The headline metrics
People & economy
A war of attrition runs on people and production. Here's how the four corners stack up once you move the big metros — the Bay Area, Las Vegas, Northern Virginia, Houston — across the lines they actually straddle.
1 · Population, the headline
Corrected for the metro moves, the ranking is B > D > C > A. The Northeast holds more than a third of the contiguous population; the Northwest barely a tenth.
2 · Who punches above their weight?
GDP share divided by population share. Above 1.0, a corner produces more than its head-count implies. The Southwest — California plus Texas plus the tech coast — punches hardest above its weight; the Southeast, populous but poorer per head, falls furthest below it.
3 · The great inversion: land vs. people
The two western corners are 61% of the land but a third of the people. A floats far above the parity line — the empty quarter; B sits far below it — crowded and productive.
A · the Northwest in one picture. A tenth of the people on a third of the land — but every land-based ICBM field in the country sits up here (Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming). Can't field an army; starts the game holding the nukes. More on that →
4 · Fragility: is a corner one state in a trenchcoat?
Resilience is the inverse of concentration. Each bar is a corner's population split by member state.California is ~45% of the entire Southwest (HHI 0.34, easily the most concentrated) — a heavyweight with a glass jaw. The Northeast is the most balanced; New York is only 16% of it, so nothing decapitates it.
5 · Does the answer hold up?
Four ways of drawing the lines. State-level: no metro moves. Corrected: the base case. Texas Tier-2: Austin + Dallas also go to D. Swing-flip: every bisected state flips sides. B stays first in all four.
Every figure here is reproducible: quadrant_summary.csv,quadrant_states.csv,quadrant_corrections.csv, and thecompute.py that builds them.