Maixembourg

January 14, 2011 3:08 PM

Which countries match the GDP and population of America's states?
posted by jjray (46 comments total)

Take that, comrade!
posted by dougrayrankin at 3:11 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

California needs to separate. Also, the comparison of Michigan and Taiwan is so funny. One is built on the future, the other the past.
posted by GuyZero at 3:13 PM on January 14, 2011

California needs to separate. Also, the comparison of Michigan and Taiwan is so funny. One is built on the future, the other the past

WTF Mate?!
posted by dougrayrankin at 3:18 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

California needs to separate.

Why? So it can be more like Italy?
posted by The World Famous at 3:20 PM on January 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is awesome. Not in the least because it finally puts the two oil oligarchs in bed together. Hey Texas, Putin does look good on a horse!
posted by nickrussell at 3:23 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

What's also interesting about this, as well as the Michigan-Taiwan comparison, is that most of the GDP produced by the U.S. is also consumed by people in the United States. We generally make stuff for ourselves. Case in point: The U.S. is the world's third-largest producer of oil. It is also the top importer. We drill for oil. And then we burn it.

Compare that to, say, China, which has a big GDP and relatively tiny per capita income. Or Taiwan, for that matter. Taiwan may be "built for the future," but right now the people of Michigan make stuff and buy stuff.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:24 PM on January 14, 2011 [5 favorites]

Angola? That's where I'm a New Mexican!
posted by vorfeed at 3:29 PM on January 14, 2011 [3 favorites]

No wonder the Merrimack sank - it had screen doors.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:34 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'd be more interested in the which countries have the same per capita GDP/GSP as US states comparison.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:35 PM on January 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

Kind of disappointed that Georgia is Austria instead of Georgia.
posted by bobo123 at 3:35 PM on January 14, 2011 [7 favorites]

...it finally puts the two oil oligarchs in bed together.

Three, Texas matches Russia in GDP and Saudi Arabia in population.

I can't laugh too much; California is Italy in GDP and Poland in population. Well, maybe I should laugh, we've got the best ethnic jokes!

Oddest thing on the GDP map: Arizona, Colorado, Indiana and Minnesota all match up with Thailand. Siamese Quatuplets!
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:36 PM on January 14, 2011

most of the GDP produced by the U.S. is also consumed by people in the United States

Yes, the US has a bunch of odd things about it. It's the only western nation to maintain an above-replacement-level birth rate. It's economy is not export-driven - certainly compared to China, Japan and Germany which are very dependent on exports. France and Italy I dunno, but once you get back to Brazil, Canada & Russia it's back to being very export-oriented. For whatever reason these two groups are also clumped together by export type - China, Japan and Germany export manufactured goods while Canada, Brazil and Russia export primarily commodities.

And much of it ends up in the US.
posted by GuyZero at 3:36 PM on January 14, 2011

What the hell did Washington do wrong to end up as Greece?
posted by Artw at 3:37 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm from Yemont or is it Vermen?
posted by Xurando at 3:37 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Welcome to Montana, the Lebanon GDP matching state
posted by the noob at 3:40 PM on January 14, 2011

The power of the American economy is pretty spectacular - and scary. Not only is the GDP huge, but the stock exchanges in NYC and the FX and Commodity exchanges in Chicago are levers of enormous power. A guy sitting at a trading desk in Chicago can bury a small country if he decides to take a short position on their currency or a key commodity.
posted by helmutdog at 3:48 PM on January 14, 2011 [4 favorites]

It's hard to compare a state to a country, but the CA ~ Italy is interesting in another way - both have serious fiscal problems, debt and budget deficits. For CA the deficit is about $28-29 billion. I wonder how this compares to Italy, and as a percentage of revenue in the respective economies.
posted by VikingSword at 3:51 PM on January 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

"And much of it ends up in the US."

That's why the financial affairs of the United States are still so important to everyone else in the world. It isn't quite as overwhelmingly dominant as it once was, but the US economy still drives the global economy.
posted by Kevin Street at 3:53 PM on January 14, 2011

Arizona, Colorado, Indiana and Minnesota all match up with Thailand. Siamese Quatuplets!

I see what you did there.

It's quadruplets, though.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:55 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

One more thing that Mississippi and Bangladesh have in common, it seems.
posted by sy at 3:56 PM on January 14, 2011

Illinois = Turkey?

I KISS YOU
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:58 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Look, I know they call Portland "little Beirut" and all but we're not supposed to actually be Lebanon.
posted by cortex at 4:00 PM on January 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

In soviet Texas, Aggie make joke at YOU.
posted by cmoj at 4:03 PM on January 14, 2011 [13 favorites]

I think I'm going to be getting into a pissing match on Wikipedia over relevant page revisions with a user TPaine 1776 (actually the full first name, but I don't want him to search me out here). I have my suspicions about how that's going to go.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:05 PM on January 14, 2011

I can't laugh too much; California is Italy in GDP and Poland in population. Well, maybe I should laugh, we've got the best ethnic jokes!

One of my Italian friends who's niece married a Polish man made a crack on their wedding day, something like Made him an offer he couldn't understand.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:08 PM on January 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

The Finland I live in has the population of Paraguay. Weeeeeird.
posted by limeonaire at 4:16 PM on January 14, 2011

What the hell did Washington do wrong to end up as Greece?

