Conveyor: the economy

Whereas most other countries have political, cultural and economic power concentrated in their national capital, those elements are distributed across the geographic vastness of the United States: political power is vested in Washington DC (purposely separated by the founders from the financial capital); the country’s financial centre is New York City; its technology hubs are Silicon Valley in California and Boston in Massachusetts; while Los Angeles (movies) and New York (theatre) vie for the title of cultural bastion. Perennial arguments debate whether the country’s best pizza is in New York or Chicago, with Los Angeles and Detroit recent contenders. 49 There are 3,982 degree-granting colleges in the United States, 1,625 of them public institutions. 50 Sixteen American universities are currently ranked in the world’s top 25, and they, too, bestride the whole country: Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Michigan and Washington state. 51