Bitcoin Forum

Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute recently presented data and a map that tries to link GDP in the US in 2012 (using the Bureau of Economic Analysis data) and other countries (based on UN data).

The report links each US state (and the District of Columbia) and the country closest to it in terms of economic size in 2012, and in some cases the country's output may increase or slightly below the state.

The map helped to explain the large size of the US economy, with GDP reaching $ 16.2 trillion in 2012, and each US state was replaced by a country of roughly economic size.

The report shows some surprising points. For example, California is the largest economy in America, with an economic output of $ 2.003 trillion in 2012, slightly less than the Italian GDP in the same year at $ 2.013 trillion, while the population California is only 38 million compared with Italy 61 million.

Saudi Arabia, despite its oil wealth, has a GDP of $ 711 billion in 2012, less than its $ 777 billion in Florida.

Besides Kuwait, whose gross domestic product (GDP) is $ 0.183 trillion in 2012, slightly higher than the $ 0.176 trillion state of South Carolina.

Switzerland's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012 is about $ 0.631 trillion higher than Pennsylvania's $ 0.6 trillion.

New Jersey tops Norway, with state output of $ 0.508 trillion, the European state of $ 0.499 trillion, and North Carolina with slightly less than Belgium, with US output of $ 0.455 trillion and the European state of $ 0.483 trillion.

Overall, the United States, the world's largest economy, has captured 22.3% of world GDP, although it has only 4.4% of the world's population.

From what I see here, you have only glorified the economy of the entire United States compared to other states which is correct based on the statistics that you have quoted. But using only GDP as a basis to determine which one is better, has been contested severally to not be the right representative.

Based on data, do you also know that the in the current entire world debt profile, the United States carries as much as 31.8% which to me is very high compared to the entire world.

"The U.S. is a prime example of “debt creep” – the country hasn’t posted an annual budget surplus since 2001, when the federal debt was only $6.9 trillion (54% of GDP). Fast forward to today, and the debt has ballooned to roughly $20 trillion (107% of GDP), which is equal to 31.8% of the world’s sovereign debt nominally" source http://www.visualcapitalist.com/63-trillion-world-debt-one-visualization/

Conclusively, when a country's GDP is not doing all too well, they might not be incurring debt for the next generation.

GDP, economic growth, inflation and other variables relating to the economy have a high potential to be misleading statistics. The sad truth is every nation on earth tries to exaggerate the size of their GDP. This contributes towards GDP not being the most reliable statistic.

A huge chunk of "economic growth" in the USA is attributed to real estate and finance sectors, which some might say doesn't represent true economic growth. This could imply to some degree that america's GDP stats are exaggerated. To begin to make an accurate assessment the US GDP numbers of real estate and finance might have to be subtracted.

Then there are other countries like china which take things further into extremes via construct "ghost cities" which have no residents to artificially boost the size of their GDP via exaggerating the value of buildings that have no residents.

Its tough to compare economic stats like GDP on a 1:1 basis. Details really do matter when it comes to analysis breakdowns.

It is always interesting to find and read these sort of comparisons, but they have little relationship to the wider world economy. If you are waving it around as some sort of vanity project, it's only use it to quench your ego. I'd prefer a GDP that is diversified and not generated by a few mega companies or commodities.