
Map: US States Renamed as Countries with Similar GDPs - Four_Star
http://thesoundingline.com/map-of-the-day-us-states-renamed-for-countries-with-similar-gdps/
======
danielvf
From the original article and chart (not the current linked site):

> "California has a labor force of 19.3 million compared to the labor force in
> the UK of 33.8 million (World Bank data here). Amazingly, it required a
> labor force 75% larger (and 14.5 million more people) in the UK to produce
> the same economic output last year as California! ... Further, California as
> a separate country would have been the 5th largest economy in the world last
> year, ahead of the UK ($2.62 trillion), India ($2.61 trillion) and France
> ($2.58 trillion)."

~~~
mhandley
That shows the power of immigration. I'm not even talking about immigration
from outside the US, though that's significant too. California has such high
GDP per capita because it draws well educated people from the rest of the US.
If it was an independent country, it couldn't do that so easily.

~~~
zer00eyz
> I'm not even talking about immigration from outside the US...

Migration, or internal migration is probably a better term here.

It isn't just the migration either - it is the nature of what happens. The top
cities/areas for several industries are here, and many secondary ones as well.
Film production, software/web, lots of aerospace. It also helps that a fair
bit basic needs are provided back to the state by itself (Central Valley
farming).

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InitialLastName
Related to this, I've recently been mulling a similar comparison:

New Jersey is approximately the same area and population as Israel.

The joke in the anecdote is that the two regions' neighbors have similar
attitudes about them.

~~~
reaperducer
When I lived in PA, the joke was that New Jersey was a sand bar off the coast
of Pennsylvania.

~~~
InitialLastName
I used to "reflexively" apologize when I heard people grew up in NJ.

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peterburkimsher
That's a really nice map! I made some graphs today comparing Chinese dialects
(Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Minnan, Hakka, etc) to languages with a
similar number of speakers. When I write up a blog post about it, then I'll
share it here. (Hakka news on Hacker News!)

I also like this world map, scaled by population instead of land area. I think
it would be interesting to edit it with major cities, and also use it as a
base for other infographics.

[http://www.buzzhunt.co.uk/wp-content/2014/01/World-map-
sizes...](http://www.buzzhunt.co.uk/wp-content/2014/01/World-map-sizes.png)

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joeschmoe3
WOW... If you add up the population of the "similar GDP" countries its well
over a a BILLION people.

~~~
ReturnUD
Well, of course. It is us, "developing" nations' populace that gets the
shortest end of the stick with no hope and redemption in sight.

Honestly, injustice is just too great to bear. All you ever discuss is things
like 10% gender-gap in payouts for the people within your arbitrary borders,
yet the horrible exploitation inflicted on us by yourself is never ever
discussed.

~~~
adventured
Developing nations benefit from the US dramatically more than the US benefits
from developing nations. They get a massive, free technology transfer.

Or, see: China's several trillion dollar trade surplus with the US over the
last 20 years.

25% of Vietnam's entire economy is currently made up of US imports from their
nation, and it's almost all trade deficit for the US. Their economy is being
constructed by US capital and US consumers, enabling them to dramatically lift
their standard of living, exactly as China has.

Then we get to the free technology transfer, which enabled countries like
China to rapidly leap forward without having to invent much of anything new.
They get to focus on implementing things that are already known to work. The
US invented nearly all the modern tech infrastructure, the list is hilariously
long, here's the short version:

Internet, transistor, router, microprocessor, computer graphics, fiber optics,
ram, most operating system tech, Unix, computer networking, the mobile phone,
the smart phone, the hard drive, SSDs, the LCD, the LED, the laser, tcp/ip,
hypertext, C/C++/Java/JavaScript/Basic/etc., the digital camera, qwerty
keyboard, cable modem, the spreadsheet, the relational database, the fax
machine, the GPU, 3D graphics cards, ethernet, hypertext, the mouse, streaming
media, email, GPS, ecommerce.

Then we can go further back in time to all the older industrial technology
invented by the US and Western Europe, which developing nations have been able
to free ride over the last 50+ years.

