Map Illustrates Which Nation Has the Same GDP as Each US State

And now, since I am posting blog entries that I never actually did get around to publishing before, this one stood out as particularly interesting.

Certainly, the United States is not as much of a superpower as it used to be, although despite this, and despite the economic troubles that the country has experienced in recent years, this map illustrates that it is still very much a superpower in the economic field.

This was really quite interesting, although I do think that it does not tell the whole picture. Economics, to my understanding, really is only important as to how it impacts people's lives, and in particularly, how it can improve the quality of people's lives. And while Americans still enjoy, by and large, a decent standard of living, the quality of life has steadily been on the decline in this country for many years, even decades. Numerous European nations, as well as Australia and New Zealand, are among those listed on the map, although in this case, economic might not reflect the realities of the lives of the people involved. After all, many of those countries enjoy a better standard of living than Americans do. Switzerland, Australia, and the Scandinavian countries (every Scandinavian country except Iceland is listed on this map) all have ranked higher than the United States for quality of life. Each of those countries have a far better and fairer healthcare system that benefits the people, and they have other things, too, like free college education, more vacation time, paid maternity leave, stronger education systems that yield better results, and affordable childcare. Hell, Australians even have bigger homes, on average, than Americans do, although they are the only people in the world to be able to make such a claim.

Still, this map was fascinating and revealing, and definitely was something that seemed worth sharing here:



This Brilliant Map Renames Each US State With A Country Generating The Same GDP

http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-vs-us-states-gdp-map-2014-2