What the hell did Greece do wrong to fail to outpace a middling state on the wrong side of the North American continent?

Greece. Cradle of civilization. At the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East. Spared the full brunt of the destruction of World War II ...

... getting spanked by Washington, which up until the 1980s was mostly just Boeing and a bunch of lumberjacks.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:17 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

You've, um, not been keeping up to date much on the current economic state of Greece, have you?
posted by Artw at 4:19 PM on January 14, 2011

New Australyork! Meetup?
posted by Ritchie at 4:22 PM on January 14, 2011

You've, um, not been keeping up to date much on the current economic state of Greece, have you?

Oh, I have. But I'm saying that historically, Greece had just as much capability as similarly sized European countries. In 1889, Greece had been independent of Ottoman rule for about 50-something years. At that time, it could have been just as economically powerful as, say, Italy.

In 1889, the state of Washington was finally admitted to the United States, and then only to keep it out of the hands of the British once and for all.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:29 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Welcome to Utah. We're like Ukraine, but they have better booze.
posted by TooFewShoes at 4:40 PM on January 14, 2011

Yes, the US has a bunch of odd things about it. It's the only western nation to maintain an above-replacement-level birth rate.

Indeed, but much of that is the result of immigration, and though it's not obvious considering the very high density of major US cities, the US is actually underpopulated in proportion to its land mass. If you're interested in the economics of US demography then this non-partisan study (pdf) from the Social Security Advisory Board is a must-read. The fireworks come near the end. An update from last month (also pdf) provides more accurate financial projections but doesn't address demographics/immigration explicitly.

Charts 6 & 7 in that last link bother me, because although I hope to keep working at something I enjoy until I die, under normal assumptions I hit retirement age the same year that social security runs short of cash.
posted by anigbrowl at 4:50 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is approximately equivalent to What fits into Russia?
posted by caffeine_monkey at 5:01 PM on January 14, 2011 [4 favorites]

Florida, appropriately as the Netherlands. Under Rick Scott, we may go underwater even faster.
posted by toodleydoodley at 5:04 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Are there two places more opposite on this map than Massachusetts and Saudi Arabia?

I like how they compared Mississippi to Bangladesh. Way to twist the knife.
posted by JohntheContrarian at 5:05 PM on January 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

"One more thing that Mississippi and Bangladesh have in common, it seems."

Literacy rates?
posted by klangklangston at 5:25 PM on January 14, 2011

Carry me back to old Polandy.
There's where the cotton and corn and taters grow.
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime.
There's where this old darky's heart am long to go.
posted by pracowity at 6:55 PM on January 14, 2011

One more thing that Mississippi and Bangladesh have in common, it seems.

What do Miss. and Bangladesh have in common other than lots of brown people? there is a more complete list on wikipedia and Mississippi is closer to Kazakhstan in GDP...

also, apparently Wash. D.C. has a bigger GDP than Nebraska or New Mexico or Mississippi for that matter, but what does DC produce? For a nominally integrated economy like the U.S. I'm not convinced that GSP computed from industry/income (which is what state GDP is) is comparable to national GDP.
posted by ennui.bz at 6:56 PM on January 14, 2011

Color me surprised that Italy has almost double the GDP of Russia.
posted by anarch at 7:02 PM on January 14, 2011

Connecticut = UAE?

Yeah, that's about right.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:11 PM on January 14, 2011

It's kind of sobering to look at something like this. Even with the economic hit we've taken over the past ten years or so, which had thrown so many millions of American lives into disarray and caused such incredible concern among our body politic, we're still the world's undisputed economic titan.
Even Michigan, which (having lived there) is in serious economic trouble, is on a part with a country that's been a byword for economic growth and modernization for the past twenty years. The nation which we spent fifty years regarding as our superpower competitor only has the economic heft of our second biggest state.
I'm not sure that the feeling I have about this can be called pride - more like awe, the sort of thing you feel when you see the Great Wall of China, or the aftermath of a tsunami, or a flyby satellite picture of Jupiter's Big Red Spot. It just makes you stop and contemplate something that seems bigger than anything has any right to be.

Of course, if the Eurozone would just adopt that damn constitution, they'd fly right past us.
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:39 PM on January 14, 2011

New York State has approximately 1/3 of the population of France (c. 19.3m vs. 62.7m) and about 1/2 of France's economy ($1.09 trillion vs. $2.2 trillion).
posted by knoyers at 1:21 AM on January 15, 2011

Oklahoma? Seriously?
posted by signal at 7:31 AM on January 15, 2011

Well, speaking of Michigan vs. Taiwan: trajectory matters.
posted by sonic meat machine at 11:16 AM on January 15, 2011

AdamCSnider: It's kind of sobering to look at something like this. Even with the economic hit we've taken over the past ten years or so, which had thrown so many millions of American lives into disarray and caused such incredible concern among our body politic, we're still the world's undisputed economic titan.

Too big too fail?
posted by hambone at 5:56 PM on January 15, 2011

the US is actually underpopulated in proportion to its land mass I don't think that really takes into account how much of the west is nearly uninhabitable desert.
posted by flaterik at 4:38 PM on January 16, 2011