The Incredible Economy of New York City

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Maybe there should be a separate city leaderboard, London, Seoul, Moscow, Lagos, ...so many wonderful places to explore

Something that you left out about New York is how its a part of the North East Corridor. While New York is definitely the biggest, the fact there are nearby major cities like Philadelphia and Boston, which have their own major ports, industries, and manufacturing, really adds a ton of synergy. In a lot of ways, it acts like one ginormous mega city

New York has done a great job of navigating through the last 200 years and maintaining its relevancy. It has fallen on some hard times in the past, and faced steep competition from growing metropolises both in the USA as well as abroad. It was really declining in the 70's until the early 90's but punched through it and got itself back on its feet. As far as its economic output in comparison with the rest of the state, Upstate NY really hasn't recovered from outsourcing. Rochester, Syracuse, Albany/Schenectady all used to be almost like the Sillicone Valley of 100 years ago. GE, Xerox, Kodak, etc. and more all called Upstate NY home, and much like the rust belt before them really took a huge hit when those companies left. I used to live in Upstate NY, and as much as some places try, they haven't meaningfully found a way to get anything really going. It's sad. And, much like the Jersey Shore, there's towns like Hudson and Kingston that used to have a lot of money because they were the city's upper class getaway towns, but really struggle with decline and declining populations. There's typically a lot of animosity between everything below the Tapanzee Bridge and everything above. It's codified in the fact that the vast majority of Upstate NY is bright red and poor, and the City is bright blue and isn't. It's been that way for most of the 42 years that I've been alive and I don't see it changing anytime soon.

It's interesting to consider how New York's, and the USA's histories would've been different if Governor DeWitt Clinton had not pushed for the Erie Canal. That enabled NYC to access the resource wealth of the country's interior. If the canal hadn't been built, the vast majority of that resource wealth would have gone down the Mississippi, and New Orleans would've been the greatest port in North America. New Orleans did ok, but the Canal transformed NYC into the major port for over a century and vastly changed the American economy. Without the canal, the South, and eventually, the Confederacy, would've been different too.

Three of the US's economic centers: New Year's wall street San Francisco's silicone valley Houston's refineries

You should make a different leaderboard for cities, since you seem to be exploring a lot lately. You can have them side by side at the end

The AI created stock images for factories was really weird.

I live in Brooklyn, and it's amazing how much construction I see in every borough. It seems any empty lot is built on quickly, and old, dilapidated buildings are torn down to build new apartment complexes, every chance they can. Lots of the warehouses that are closest to the city, don't even exist anymore, and are either torn down or converted into apartments. And the upgrades they did to La Guardia Airport are phenomenal and is now my goto over JFK. They also offer free bus service from the train to each terminal. One thing NYC doesn't do well is build many new houses, or condos/coops, which makes it very hard to own here. Even some old houses are torn down and replaced with apartment buildings. I guess that's one reason homes prices have gone up so much the past couple of decades

I visited NYC a few years ago. Couldn't believe how huge it was. I'm just not used to huge cities like it.

@4:32 One of those Lake Ontarios should be Lake Erie.

One possible explanation for NYC's economy being bigger than that of NYS is that the NYC metro by which that is measured also includes large swaths of likely the most economically productive areas of New Jersey and Connecticut as well.

As someone whose lived here (Queens) my entire life. This puts a smile on my face

If you made this video an hour long I'd love it even more

A little note though - Ports of LA and Long Beach are right next to each other. Like, literally one ends and other begins. I would argue that they should be counted together for statistical purposes.

They don't call it the empire state for nothing. Excellent as always

You should have an International City Leaderboard, that would be a great switch as you are starting to run out of countries. Keep up the great content! I watch all of your videos and have loved the two new channels!

The United States is the world's largest economy, almost predetermined by its massive abundance of agricultural land and industrial resources. New York City is its key port to Europe. Los Angeles is its key port to Asia.

We cannot underestimate NYC's influence on the world.

Hello! Longtime watcher first time commenting. I noticed some of the AI-generated images in this video. It helped illustrate the point during the manufacturing section, but aspects of some of the "people" were off enough that it bothered me enough to leave a comment. Thank you for making content, it has been excellent at increasing my understanding of economics and some of the counter-intuitive pressures at play!