GDP is a flawed way of measuring quality of life in many regards:

 - If a window were to be broken, and replaced a few days later, this would be measured as a positive in GDP, yet the quality of life has not increased, in fact, for the days in which the window was missing, it would have decreased. The same goes for any maintenance or repair work.

lol...that was pretty fun. USA is a GDP beast.

Its a shame that the national debt is now bigger than the GDP for a whole year. Basically USA and every citizen has to work for a whole year for free to pay it off...

Here is a fun fear mongering site - http://www.usdebtclock.org/

But USA is not as bad as some other countries, like Japan or Greece...

Your public spending is $3.5 trillion?!

That's $10,000 per capita.

Britain's public spending is about £8500, or $13,400.

You're nearly as high as us.

I'm beginning to understand the Tea Party's popularity. We have to charge 61% top-rate tax to make up for our spending...

A table you might find interesting:

Source: http://www.adamsmith.org/tax-freedom-day/

Basically, this year, the average worker will have to work until May 30th before he's paid off the tax man, 3 days longer than last year (the extra three days come from the VAT increase).

I am a resident of California, the world's 8th largest economy.Formerly a resident of Oregon and their fine higher education system, but California born and raised.

Source: http://econpost.com/californiaeconomy/california-economy-ranking-among-world-economies

I am not going to address this nonsense of California going the way of Greece. We have enough right leaning California haters writing for the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Weekly Standard. They gladly prop up welfare states like Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi because they are solid Republican states, but forget that Democratic states such as California and New York are subsidizing those God fearing, welfare Republican states via Federal tax dollars.

Source: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html

Source: http://scatter.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/red-state-blue-state-welfare-state-subsidizing-state/

Regarding state bankruptcy, it is a political canard aimed to defund and disempower the 1st Amendment rights of citizens in each state to "peaceably assemble" in unions. Republicans and tea baggers want this state bankruptcy legislation to pass so that states would have to dissolve public employee unions in order to cut budgets, cut consitutionally (state) protected public employee pensions, and allow Republican interest groups to fill the power vacuum leftover from the dissolved. overwhelmingly Democratic public employee unions.

The problem is, Obama has the "shut the eff up" card AKA the presidential veto. In order to override a presidential veto, there needs to be a two-thirds vote of both chambers of the US Congress meaning Republicans need 292 House members (They currently have 242 vs. 193 Dem) and 67 of the 100 US Senators to vote yes in overturning a presidential veto.

In the end, this is shameless political theatre just like the repeal of Obama's healthcare bill. They know Obama has the "shut the eff up" card, they don't have any meaningful influence with enough Democrats to overturn a veto, and they hope they can drag it out on Fox News well until the 2012 election. Well baby, it ain't going to happen, plenty of news between now and then.

Source: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/pdf/con001.pdf

Your public spending is $3.5 trillion?!

That's $10,000 per capita.

Britain's public spending is about £8500, or $13,400.

You're nearly as high as us.

I'm beginning to understand the Tea Party's popularity. We have to charge 61% top-rate tax to make up for our spending...

This is all correct except when you say "your".

I'm Canadian...

Our national debt is only around 500 billion ish...pfft...small change compared to our mamoth 1.3 trillion GDP. :)

Please come run our country. Our Conservatives are liberal socialists and you don't even want to know about the Labour Party.

As long as California controls the tech industry, entertainment industry, and has copious amounts of farmland, their economy isn't going anywhere. Thinking that they're going to slide to a GDP comparable to second-rate nations is laughable.

Will two of those three still be around when the market crashes.  Tech and Hollywood are just there because they want to be... and because of prestige.  If the bills get too expensive... it wouldn't be too hard to move.