The Strange Maps blog has an interesting map which has the 50 United States plus DC renamed for countries with the closest GDP.
It’s interesting and puts into perspective our enormous wealth.
Andrew Sullivan, whose post drew my attention to the map, sees something else: “The District of Columbia has the same GDP as New Zealand. Now imagine if no one in New Zealand were allowed to vote for their own government, and they were governed by the Senate in Australia as a colony.”
While I’m sympathetic to voting rights for DC (via retrocession rather than statehood, as discussed numerous times previously) the comparison strikes me as unfair. The 50 states are, after all, part of the same country. D.C. exists as a significant population base — let alone a major economic center — solely because it is the seat of the nation’s capital.
