If Hawaii Were a Country, It Would Be Azerbaijan

Mark Perry, an economist who runs the Carpe Diem blog at the center-right think tank American Enterprise Institute, has matched up states to countries that had a roughly similarly sized economy in 2013.

"The results are pretty stunning: California, America’s most economically powerful state, has a gross domestic product roughly the size of Brazil’s,” says a WaPo blogger. "Texas pumps out around the same GDP as Australia. Ohio’s economy is as big as Sweden’s, while New York’s economy is similar to Spain’s.”

Hawaii’s GDP compares with Azerbaijan, in the Caucasus region where Eastern Europe and Western Asia meet.

The purpose of the map is to show just how big the U.S. economy is: "GDP was about $17.4 trillion in 2014, followed by China with $10.4 trillion.”

The map does not take into consideration the cost of living.

Of note: Last year, then state Reps. Mark Takai and Rida Cabanilla failed to persuade their colleagues in the Hawaii Legislature to urge President Obama to facilitate a political settlement to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In 2013, Azerbaijan spent nearly $8,000 so that Cabanilla and Takai could visit the country.

www.civilbeat.com/2015/06/if-hawaii-were-a-country-it-would-be-azerbaijan/