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Map: US States Renamed as Countries with Similar GDPs
- elvirs 8y agoholy cow america is mighty
- curiousgal 8y agoThis is the saddest part, America is mighty but that doesn't translate into the life quality of its citizens at all.
- linkmotif 8y agoMighty doesn’t mean everyone gets free stuff via government redistribution programs. And maybe one can see that this is the reason America is “mighty.” We attract and retain the best of the whole world, who come here because they are tired of senseless redistribution campaigns by the have-nots of the world. Not to mention freedom generally, which is why my family came to the US: we were not seeking economic opportunities, but freedom from oppression and discrimination, which in 2018 is still much more the exception than the rule globally. Russia can huff and puff all it wants, but Ed Snowden is still basically the only prominent American who has ever moved to Russia. This while millions of people from the FSU moved to the US, Israel, Europe, Australia and Canada over the past thirty years, which is the fundamental difference between the US and Russia, etc. Now if only there was a way to send the people who want redistribution to places where they have that sort of thing. That would be great! But guess what: Norway doesn’t want these people :(. They have enough people jockeying for the dole.
- curiousgal 8y agoWell, this isn't the 80s anymore, no one talks of Russia anymore. What I meant was based on looking at European countries like Sweden and Finland or even France. Also, I am not saying the U.S. is a horrible place to live in, I am just saying that it has the potential to be more liveable for all citizens, not just the very "best".
- strictnein 8y ago> Well, this isn't the 80s anymore, no one talks of Russia anymore. What now?
- linkmotif 8y agoWell the same is true for the rest of the world. I live in Queens, NY surrounded by the world’s best who came here from all over the place. For every 100,000 people from Bangladesh here in Queens, I wonder whether these is even 1 American living permanently in Bangladesh. I wonder how many expats there are out there total, and which country has the closest immigration balance to the United States, which probably leads the world by a lot in any metric of incoming immigrants. I focus on immigration because where you choose to live seems like the single greatest vote of confidence that you can make. So I wonder why people here in the states want to make the states more like other places when clearly people from other places want to come here. > I am just saying that it has the potential to be more liveable for all citizens, not just the very "best". Yeah it definitely could and should be. There is a lot of low hanging fruit.
- tjr225 8y agoYou're presenting a false dichotomy where the US can't have social welfare programs and be great - this is simply not the case. FDRs social programs and the labor movements of the last century arguably improved our country in its most noticeable way of all time - at least until it was dismantled by the people who benefited from it the most (the baby boomers).
- chimeracoder 8y ago> FDRs social programs and the labor movements of the last century arguably improved our country in its most noticeable way of all time You can't discuss either of those two things without also recognizing the other half of those policies: the massive xenophobia, racism, and outright genocide that motivated and fueled them, all under FDR's watch.
- hood_syntax 8y agoI disagree. It does, just not at the rate that it could.
- tjr225 8y agoThis is it right here. A safety net(including healthcare, education, retirement) intended for all would be an awesome way to spend all of this money, but instead it gets squandered elsewhere.
- rukittenme 8y agoWhere does it get squandered? 60% of the federal budget goes to retirement and healthcare. That doesn't account for all of the local budgets which almost exclusively target human welfare projects. There are only two stereotypical places I can think of it being "squandered". The first is the military which, who knows, could be NPV if you consider what the world could be like without it. Ultimately its unknowable. The second is the money not taxed. Which is a particularly frustrating mindset that I encounter on the internet. In either case, we're not "squandering" money anywhere. You may disagree with the allocation of some resources but that doesn't mean its been squandered.
- jessaustin 8y agoGosh, what would the world be like if our troops and munitions weren't murdering civilians and prolonging conflicts in a monotonically-increasing set of nations around the world? It's not "unknowable"; we just have to start voting... ...haha what was I thinking never mind. Also what does net present value have to do with any of this?
- rukittenme 8y ago> Gosh, what would the world be like if our troops and munitions weren't murdering civilians and prolonging conflicts in a monotonically-increasing set of nations around the world? It's not "unknowable"; we just have to start voting... Hah! I didn't say you couldn't have an opinion on it. Only that you can't know the world that "could have been". > Also what does net present value have to do with any of this? Squander is a word which means to waste. If a government project has a net economic (or public health) benefit then by definition the money was not squandered.
- pluto9 8y agoHow 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 8y agoWell I've been to Scandinavia and despite the countries having less GDPs, the quality of life, for the average citizen, is way higher.
- rukittenme 8y agoBut that wasn't your point: > America is mighty but that doesn't translate into the life quality of its citizens at all. Countries can vary in development and quality of life but your original statement is demonstrably false.
