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.

I'm sorry if you don't understand how this relates to startups. It does.

I know of very few founders who didn't move to a new place for their startup. Understanding how the qualities of a region affect the prosperity of its companies will aide you greatly when weighing the costs and benefits of moving for your startup and where to move to.

Prior to what I have learned through HN, I may have moved back to Europe without giving it a second thought. Pull your head out of the compiler for a minute to see how location will affect your hacking career.

Reddit content is funny pictures, useless politics, inflammatory youtube, and misleading headlines. This is none of those.