Capitalogix

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.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading

Are we evolving ... or getting dumber?

 

via Scott Adams.

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• The Ultimate List of 20 Motivational Tools for Every Entrepreneur. (Read)
• Gartner Predicts Three Big Data Trends for Business Intelligence. (Forbes)
• 6 Google Flights Tricks That Are Better Than Any Travel Agent. (Huffington Post)
• How Terrible In-Flight Wi-Fi Will Finally Become A Thing Of The Past. (FastCompany)
• The Speech President Nixon Would Have Given If Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin Had Died on the Moon. (Vox)

 

Trading Links:

• How Many Mutual Funds Routinely Rout the Market?  Zero. (NYTimes)
• These Will Be the World's 20 Largest Economies in 2030. (Bloomberg)
• A Sign of the Times? Austria to No Longer Guarantee Bank Deposits. (Goldcore)
• A Look Back at Dallas Fed Fisher’s Flashiest Quotes. (WSJ)
• Santelli Stunned as Janet Yellen Admits "Cash Is Not A Store Of Value". (ZeroHedge)

Mana Lisa's Smile (Nope, It's not a typo)

Mana Lisa had a strange smile ... and eyes that seemed to follow you around the room.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Sometimes you don't recognize when the journey starts ... other times you do.

 

 — with Ming Alihan at MAD Museum of Art & Design, Singapore.

 

And sometimes you have to go half way around the world, just to get to the starting line.

Best wishes on all your journeys.

MAP: Living Costs Around the World

This map shows the difference in living costs around the world using figures from the world's largest database of user contributed data about cities and countries worldwide.

The Consumer Price Index, used to determine the difference in the living costs between countries, takes into account the prices of groceries, transportation, restaurants and utilities.

 

 

There are many more charts with specific data by region.  The chart below shows the places with the highest and lowest costs of living.

 

via MoveHub.

 

The CPI in the infographic is a relative indicator of a country's living costs compared to New York. So, for instance, if a country has a CPI of 70, on average it enjoys 30% cheaper living costs compared to New York.

What’s Going On - Playing For Change [Music Video]

Here is a different take on Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Going On”.

It is a "Song Around The World" recording by Playing For Change.

It starts with an acoustic guitar in Africa, adds a drummer in Los Angeles. Next comes the electric guitar and bass on the streets of Chicago and strings in Serbia.  You get the picture ...

Now listen to the music.

 

 

 

Years in the making, minutes to watch. Very cool.

This Song Around The World is featured on PFC3. The album features 185 musicians from 31 countries.

88

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading

Déjà vu?

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• 5 Tips for Finding Flow: A High Performance User's Guide for the New Year. (Forbes)
• Science Says This Personality Trait Predicts Job Performance. What's your guess? (BI)
• Why Airlines Want to Make You Suffer. (NewYorker)
• CIA Predictions for 2015 from the Year 2000. (Business Insider)
• Coming Data Deluge Means You’ll Know Anything You Want, Anytime, Anywhere. (SingularityHub)

 

Trading Links:

• 10 Legendary Investment Rules from Legendary Investors. (Zero Hedge)
• Big Banks Manipulate Physical Market Prices | The Big Picture. (Ritholtz)
• Information in Financial Markets: Who Gets It First? (Papers)
• High-Frequency Trading Payoff Tied to News. (MarketWatch)
• Oil Companies’ Predicament: Who Should Cut Production? (Wall Street Journal)

The World as 100 People [New Infographic]

The world has over 7 billion people.

How can we get a sense of what it means ... and who we are?

One way is by statistically representing the world population as 100 people.  That way, complex issues become more comprehensible and help us get a clearer look at the big picture.

So, what would the world look like if it were represented by just 100 people?

The infographic below covers a broad range of statistics, including: gender, age, race and religion. 

 

 via Washington Post.

To see a video about this, click here.

A different look at the data is here.

You can find the original source of the data here.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading

Have you seen how they teach math recently?

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• The Complexity of Complexity. (Strategy-Business)
• Computers Projected To Overtake Human Brain By 2020. (ValueWalk)
• This Is How Putin Rolls. (Zero Hedge)
• 17 Essential Mobile Apps for Small Business Travel. (BigIdeasBlog)
• What Democrats can learn from Republicans. (Vox)

 

Trading Links:

• Has Capitalism Reached A Turning Point? (Forbes)
• There’s Rich, Then There's the 0.01%. (Bloomberg View)
• A Peek Inside One of the World’s Most Secretive Hedge Funds. (eFinancial)
• The New Strategic Intent of Corporate Venture Capital. (CB Insights)
• Jesse Livermore's 21 Trading Rules. (Business Insider)

Time-Lapse Maps That Show How Fast and Much the World Has Changed

Human have a huge impact on the landscape. 

For example, take a look at Dubai in Google's Earth Engine.  It is easy to see the incredible coastal expansion.

 

 

 

We are literally terra-forming the planet.

The Earth Engine brings together trillions of scientific measurements dating back over 40 years (based on Landsat satellite imagery).

You can explore some of these time-lapse maps here.

What Is $100 Actually Worth In Your State?

Money goes further in some states than others.  Here is one way demonstration.

The Tax Foundation released a map showing the relative value of $100 in every state (compared with the national average using the data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis).

 

The same amount of dollars are worth almost 40 percent more in Mississippi than in D.C., and the differences become even larger if metro area prices are considered instead of statewide averages," writes the Tax Foundation. "A person who makes $40,000 a year after tax in Kentucky would need to have after-tax earnings of $53,000 in Washington, D.C., just in order to have an equal standard of living, let alone feel richer.

 

Here's the map:

 

Tax Foundation

The states with the smallest relative value of $100 were:

• Washington, D.C. ($84.60)
• Hawaii ($85.32)
• New York ($86.66)
• New Jersey ($87.64)
• California ($88.57)

While the states with the largest relative value of $100 were:

• Mississippi ($115.74)
• Arkansas ($114.16)
• Missouri ($113.51)
• Alabama ($113.51)
• South Dakota ($113.38)

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