Sometimes, it's easy to forget how large many American states are. Colorado, for example, is the size of New Zealand. Here's a helpful map for all states: Source. But that's just comparing by physical size. If we compare by GDP , Colorado is the size of Thailand, which is not tiny. Of course, this is not per capital GDP. Per capital GDP is much higher in Colorado than in Thailand. Indeed, with five million people, Colorado generates a similar GDP to Thailand's population of 64 million people. The map: We can also compare based on population size , in which case Colorado is similar to the small African country of Eritrea.
We often see the United States compared to a variety of other countries in terms of life expectancy, murder rates, and more. But, it's a bit dishonest to compare a country the size of Portugal, for example, with the United States.Portugal has ten million people and is not geographically diverse. The United States has more than 300 million people, and is extremely diverse in its geography. So, it makes much more sense to compare the particular states within the US with foreign countries, and most people tend to underestimate the diversity in factors such as life expectancy and murder rates among states. For example, the murder rate in Oregon (2.0 per 100,000) places it about 160th among 218 countries measured. That's quite low, and well below the US overall rate of 4.7 (per 100,000), which places it at 91st in the world . In other words, there are many places in the US that are well below the national murder rate, including Iowa, Wisconsin, and Colorado. If we were use th...
Pew breaks it down . I was surprised by how little revenue is generated from severance taxes. And, of course, there is no statewide property tax thanks to TABOR.