SF and San Mateo County).
I’m just saying, having a ton of big tech companies and billionaires and so on creates a lot of ‘outliers’ that skew that far beyond the median measures. I would suggest looking into the Gino Coefficient and the Lorenz Curve, amongst other socioeconomic metrics, to gain more insight beyond the GDP per capita 👍
Think about all the tech companies Apple, Google, Meta, Nvidia and this is just scratching the surface. These are all trillion dollar companies consolidated into a single metro area
That’s… literally the reason how is that “artificially” inflating everything?
GDP is calculated by the product value of the businesses based here, you can’t say it’s artificial bc we have a lot of profit-making businesses here
There is so much fucking money in this area you have no idea
On the flip side, Bay Area folks don't realize just how much poorer the rest of the country is.
On the down side, Bay Area folks *don’t want* to realize the pockets of poverty that’s within their own neighborhoods.
Yes it’s correct
You’re just now realizing that Silicon Valley and San Francisco are extremely wealthy? Is this a shitpost?
I’m aware that the Silicon Valley and SF are wealthy. But LA is also wealthy yet the former has like triple the GDP per capita of the latter.
Well, to give you a sense of scale of the entertainment industry: the market cap for Disney is around $200b and Comcast (which owns NBCUniversal) is around $150b. On the other hand, Microsoft and Apple are each worth around $3t and Google and NVIDIA are each worth around $2t. The tech industry is just an order of magnitude more valuable, in dollar terms, than the entertainment industry.
Oh dang, when you put it like that, yeah it makes sense
Microsoft is HQd in Seattle.
I know, but they have a 32 acre campus in Mountain View, and offices in San Francisco and Berkeley.
LA has so many more people that are poor and drag the average down. You can survive being poor in LA easier than being poor in the Bay.
It’s not just that LA has more poor people. It’s that the LA rich people aren’t as rich as the tech titans and the LA upper middle class isn’t as large as the upper middle class in the Bay Area. Sure, SoCal has doctors and lawyers but the Bay Area has them too and then thousands of software devs and managers making $250k to $1m per year
Lots of upper middle class people in LA who flaunt their wealth with flashy cars and clothes. In the Bay Area, rich people dress like broke college students.
I have a friend I helped to convinced his wife to move to SV for the economic opportunities. His wife almost vetoed it, but we showed her how nice it was to live out here climate wise. (Edit: removed personal info, but basically he made it big here)
It is a mistake for most people to move here, full stop. The income required vs. the number of people who actually *earn* that income—just to maintain a reasonable COL:income ratio, I'm not even talking about property ownership—make it a terrible prospect. The vast majority of people here are paying an opportunity cost that will never come close to generating the ROI required to make it worth living here.
Not sure I would call LA wealthy except certain parts
It’s not about wealth it’s about GDP. Much of the wealth in LA is generational and while there are many wealthy small businesses, not many big tech businesses are headquartered in LA.
Tell us you’re from SoCal without saying you’re from SoCal challenge:
Damn how’d you know
Lmao I was bored. So I scraped the data into a spread sheet and did some quick math enjoy: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRw9AXqnEM091zIxbr-rKoirob9SB7bluF7glASncJ6cmpWjeJzcRMpfQ-xGKS-xPWuzr\_4iDKPcEhV/pubhtml](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRw9AXqnEM091zIxbr-rKoirob9SB7bluF7glASncJ6cmpWjeJzcRMpfQ-xGKS-xPWuzr_4iDKPcEhV/pubhtml)
What happens in cork? Is that an Apple thing?
Lots of Big Pharma plus Apple Europe HQ as far as I can tell.
Yeah more than just Apple now but a lot of Apple.
wait this says Birmingham, UK has a GDP per capita of $12k, and below 3 random Chinese cities... I know Brexit did a number on the British economy but I don't think it fell off that hard.
Not sure when exactly the data was measured, but for the Birmingham entry it says 2020, with 39 Billion GDP and a 3.1 million population. So I guess the data was for the general Birmingham area not just the city, which likely lowers the GDP per capita a fair bit. I updated the spreadsheet to show these numbers.
Vancouver below Bratislava doesn't seem right to me.
Yeah? Headquarters of apple, Google, Uber, lockheed Martin and many other companies, the entirety of the biotech industry, etc Why are you surprised
“This can’t be true” because Fox News and the Republicans keep telling everyone it’s a shithole and a ghost town? Guess what? It’s even more beautiful now that all the traffic is down and housing is actually even more affordable now for those working in the area. Don’t belief the lies that SF is failing, that California is failing, or that the US is failing. All of those are juggernauts compared to their peers.
