Populated Peoples Front of Australia

I so enjoyed my amateur economic geography yesterday that I’ve made an another tribute map.

If you click on the “Population” tab on the aforementioned map from The Economist you can see the US states transformed into the equivalent nation by population (I’m feeling more exotic now as my 2011 US journeying will take me to Cameroon and Senegal).

So here is the Australia commonwealth rebadged (population for our states is from the ABS again, and country comparisons from this Wikipedia aggregation of sources):

This is a quite different batch of pairings, and my thoughts on each:

• It’s a joy to be living in Copenhagen again, although I’m stunned by the traffic (especially the paucity of bicycles) and lack of decent smørrebrød
• The NSW Labor Party would love the electoral might of Emomali Rhamon
• WA is no doubt relieved it has held off on adopting the Euro
• Tasmania has under-utilised its first-mover advantage with legal casinos
• Both our non-states (i.e. the Northern and Australian Capital Territories) have tax-haven status
• …and I know a lot less about Queensland and South Australia than I thought

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A slightly different Australian Federation

Inspired by The Economist magazine’s latest map of the USA with state names replaced by the equivalent nation based on GDP, I felt inspired to do the same for Australia.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics calculates Gross State Products. I converted each to $US using the average exchange rate of (A$1=US0.88) for the period 2009-10.  I then compared them to the latest country GDP calculations from the International Monetary Fund. It throws up some fun replacements:

I draw a number of conclusions from this:

• Victorians should be much more excited by the rarity of our current floods
• The beer in Queensland should be much, much better
• The current economic dramas of New South Wales should be viewed as a likely long-term issue
• Our Olympic sprint coaches should be scouring the Northern Territory
• All future Western Australian tourist campaigns will incorporate Paddington Bear
• We may see South Australia split into two states very soon
• Tasmania is NOT an island, but rather is mountainous (I assume all of Hobart has moved to the top of Mt Wellington) and landlocked…and bordering WA
• Julia Gillard will be delighted that her power has increased, ruling in a Kingdom as she does!

As an aside, I was a little disappointed that, during my stay in the US this year, I’ll be splitting much of my time between Australia and Indonesia!

Update: I have also done this for population now.

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Scattergun Target expansion

You may recall my discussion in January of the nifty Wal-Mart expansion graphic at Flowing Data.

Well, they’ve delivered another one. This time it’s fellow US big-box discount retailer Target under the microscope. Click on the pic below for the animated graphic thingie.

The big insight from this new map is that Target did not adopt the oil-slick style growth we saw with Wal-Mart. The expansion here is much more opportunistic, as they jumped back and forth across the nation.

It took the firm considerable time for them to fill in a lot of gaps. It does raise questions about their scope to build sufficient economies of density.

Target is not an international retailer, so this is their entire growth story. For any Australians scratching their head, our Target is a rather ancient logo licensing arrangement (i.e there is no relationship between Wesfarmers and the US firm).

Let’s hope the next firm to get the Flowing Data treatment shows some international expansion.