And that's before we get to vaccines, medtech, biotech, pharma, genetech,
aerospace, vast free research & data, process knowledge, and on and on.

Oh the exploitation, make it stop.

------
vinceguidry
Wow. The _difference_ between California and its sister country, Great
Britain, is itself the size of Kuwait / Arkansas.

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fredley
I had no idea the disparity between the US and Russian economies was so huge!

~~~
themodelplumber
I didn't see Russia on the map, where did you find it?

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
It's in the text at the bottom:

"The economy of alleged US nemesis Russia is less than 9% as large as the US
economy and hasn’t grown consistently in years."

~~~
vkou
Russia has ~40% of the population of the US, and one major export - oil. Oil
in itself, surprisingly, does not contribute much to GDP[1] (Even though the
modern world is built on it).

Outside from the major metro areas, Russia does not have a extensive - or
expensive service economy, and it has very few exports. Between that, and the
petro-ruble suffering from oil shocks/sanctions, its GDP is, unsurprisingly,
quite low.

[1] Oil is, for example, 3% of Canada's GDP, but you wouldn't think it, given
how hard the federal government is trying to prop it up, at the expense of
other industries. Extracting it, like growing food, is an incredibly low-value
industry.

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jandrese
I'm surprised just how far up the chart the tiny 61 square mile city of
Washington DC is. A lot of the contractors are out in the 'burbs in different
states and a big chunk of that is taken up by disadvantaged neighborhoods. So
the concentration of wealth is even more extreme than it looks at first.

I'm guessing the majority of that is the millions of people on GSA payroll
sitting in office buildings all day. That and of course lawyers and lobbyists.

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ConceitedCode
Cached Version -
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pywLG4L...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pywLG4Ltc4AJ:thesoundingline.com/map-
of-the-day-us-states-renamed-for-countries-with-similar-
gdps/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=ubuntu)

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rayiner
It would also be interesting to see this chart with GDP per capita.

~~~
adventured
I won't do the map, but here are the reasonable direct comparisons in a list.
Where names are repeated it's because there are no other high enough unique
matches. It'd be difficult to do a nice map, because there aren't enough
comparables for all the states.

Updated to 2017 figures and rounded (for the US figures):

[https://i.imgur.com/u0FdDUt.png](https://i.imgur.com/u0FdDUt.png)

------
0003
Appears down:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pywLG4L...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pywLG4Ltc4AJ:thesoundingline.com/map-
of-the-day-us-states-renamed-for-countries-with-similar-
gdps/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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chvid
Why not do it by gdp pr capita?

~~~
dibstern
Totals are interesting. It tells you about things like the US’s power in
international trade, reminds is how big the US market is, why people focus on
it, etc.

It doesn’t mean GDP per capita isn’t interesting either, but they’re different
lenses used to view different things.

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tomatotomato37
It would be cool to expand this by comparing those states to their respective
countries in land area and population as well.

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fareesh
Hug of death?

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elvirs
holy cow america is mighty

~~~
curiousgal
This is the saddest part, America _is_ mighty but that doesn't translate into
the life quality of its citizens at all.

~~~
pluto9
How do you figure? I've been to both Iraq and Oklahoma, and I can tell you the
quality of life in Oklahoma is a hell of a lot better than Iraq, pre- or post-
war, in spite of their similar GDPs.

~~~
curiousgal
Well I've been to Scandinavia and despite the countries having less GDPs, the
quality of life, for the average citizen, is way higher.

~~~
alehul
As a Swede living in the United States, I can agree that the average person
has a higher quality of life in Scandinavia! I don't think it's possible to
have that in the States, though; the country doesn't seem meant for it.

The Scandinavian model relies on many incompatible tenets that could be
mentioned, including but not limited to immigration. The Swedish system is
already practically collapsing from its first major influx of immigrants ever.

If we want a country in which everyone is welcome, it can't be a country in
which we offer a fantastic quality of life automatically through living there.
I mean, not until we have some post-scarcity economy, at least.

Another issue is that maybe part of the States' success is related to having
more income to yourself, to spend at your discretion after taxes, rather than
it being spent for you by the government. It inspires a lot of immigration
from people with big ideas, and that could easily change if the U.S. surpasses
other countries in taxes.

