> A single US state has a larger economy than the vast majority of nations. It's pretty impressive, but it isn't really news. California's economy is impressi

> A single US state has a larger economy than the vast majority of nations. It's pretty impressive, but it isn't really news. California's economy is impressive, but this comparison doesn't really show that. California has a larger population than all but ~15% of the world's nations[0]. Having a GDP larger than 50% of them isn't surprising. At least 20 US states have a GDP per-capita greater than almost any other country in the world, except for a couple of incredibly tiny countries like Liechtenstein[1], and some countries with massive oil reserves (Qatar, Norway, UAE, etc.). On a per-capita basis, California ranks higher than Switzerland, only tenth in the US. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_%28United_Nations%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio... [1] 'per capita' is much less meaningful as a metric when there are several orders of magnitude difference between the denominators, and Liechtenstein has the population of what would be considered a medium-sized town in other countries.