because our own GDP is higher than all of Europe's combined lol get rekt
Nice joke, where do you find all this jingoistic nonsense?
First of all if we compare by total GDP as you seem to want to because the US has a major advantage there with its 300 million population, still the European Union comes out on top over the US according to charts by the usual sources for this, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the CIA World Factbook. I've provided links below.
Secondly, as anyone who'ever taken a social studies course will know, GDP isn't really useful for anything unless we use it
per capita, where it becomes slightly less useless. Similarly, Yankees claiming the US gives a lot to foreign aid are using total amounts, because if you look at what the US gives per capita it is embarassingly little compared to all other developed countries (and mostly military aid to Israel).
Remember that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel? That is why 'patriots' use these numbers as they want to, but never scientifically.
I live in the small Scandinavian country of Denmark. We are only about five and half million people here and the total GDP isn't very high due to our size, but our GDP per capita is pretty high because of our highly industrialized modern economy and free higher eduction etc, and on top of that, despite our GDP per capita not being the world's highest, our average living standards and HDI, general happiness and quality of life etc. is among the highest of the world (much higher than the US or England for example). I would much rather live here than in say China, where the total GDP is much higher.
GDP has long been critized in the social sciences, which is why today we often use HDI, GPI, HPI etc. instead.
Some charts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capitahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capitahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_workedhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
