How Big Is America? So Big!

Sometimes it helps to employ unconventional perspectives when thinking about the size of things.

Here's a map that shows how massive and productive America's $16.7 trillion economy is on a global scale.

The map compares the gross domestic product of each US states with the national GDPs of other nations.

America's largest state economy is California. For 2013, the Golden State's GDP was about $2.05 trillion, roughly the same as Brazil's GDP ($2.25 trillion). But Brazil's population is about 200.4 million, while California's is just 38.8 million — meaning California produces about the same as Brazil with about 80% fewer people.

To put it in a global perspective, if California were its own country in 2013, it would have been the 10th-biggest economy in the world, close behind Russia, whose GDP was $2.096 trillion that year.

Check out the rest of the states in the map below:

 

 via Business Insider.

Based on population, the US is the third-largest country in the world.

To put that in perspective, below is a a map that renames each state with the country that has the closest population to it.

 

via Business Insider.

 

The map, below, is interesting in a different way.  I'm sure you've heard that "a picture is worth a thousand words."  Here, a couple dozen words capture the world.

 

by Michael Tompsett via Fine Art America.