california king snaketvtv

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California cleaving, an animated infographic. Splitting up the golden state isn't easy.

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Splitting up the Golden State isn't easy. California's the most popular state in the Union - home to one out of every eight Americans. It's also the richest with a GDP of around two trillion dollars - that's more than India and almost as big as Russia.

There have long been calls to chop it up, most recently by a gadfly Silicon Valley investor, into areas called:

1.) Jefferson - sparsely populated with tiny Reading as its largest city.

2.) Northern California - perhaps keeping Sacramento, the state capital, as its seat of power.

3.) Silicon Valley - based around San Jose this already considers itself a land apart anyway.

4.) Central California - centered on Fresno, currently the state's fifth largest city of half a million.

5.) West California - with LA the biggest city which would be the most populous of the new states.

6.) And Southern California - based around the coastal city of San Diego.

Two of the new States would be America's richest and poorest by income per person, beating Connecticut and Mississippi for the titles. most of the others are around the American average of forty-four thousand dollars a year.

By population the speculative states would range between fewer than a million to more than 10 million - the others are closer to the American median of around five million.

But breaking up is hard to do. The public university system is clustered in just a handful of places. Water, always a tricky topic in the West, is most in-demand where it's least in supply. And it would present electoral college problems because it would divide one blue state into areas of red republicanism. But for the idea to fly it needs the support of Californians, the state legislature, and the American Congress and that, as they say, ain't gonna happen.

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The week ahead: February 2nd 2014 The games within the Games. The IAEA questions Iran's nuclear programme, Costa Rica and El Salvador go to the polls, the Superbowl and Sochi kick off and Christie's auctions pricey modern art. For more video content from The Economist visit our website: http://econ.st/LqD4Xd