California Dream Machine — The New 4th Largest Economy on Earth

Roll out, my friends, roll out across the oil-slicked highways of the mind to the land of golden grids, where the sun’s got teeth and the strip malls hum a soft electric hymn. California, the mystic land of oranges, avocados, and algorithms, of surfboards and servers, where the Pacific kisses Silicon with the same salt-lipped lust it gave to Charlie Chaplin and Jim Morrison and Joan Didion under the same endless blue sky.

We’ve Reached $4.1 Trillion

That’s a T. A big one. Four-point-one-trillion U.S. of A. dollars, nominal GDP, the newest number hot off the press like some steaming pie from a diner in Barstow, and with that, the Golden State — yes, the state, not the nation — has leapfrogged Japan. Japan! The old techno-wizard of the East, neon castles and bullet trains and Mount Fuji zen. California passed it like a cherry ’57 Bel Air with a lead foot on Highway 1.

Now it’s official: California is the fourth largest economy in the world.

Take a breath. Let it hit you like a cool breeze off Big Sur cliffs.

Only the U.S. (yes, the whole thing), China, and Germany stand taller. But California, this swaggering paradox of wealth and wildfire, this sprawl of San Francisco…