The Power of the Acela Corridor

Richard Florida:

The great cities of the Bos-Wash corridor comprise one of the most economically productive regions in the world, producing more the $2.5 trillion in economic output, more than the UK, Brazil, Russia or India. Together, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., attracted $7.5 billion in venture capital investment in 2011, just over a quarter of the national total.
The shift to urban tech can also be clearly seen across the Bos-Wash corridor. New York City alone attracted more than $2 billion in venture capital investment., mainly in midtown and Lower Manhattan. Cambridge, home to MIT and Harvard, attracted another billion, Boston $669 million, and D.C. another $600 million. Predominantly urban zip codes accounted for more than three-quarters of of all investments in greater New York, greater than 70 percent in the Boston metro, and more than two-thirds in greater D.C.

I'm sure that some of the folks at the fair would tell me that all those people would starve without all of us farmers, but I'd have to tell them that we'd die surrounded by giant piles of corn without them to buy our commodities.  Ag is a big business, but $2.5 trillion is a very large number (don't get me wrong, I don't consider most of the financial chicanery in New York to be real economic output, while that number counts it).