Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about Americans learning from Canada.

All of this talk from Trump about making Canada the 51st state may actually turn out to have some benefits.

Apparently, it has led to some very important realizations.

Let me read this message and we'll go from there.

Hey, Bell, I have a question.

I've been watching an interaction on Facebook, and there's a lot of economics questions in it.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. It started by someone saying

that Canada would be a bad state because it has the same population as California, but half the

GDP, which would make it a poor state, one of our poorest. This led to people asking how they can have health care

and all of the social safety nets if they're so poor. And somebody was like, exactly,

can you help me out with this? Absolutely. I got you. First, let's check the numbers. Canada's population is about 40 million.

California's is about 39 million. So sure, that's close enough to the same for a Facebook argument.

Canada's GDP is 2.1 trillion and change.

California's is 3.9 trillion.

Again, not exactly twice, but close enough for Facebook.

Remember, GDP, gross domestic product, is the final value of all the goods and services produced in a geographic region in a year. It's shorthand for how big the economy is.

A better way to do this is just using something called per capita GDP.

That just divides the GDP up among the population.

It makes the numbers easier to follow. Canada's is about $53,300. California is about

105,000. Yes, Canada would be one of the poorest states in the Union. Only Mississippi

would be below it. So, all of the math and general tone checks out.

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