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).

WILL NEW U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO PUSH RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ?

Tony Perkins at the Family Research Center thinks so.   [my bolding] 

. . .  But with the announcement by President Trump this morning that Tillerson is out and CIA Director Mike Pompeo is in, there is now hope for change at the agency that has few if any rivals in being at cross purposes with American values and principles.

When Rex Tillerson was first announced as the president's pick for Secretary of State, I communicated my concern privately and publicly. I said that the State Department needed a strong change agent like Trump, and there was no way based upon Tillerson's record that he would do enough to roll back the harmful cultural imperialism which had been pushed in the State Department during the Obama administration, and to restore our promotion of international religious freedom to where it should be. And under Tillerson's leadership, not much did change in these areas. Religious freedom and human rights for all continues to take a backseat to the LGBT agenda as LGBT-promoting acting ambassadors remain in place around the world and our tax dollars still go to non-government organizations (NGOs) aligned with groups like George Soros' Open Society and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now that Tillerson is on his way out, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo has been tapped to take the helm, there is hope for the United States to once again lead the world toward the promotion of religious freedom and the protection of human rights. I believe Mike Pompeo is the agent of change the State Department needs, and he has the president's ear. He cares about religious freedom, and about restoring the United States to its historically-esteemed role of human rights defender -- not cultural imperialist. And with Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Brownback also in place, the United States is perhaps better poised than any other time in recent memory to significantly make inroads in promoting religious freedom worldwide.

GREAT DAY! REP. STEVE SCALISE RETURNS TO CONGRESS!

The return of Rep. Steve Scalise to the U.S. Congress after being shot and hospitalized for 3 1/2 months makes for a fantastic "upper" for all Americans.  In his beautiful talk, Scalise expresses heartfelt thanks to many people and offers profound thanksgiving to God for answered prayer.  Watch and enjoy!