I'm sorry, but i really am tired of this reddit content making the front page of Hacker News.

I thought this was fascinating.

I know there have been a lot of new users lately, and a lot of us are concerned that the site will go downhill, but this is very interesting to me. I've never seen a more graphic demonstration of the huge size of the US economy.

To think, for example, that I grew up in fear of being nuked by New Jersey...

That's exactly why I would downvote this if I could. It's a misleading article that he stolen from someone else (because I've seen this many times on different blogs) and has tons of bogus data that no one checks.

About Russia: In 1987 the GDP was: USA : 5,093,396 USSR: 1,965,457

P.S. nukes don't care about GDP.

P.P.S. In 2007 EU had a GDP of $16,574 trillion and USA: $13.794 trillion. So it would be easier to make a map the other way around.

Here's the data:

countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

us states: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_(nominal)

It doesn't seem extremely inaccurate. I'd compare California with Italy, not France, and Texas with Brazil, not Canada. And Russia's economy is more New York than New Jersey.

Where's the map stolen from? We can switch the link to the original source.

I don't know what is the original source... http://www.google.com/search?q=US+States+Renamed+For+Countri... I may have been too fast to judge that it isn't the original, because it's very popular and being just another blog didn't seem extremely accurate... I can't edit that out now anyway.

Shouldn't you have been _more_ worried to know that a country with thousands of nukes was also relatively poor?

I'm sorry, but the way a portion of the YCNews community has handled this news article really gets to me.

First, it's clear that a large number of people think the news item is relevant. See the upmods. The map shows a technique for data visualization. It also relates to economics, which many of us would like to learn more of.

Second, just because you think this article isn't YC-worthy, don't go downmodding everyone's comment on the map and upmodding every negative comment. If you're going to do that, have the spine to downmod pg's comment.

While I agree, I'm surprised that there was more defense of the Castro post than this one. I know there are some fans of the visual display of quantitative information among us here . . .

Usually I'm strongly in favor of things that fall outside the bounds of hackerism, but this is a little much.

Fidel Castro was fine though, it doesn't bother me to see truly major news make it here, even if I suspect many of us had already seen it on another site.

This mapping surprised me: "Tennessee – Saudi Arabia (GDP #25 at $286 billion)"

I probably magnify the oil economy in my mind. You hear about the vast wealth, the oil sheiks, the buying of US assets, etc. Either my intuition on relative economies is very off (likely)... or GDP doesn't cover some things that impact our perception. Wonder how that map would look if we used GDP per capita.

Re: vast wealth, just want to point out that there is a lot of poverty in Saudi Arabia that westerners don't realise, and that unemployment is estimated to be at 20% or so.

You also have to keep in mind that most of Saudi Arabia's GDP is concentrated in the hands of a very few, whereas Tennessee's is more spread out.

Maybe I should clarify... I meant that most of the oil income in SA is concentrated in the monarchy. I guess, as another comment pointed out, that oil income is only like 45% of GDP, but I still maintain that national income is much more concentrated in SA than it is in Tennessee, leading to the perception of untold riches of some and the reality of poverty for many. Tennessee doesn't have such concentration of wealth was my point.

That surprised me too - but I'm guessing its because their GDP is almost entirely from oil, whereas the US economy is very distributed.

Edit: Guess I was wrong.

From Wikipedia (probably taken from CIA factbook):

"The petroleum sector accounts for roughly 75% of budget revenues, 45% of GDP, and 90% of export earnings."

It would be interesting to redo the map using GDP per square mile, or GDP per capita. For instance Georgia has the equivalent GDP of Switzerland, but it is much larger than Switzerland, geographically speaking. On the other hand, New Jersey has the same GDP as Russia, but is a fraction of the size, both geographically and in population.

this is not the right place...

10 points for anyone who can find the 3 G8 countries on the map...

Leave it at reddit.