- pluto9 8y agoI haven't been to Scandinavia, but I have been to some of the "wealthy" European countries, including Ireland. I now live in its GDP counterpart, Colorado. I would say their quality of life is comparable. It would be helpful for you to explain how life in, say, Sweden is vastly better than life in Georgia. Before you cite poor uneducated Georgian hillbillies, keep in mind that Georgia is home to Georgia Tech, not to mention Atlanta, which was quite prosperous last time I checked. And if you're going to cite Sweden's "free" universities, you might as well go ahead and throw in a side-by-side comparison of Georgian/U.S. Federal and Swedish tax rates as well.
- lexs 8y agooh no contributing to society with taxes oh noooooo
- pluto9 8y agoUtterly pointless and idiotic comment. I made no judgement as to whether those higher taxes or the things they pay for are good or bad. I am merely saying that these things are trade-offs, and if you're going to count the benefits, you must also count the costs.
- lolsal 8y agoYou're making a judgement call. Americans value different things than Europeans (or Asians, or ...). For example I personally would rather live in USA than Europe.
- mikeash 8y agoAt all? American quality of life could (and should) be better, but it’s still pretty good.
- rayiner 8y agoI mean, it clearly does. The US is in the top 10 in terms of Human Development Index, above the U.K., France, Spain, and Italy. Germany is the only large, economically and geographically diverse European country that beats the U.S.
- strictnein 8y agoWhere did you get the idea that Americans don't have a high quality of life? If this is an outside looking in scenario, I'll just say that I'm amused and disappointed by international press coverage of the US whenever I travel abroad.
- vinceguidry 8y agoWow. The difference between California and its sister country, Great Britain, is itself the size of Kuwait / Arkansas.
- peterburkimsher 8y agoThat'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.png http://www.buzzhunt.co.uk/wp-content/2014/01/World-map-sizes...
- fredley 8y agoI had no idea the disparity between the US and Russian economies was so huge!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- themodelplumber 8y agoI didn't see Russia on the map, where did you find it?
- rukittenme 8y agoNot the OP but its not on the graph. It's mentioned in this blurb: > The economy of alleged US nemesis Russia is less than 9% as large as the US economy and hasn’t grown consistently in years.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoIt'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 8y agoRussia 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.
- purple-again 8y ago>> 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 8y agoYou 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 8y agoHmm 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 8y agoMaybe 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.
- chvid 8y agoWhy not do it by gdp pr capita?
- ju-st 8y agoor PPP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
- dibstern 8y agoTotals 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.
- lumberjack 8y agoNominal is better if you want to compare the economic might of countries, which is what this is presumably doing.
- danielvf 8y agoFrom 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 8y agoThat 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.
- rjsw 8y agoThe UK has drawn well educated people from the rest of the EU.
- mhandley 8y agoYes, and it's the main reason our economy hasn't tanked. But there have traditionally been more barriers to movement from the EU, not least language, so the effect is somewhat less, and easy immigration from the EU hasn't been going on for nearly so long. And don't get me started on Brexit...
- zer00eyz 8y ago> 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).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- InitialLastName 8y agoRelated 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.
- habosa 8y agoTheir borders also draw very similar shapes.
- reaperducer 8y agoWhen I lived in PA, the joke was that New Jersey was a sand bar off the coast of Pennsylvania.
- InitialLastName 8y agoI used to "reflexively" apologize when I heard people grew up in NJ.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoIt would be cool to expand this by comparing those states to their respective countries in land area and population as well.
- rayiner 8y agoIt would also be interesting to see this chart with GDP per capita.
- adventured 8y agoI 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
- peterwwillis 8y agoThe 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 8y agoWeird, 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 8y agoI 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.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI agree with you here. I think the primary divide was based on accumulating power and influence around the world post WW2. The difference in political ideology at that time may have been a convenient front but the real competition was economic. I'm not sure what drives the divide today other than old cold-war memories or just two very powerful countries competing with each other. I suspect there is animosity from the US because Russia won't really do what we want them to. Russia also tends to support causes opposing US interests due to protecting their own interests, balancing of power, and also just to stir the pot a bit.
- 0003 8y agoAppears down: 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 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pywLG4L...
- joeschmoe3 8y agoWOW... If you add up the population of the "similar GDP" countries its well over a a BILLION people.
- kiliantics 8y agoThat's what free movement of capital without free movement of people does. Military and economic dominance means USA has a lot of the capital and keeps out a lot of the people. That money is coming from somewhere, like e.g. Africa where you see the opposite trend: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/africa-subsidises-world-billions-a-year-say-campaigners-a7754041.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/africa-subsi...
- classicsnoot 8y agoIn regards to both your's as well as u/returnUD 's comments, i never cease to be amazed at the insidious spread of the thoroughly debunked Dependency Theory. For a primer on how the developing world can get stuck in a poverty cycle, look into the history of Ghana and the utter moron Nkrumah. More damage is done by humanities majors pretending to understand economics than ebbil capitalists stealing magical resources from noble savages.
- ReturnUD 8y agoWell, 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 8y agoDeveloping 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.
- ConceitedCode 8y agoCached Version - 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 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pywLG4L...
- jandrese 8y agoI'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.
- fareesh 8y agoHug of death?