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SOURCE: Investors Business DailyURL: http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/just-how-crazy-big-is-the-u-s-economy/by: John Merline________________________________________________A friend once told a story involving German visitors who were staying at his house. One morning, he said, the Germans asked if they could take a day trip to the Grand Canyon. Bear in mind, they were in Michigan. “I don’t think you realize just how big America is,” the friend told his guests.The opposite is also true. Americans don’t realize how little the rest of the world is — at least economically — compared to the U.S.That’s particularly relevant when it comes to pleadings on the part of Democrats, who insist that we model the U.S. after Norway or Denmark or Japan or Canada or some other country that allegedly does everything better than we do.Economist and IBD contributor Mark Perry recently put together a map of the U.S., with the state names replaced with countries that have comparably sized economies. It is eye-opening.New York’s economy, for example, is equal in size to all of Canada. California’s is as big as France. New Jersey and Saudi Arabia have comparable GDPs.Perry’s map doesn’t show this, but you’d only have to combine Texas, Florida and Indiana to have a GDP that’s bigger than all of the U.K.Alleged socialist paradise Norway’s entire economy would fit into liberal Minnesota.So when someone like, say, Bernie Sanders, says that the U.S. should be run like Norway, someone ought to tell him that we already have a piece of the U.S. that is run that way.And that was the political genius of the Founding Fathers when they set up the Constitution, which was meant to strictly limit the federal government so that state governments, which are closer to their people and more responsive to their needs, could pursue their own economic and social policies.Even now, as the federal government has become obese and overly intrusive, states still must compete with each other to attract and retain workers. States like California that regulate and tax too much find themselves losing population to those that are more business friendly and productive, like Texas.But when the federal government imposes its will on all states, those competitive forces are lost, which helps explain why federal welfare programs are such a disaster.Perry notes something else — these U.S. state economies are far more efficient than their country counterparts.“Amazingly, it required 32% more workers in France to produce the same economic output last year as California!” Perry notes. New York has about half the number of workers as Canada. And while Texas and Brazil have comparable economies, Brazil has almost 80 million more workers than Texas.Overall, he notes, the U.S. produces 24.5% of the world’s economic output, but with less than 5% of its population.So what is it, exactly, that these smallish, inefficient countries have to teach the entire United States about how to run a successful economy?NOTE: The quote from Mark Perry was updated to include a change he made on his blog to the figure cited.