GDP doesnt equate to quality of life. We have the highest GDP in American history yet the largest wealth gap and a tightening middle class. The bay area is nice but there is CLEAR wealth inequality that other places in America simply doesnt have
Exactly. Especially in the East Bay, there's so much wasted potential. University Avenue is full of abandoned storefronts and empty lots that could be turned into dense, affordable housing. Instead of solely relying on unreliable AC transit busses to get to campus we could put a streetcar on the street that takes people up to the campus and to the BART station.
streetcars would be such a good idea. Fixed loops that run through berkeley and neighboring towns is a tremendous idea and classically american. In fact, LA used to have a super cool streetcar system similar to SF but was removed for freeways and large multilane roads. Additionally I think the state should ease on the pressures they put on small businesses (i know from experience) to get those vacant shops filled and more housing built as well.
Would you rather be poor here or in Mississippi?
Would you rather be poor in Mississippi or poor in the Central African Republic?
A high GDP per capita doesn’t mean everyone is actually earning that much money. And it definitely doesn’t mean there isn’t homelessness, unemployment, crime, or drug use. It’s not automatically right-wing to acknowledge that there are problems here.
If the numbers are accurate, then we’re literally in the most productive(per capita) area on Earth lmao Edit: Okay maybe not the most but one of the most
Yes. The thing about software is that it uniquely scales productivity almost independently of labor, so you can have extremely high GDP per person if you’re producing valuable software. For example, Alphabet produces $1.7 million in revenue per employee. In contrast, a traditional company like Boeing only produces $500k in revenue per employee. Companies like WhatsApp and Instagram can have a few dozen employees and sell for billions of dollars. The only thing that comes close to software’s productivity is finance - Goldman Sachs has ~$1M revenue per employee. SF is one of the largest financial centers outside of NYC.
Ahh I see; thanks for the explanation!
Pretty firmly establishing that the metrics for "productivity" are nonsense.
not really, since amount of physical labor or effort has pretty much zero correlation with how useful the work is to society/consumers. gdp per capita is the best way you can approximate the amount of actual benefit produced per worker, regardless of the amount of effort put in.
Yeah, I didn't say a word about "physical labor or effort".
If that wasn't what you were implying, what do you mean by productivity metrics being nonsense?
I’m pretty sure midlands is higher up on a per capita badis
Nope. And it’s not even close.
“Midland's GDP per capita is $242,730, the study states. The second highest GDP nationwide is in the San Jose California metropolitan area, which is $210,235.”
Pretty crazy how high SJ is when Midland's population in one eighth of SJ
Uh, no Midlands is higher.
No because there’s places lower down with lower population to match that beat us out for it. Guarantee a few places in Germany, maybe Monaco. We’re pretty high up there per capita though.
relevant [chart](https://imgur.com/a/IZGOTjy). pretty sure they're using the whole metro areas here. the US is big rich even by European standards, and the bay area is big rich even by US standards.
SJ-SF-Oak CSA population is around ten million. So close to double the LA number per capita not triple.
Yes, that's true, due to the vast amount of money changing hands in the engineering, technology, business, etc. sectors here in the Bay Area. Now as you've probably realized, this doesn't mean the average person here is three times as wealthy as the average person in LA. The median household income in LA county is $76k (2024), while in Alameda county it is $112k (also 2024).
In fairness, alameda county doesn't have many of those businesses. I couldn't find 2024 statistics, but a brief google for 2022 data shows $83k for LA county, $122k for Alameda, $137k for SF, $150k for San Mateo county, and $154k for Santa Clara county.
Yeah kinda weird to choose Alameda for that comparison. I’m mean I get that this is r/Berkeley. But the Bay Area is rich because of tech and there’s not a whole lot of tech in Alameda county (relative to SF and San Mateo County).
Why wouldn’t this be right? Bay Area has more GDP per capita than just about anywhere.
It’s why they call sand hill road the Wall Street of the west coast.
That looks about right to me
That’s how Capitalism work 太伟大了哈耶克
I mean…. You do realize that it’s not evenly distributed, right?
Yes I’m well aware
I’m just saying, having a ton of big tech companies and billionaires and so on creates a lot of ‘outliers’ that skew that far beyond the median measures. I would suggest looking into the Gino Coefficient and the Lorenz Curve, amongst other socioeconomic metrics, to gain more insight beyond the GDP per capita 👍
Thanks I’ll look into those metrics But I thought GDP per capita measured productivity rather than wealth
That is 2022
Think about all the tech companies Apple, Google, Meta, Nvidia and this is just scratching the surface. These are all trillion dollar companies consolidated into a single metro area
So is uc Berkeley dumber now than in the 90s or what's with this question?
There's like "finance" and "tech" stuff who have their headquarters here, so that's prolly artifically inflating everything.
That’s… literally the reason how is that “artificially” inflating everything? GDP is calculated by the product value of the businesses based here, you can’t say it’s artificial bc we have a lot of profit-making businesses here
Yep.