Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

COMPARING THE GDP OF INDIVIDUAL U.S. STATES TO ENTIRE COUNTRIES!

The U.S. is an absolutely HUGE and productive country.  The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) produced the map below matching the economic output (Gross Domestic Product) of each US state with that of a comparable foreign country's GDP.   An intriguing commentary lies below the map.  [HT: econforecaster]

Read on for intriguing commentary from the AEI web posting:

It’s pretty difficult to even comprehend how ridiculously large the US economy is, and the map above helps put America’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $19.4 trillion ($19,400,000,000,000) in 2017 into perspective by comparing the economic size (GDP) of individual US states to other country’s entire national output. For example:

1. America’s largest state economy is California, which produced $2.75 trillion of economic output in 2017, more than the United Kingdom’s GDP last year of $2.62 trillion. Consider this: 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! That’s a testament to the superior, world-class productivity of the American worker. 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).

SOME NEWS ITEMS NOTED TODAY

Each of the following articles are well worth reading:

   -- Vice-President Mike Pence on Prayer in the White House

   -- Dr. Robert Epstein - Google has power to flip elections in a way that can't be traced

   -- Survey - 88% of Harvard Faculty say President Trump has done a very poor job in his first year and a quarter as President  

    -- Jamie Glazov suspended from Twitter for quoting  Islamic religious texts

   -- Islam in France: troubles Macron chooses to ignore 

Macron's Washington speech, as it happened, came only days after the release of the most comprehensive study yet of Islam in France. Co-sponsored by the Sorbonne, it concluded that the country's second- and third-generation Muslims, who make up seven or eight percent of its population, are increasingly Islamized. Most have no respect for French law and culture; most approve of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Researcher Olivier Galland said his results were, “to put it mildly, harrowing” – reflective of community values in stark contrast with those of "la belle Republique. "