I think there are models the U.S. should adopt from Scandinavia, however
they're smaller in scope and address efficiency with tax money. One example is
that all your income tax goes to the local government up until a certain point
(~65,000 USD?), and it's redistributed at that level, rather than being
siphoned through so many levels of bureaucracy like in the States. It's funny,
while being the polar opposite of the U.S. and its conservative values, Sweden
still manages a smaller federal government!

~~~
toomanybeersies
Australia is a nation of immigrants. About 30% of the Australian population
are immigrants, and rising. Less than 50% of Australians have both parents
born in Australia.

Australia still manages to have great quality of life (unless you are an
Aboriginal). I'm not sure how they manage it, I haven't looked into it, but
somehow they have.

~~~
adventured
They've managed it through the greatest major real estate bubble in modern
history (by a large margin).

Their housing market value as a share of GDP, is about 2.6x that of the US
rate.

[https://i.imgur.com/h0BOtzE.png](https://i.imgur.com/h0BOtzE.png)

The other thing has been the rise of China and selling them a vast supply of
commodities.

In 2002, Australia's GDP per capita was $20,000, while the US was $38,000. A
dramatic gap. China's GDP explosion began in 2003 (their economy went from
$1.4t in 2002 to $4.6t in 2008, and on upward from there). Australia's GDP
soared right along with China's economy.

------
peterwwillis
The article lists Russia as the US's "nemesis". "Competitor" or even "enemy"
would have been an appropriate designation, but "nemesis" means retribution,
justice, or vengeance. Exactly whom is seeking retribution against whom, and
for what?

Since the birth of the nation, Russia supported the US. It supported its
revolution and supported the Union during the civil war. It even sold Alaska
to the US. We brokered the end of the Russo-Japanese war, and about 3.3
million Russian Jews and Poles immigrated to the US by 1917. We then started
down the path of trying to support the anti-communists, which of course
backfired. We allied with the Soviets during WWII, but then we quickly started
the cold war and formed NATO.

Since then, the Soviet Union basically wanted to control eastern (and
possibly, eventually, all?) Europe, but it didn't work out, and the nations
they had absorbed along the way eventually became independent again. So now
their sphere of influence is smaller, but they still have a lot of nukes, and
neither of us trust each other.

I would call us "frenemies", perhaps (a bit like China). But we really don't
have some big grudge against each other. We're just two dicks who want to rule
the world.

~~~
hetman
Weird, I've never come across this usage of the word "nemesis" (although the
dictionary indicates it is correct). Still, I think the author would have been
using the more common meaning of the word "nemesis" as a rival one can not
defeat (or even in more dilute usage, simply a long standing rival).

~~~
reaperducer
_I think the author would have been using the more common meaning of the word
"nemesis"_

Or we can all be happy we learned something today and are a smidgeon smarter
than yesterday.

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purple-again
>> Nominal GDP per capita does not, however, reflect differences in the cost
of living and the inflation rates of the countries; therefore using a basis of
GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) is arguably more useful when
comparing differences in living standards between different nations.

If you live in a roach infested box in California you need to be putting
dollars in the bank and have an exit plan to take those dollars to somewhere
with a much lower COL someday, otherwise...you live in a roach infested box
with a very high GDP!

~~~
dpark
You do realize that most of California is not the Bay Area, right?

Also you sound pretty bitter. I never saw a roach when I lived in Mountain
View, though my apartment _was_ pretty small.

~~~
purple-again
Hmm not sure how you could take away such a poor interpratiaton of my comment.
I’m actually having a great day and one of the best years of my life.

At the time of my comment, very early in the submission, all of the other
comments were drawing false conclusions about what is being presented. GDP
comparisons tell you nothing about the lives of the people living in those two
areas being compared. My original comment was meant to point that out to an
audience that may not have spent much time studying economics.

~~~
dpark
Maybe because you made reference to living in a "roach infested box in
California" not just once but twice.

If your goal was just to educate people about the shortcomings of GDP as a
measure of living standard, the social commentary about California's high cost
of living didn't help.

