No doubt the US GDP is by far the world’s biggest. It shouldn’t be suprising when you think of the US as a union of states, all of which are doing more (Alaska, New York, New Jersy, California, Texas, etc), or less (W. Virginia, Mississipi) well. But I think the numbers that this map is based on are way off – I mean even if you stick to nominal GDP (not PPP, not per capita – both of which would probably paint a more useful picture for comparison).

For fun I looked at some Wikipedia articles.

List of US states by GDP (nominal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_(nominal) .

List of countries by same.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) ..

Now California falls behind Italy, ahead of Canada (which seems about right given its population and strong economy). Texas and NY are the next biggest economies, and they are behind both Canada and Spain (although per capita GDP would show that they are both relatively better off than those two countries). New Jersey is much less than the Netherlands and much more than Belgium. West Virginia rates just ahead of Slovakia.

But I think you need a per capita, PPP comparison to really tell a story. Canada, for example, had a $0.70 dollar in 2006 and this year it’s more like $0.90, so the nominal GDP rank should jump in 2007. But even nominal per capita rankings show the poorest US states doing about as well as Greece and Spain, two of the poorer states of the old EU-15 (obviously with the EU-27, many states are doing much worse than the poorest US states).

Obviously vK-T makes several very good points, but lets not forget the forest in our efforts to focus on the trees – just the notion that Hawaii and Nigeria are in any sense comparable on an economic scale is mind-boggling when you think of the potential natural and human resources in Nigeria. A very thought-provoking map!!

Woah I didn’t see this at first but, in the same vein as Mr. Wallace’s comment – check out New Jersey!

Also, to Rommel, I would guess that Russia’s GDP is severely underestimated due to the strength of the ruble and the fact that so much of Russia’s economy is black.

Curz: On that last note, you could say the same about the Irish, although they certainly wouldn’t have agreed with you until a few years ago.