Another example: Japan has many quakes per year and has a strangely high percentage of the world's active volcanos. People have lived there for a very long time, built to accommodate it (both traditionally, using timber and expecting to rebuild often, or with modern earthquake-hardened architecture), and is now a top five economy by GDP.

And, well, most of the US is just a hanger-on to California's economy.

> In 2023, California's gross domestic product (GDP) was about $3.9 trillion, comprising 14% of national GDP ($27.7 trillion). Texas and New York are the next largest state economies, at 9% and 8%, respectively.[1]

CA is a huge economy but by no means is the US just CA + 49 other states. Might be fairer to say it’s CA+NY+TX+FL but at that point you’re just aggregating the population.

[1]:https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-economy/