US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/131-us-states-renamed-for-countries-with-similar-gdps/

by jmorin007 • 18 years ago

43 22 18 years ago

strangemaps.wordpress.com

run4yourlives2• 18 years ago

10 points for anyone who can find the 3 G8 countries on the map...

run4yourlives2• 18 years ago

Holy crap mods... bad mood or something? It was just a joke...

kingnothing• 18 years ago

Leave it at reddit.

DocSavage3• 18 years ago

This mapping surprised me: "Tennessee – Saudi Arabia (GDP #25 at $286 billion)"

I probably magnify the oil economy in my mind. You hear about the vast wealth, the oil sheiks, the buying of US assets, etc. Either my intuition on relative economies is very off (likely)... or GDP doesn't cover some things that impact our perception. Wonder how that map would look if we used GDP per capita.

breily• 18 years ago

That surprised me too - but I'm guessing its because their GDP is almost entirely from oil, whereas the US economy is very distributed.

Edit: Guess I was wrong.

DocSavage3• 18 years ago

From Wikipedia (probably taken from CIA factbook):

"The petroleum sector accounts for roughly 75% of budget revenues, 45% of GDP, and 90% of export earnings."

Xichekolas2• 18 years ago

You also have to keep in mind that most of Saudi Arabia's GDP is concentrated in the hands of a very few, whereas Tennessee's is more spread out.

Xichekolas2• 18 years ago

Maybe I should clarify... I meant that most of the oil income in SA is concentrated in the monarchy. I guess, as another comment pointed out, that oil income is only like 45% of GDP, but I still maintain that national income is much more concentrated in SA than it is in Tennessee, leading to the perception of untold riches of some and the reality of poverty for many. Tennessee doesn't have such concentration of wealth was my point.

gms• 18 years ago

Re: vast wealth, just want to point out that there is a lot of poverty in Saudi Arabia that westerners don't realise, and that unemployment is estimated to be at 20% or so.

simianstyle• 18 years ago

I'm sorry, but i really am tired of this reddit content making the front page of Hacker News.

rms• 18 years ago

Usually I'm strongly in favor of things that fall outside the bounds of hackerism, but this is a little much.

Fidel Castro was fine though, it doesn't bother me to see truly major news make it here, even if I suspect many of us had already seen it on another site.

jraines• 18 years ago

While I agree, I'm surprised that there was more defense of the Castro post than this one. I know there are some fans of the visual display of quantitative information among us here . . .

pg2• 18 years ago

I thought this was fascinating.

I know there have been a lot of new users lately, and a lot of us are concerned that the site will go downhill, but this is very interesting to me. I've never seen a more graphic demonstration of the huge size of the US economy.

To think, for example, that I grew up in fear of being nuked by New Jersey...

Dauntless2• 18 years ago

That's exactly why I would downvote this if I could. It's a misleading article that he stolen from someone else (because I've seen this many times on different blogs) and has tons of bogus data that no one checks.

About Russia: In 1987 the GDP was: USA : 5,093,396 USSR: 1,965,457

P.S. nukes don't care about GDP.

P.P.S. In 2007 EU had a GDP of $16,574 trillion and USA: $13.794 trillion. So it would be easier to make a map the other way around.

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

Shouldn't you have been _more_ worried to know that a country with thousands of nukes was also relatively poor?

imsteve• 18 years ago

I'm sorry if you don't understand how this relates to startups. It does.

I know of very few founders who didn't move to a new place for their startup. Understanding how the qualities of a region affect the prosperity of its companies will aide you greatly when weighing the costs and benefits of moving for your startup and where to move to.

Prior to what I have learned through HN, I may have moved back to Europe without giving it a second thought. Pull your head out of the compiler for a minute to see how location will affect your hacking career.

Reddit content is funny pictures, useless politics, inflammatory youtube, and misleading headlines. This is none of those.

DocSavage3• 18 years ago

I'm sorry, but the way a portion of the YCNews community has handled this news article really gets to me.

First, it's clear that a large number of people think the news item is relevant. See the upmods. The map shows a technique for data visualization. It also relates to economics, which many of us would like to learn more of.

Second, just because you think this article isn't YC-worthy, don't go downmodding everyone's comment on the map and upmodding every negative comment. If you're going to do that, have the spine to downmod pg's comment.

streblo• 18 years ago

this is not the right place...

hobbs• 18 years ago

It would be interesting to redo the map using GDP per square mile, or GDP per capita. For instance Georgia has the equivalent GDP of Switzerland, but it is much larger than Switzerland, geographically speaking. On the other hand, New Jersey has the same GDP as Russia, but is a fraction of the size, both geographically and in population.

US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs

Related Stories