What Do Connecticut and Pakistan Have In Common? This Map Will Explain

Last year 80,000 people signed a petition for the secession of Texas with hopes that the Lone Star State could become its own country again.

If that were ever to happen, the resulting nation would be about as rich as Australia.

“It’s pretty amazing how ridiculously large the U.S. economy is,” wrote Mark Perry, a professor at the University of Michigan, who created a map comparing American states to countries with a similar gross domestic product.

Perry wrote that the result helps to put the $16.2 trillion GDP of the United States in 2012 into perspective.

California had the highest economic production of just over $2 trillion in 2012, which is slightly less than all of Italy in the same year, a figure made more impressive by the fact that the population of the state is 37 percent less the Italy's.

Meanwhile, Florida produced more than Saudi Arabia, and New York’s 19.6 million residents produced more than all of Mexico’s 120.8 million people.

Vermont, with a GDP of $27.2 billion in 2012, was last on the list, but still makes about the same as Latvia.

Take a look at the chart below for the top 10 states and their corresponding countries.