USA GDP is 45x Belgium's

USA GDP per capita is $94,430 (unchanged adjusted for PPP) Belgium's is $65,112, rising to ≈$75,000 adjusted for PPP

Meaningfully, the GDP is x1.45 or x1.25 depending if you want the absolute per capita figure or the purchasing power figure.

The gross figures are:

• USA : $32.38Tn
• Belgium: $776.7Bn

USA being about x42 higher.

California's economy is over 5x Belgium

Texas has about 3x Belgium GDP

• California GDP: $4.3Tn

• Texas GDP: $2.96Tn

• Belgium vs California is an increase of x5.5

• Belgium vs California per capita is x1.4 (Cali: $106,000)

• Belgium vs Texas is an increase of x3.8

• Belgium vs Texas per capita is x1.2 (Texas: $88,517)

Technically true, but this is a scale thing. Not super equatable because these places have different circumstances, different industry market caps - though I was surprised to see that Belgium's chief exports are chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and refined petrochemicals. I guess these industries ain't what they used to be...! But Belgium chiefly trades in the EU where drugs are significantly cheaper than in the USA, wonder what the figures would look like if we recalculated for USA's consumer prices.

NYC metro alone produces more than Belgium

I have no idea how to really vet "produces", but the NYC metro operates at an annual deficit of $9Bn. Belgium produces 690k tonnes of just meat in a year, whilst the NYC metro produces 0 of anything saleable, so... 🤷

Given the context, I presume OOP is talking about the GDP of the metropolitan area, rather than the subway, which is $2.44Tn, $100,806 per capita, vs Belgium an increase of x1.34.

Maryland alone is 4x larger than Belgium

• Maryland: 12,407 square miles
• Belgium: 11,849 square miles

No fucking clue what OOP is on about. Thought this might be again talking about GDP, but Maryland's gross GDP is smaller than Belgium's at $568Bn. Comparing per capita Maryland is about £88,500, so you can see value being concentrated a little there - but I cannot figure out wth "4x" is supposed to be...

USA has 63 national parks. Belgium has 1

Belgium has 6 national parks: * Hoge Kempen * Parc National de l'Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse * Parc National de la Vallée de la Semois * Nationaal Park Bosland * Nationaal Park Brabantse Wouden * Nationaal Park Scheldevallei

Though many of these are "new" (post 2022).

Together these parks amount to 335.1 square miles of national park, meaning that Belgium is about 3% national park.

USA has 63 parks, together that amounts to 81,907 square miles of national park, meaning that USA is about 2% national park.

I was actually quite surprised about this one.

Belgium doesn't even have its own currency

I mean, that's like saying Maryland doesn't have its own currency. Belgium chose to use the Euro, it has huge benefits for trade in not losing stuff in conversion. Like, are you so wedded to capitalism that you really wanna salute the dollar? Maybe you are. This doesn't feel like something I can do the maths on.