This map, which comes from Strangemaps, shows how the total economic output of each state corresponds with a total output of various countries. Notice, for example, that Texas produces as much as Canada, Tenessee as much as Saudi Arabia, New, Jersey as much as Russia, and Alabama as much as Iran. Interesting, isn't it?
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Graphic of the day - States and Countries
This map, which comes from Strangemaps, shows how the total economic output of each state corresponds with a total output of various countries. Notice, for example, that Texas produces as much as Canada, Tenessee as much as Saudi Arabia, New, Jersey as much as Russia, and Alabama as much as Iran. Interesting, isn't it?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ya its really interesting, but in the presenet condition of economic cricis, isn't there any changes in the output of the above states.
ReplyDeleteSaroj,
ReplyDeleteYou are right, there are some changes in the output of both the states and the countries. Of course, GDP grows or declines different rates even without a global recession, so this sort of a map only represents the data at one point in time.
You may be interested in general comparison of GDP's of the world at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
The most comprehensive resource for forward-looking output estimates for the world is available freely at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/01/index.htm
For the states, the at this link from the St. Louis Fed (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/release?rid=140) you can see that the GDP for each state tends to be rather constant over time, and the changes, while they occur, are typically not drastic.
I remember the first time I tried to explain this about Texas to my older daughter--7 at the time. She had a really hard time getting her head around it. She kept insisting that a nation had to have more wealth than a simple state.
ReplyDeleteYour daughter was raising a good question - why can a state have more wealth than a nation? That is a relevant question even today.
ReplyDeleteThat's the sort of question that Adam Smith asked that caused him to write "The inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations" in 1776.