Given some of the monstrous player contracts over the past decade, the pastime of taking the figures out of context and applying them toward other things has grown popular. CC Sabathia’s new contract with the Yankees is reported to work out to $23 million a season. That’s, like … one hundred billion pennies! If you stacked all those pennies on top of one another it would stretch from the Earth to Pluto!

Nevermind, that illustration is inaccurate and boring. Let’s take an honest look at some of the modern nations with a lower annual gross domestic product (the total market value of all goods and services produced within a country over a year’s time) than CC Sabathia’s $23 million.

Saint Helena
Annual gross domestic product: $18 million
Population: 4,255

Saint Helena is one of the most isolated islands in the world. Its first procreating settlers were five slaves who escaped from a slave ship and sought refuge there. After acquiring the island territory, the British exiled Napoleon Bonaparte here because they hated him.

Tuvalu
Annual gross domestic product: $15 million
Population: 11,992

Tuvalu eats up a minuscule 26 square kilometers. Given the effects of climate change, by the end of the century it will probably be a lot less than that. They used to own an Internet domain name extension, “.tv”. Unfortunately, “tv” also stands for “television,” and they were unable to outbid Internet entrepreneurs.

Niue
Annual gross domestic product: $8 million
Population: 1,679

Niue, a former British territory, now governs itself, but Queen Elizabeth II is still its head of state for some reason. Coconut bowling is popular.

Tokelau
Annual gross domestic product: $2 million
Population: 1,449

There is nothing interesting about Tokelau.

Pitcairn Islands
Annual gross domestic product: negligible
Population: 48

The entire population has given birth to two children since 1986. From Wikipedia:

Pitcairn Island does not have an airport or seaport; the islanders rely on longboats to ferry people and goods between ship and shore through Bounty Bay. To get to Pitcairn it is necessary to fly to Tahiti, then Mangareva, then embark on a further 30-hour boat ride. There is one boat every several months. Alternatively, passage can be obtained aboard a few freighters out of New Zealand; it is a seven-day trip via freighter. Leaving the island is hit-and-miss; one leaves when transportation happens by, not necessarily when one wishes to go.

LOL.

The Principality of Sealand
Annual gross domestic product: negligible
Population: 27

The Principality of Sealand is actually an old navy platform off the coast of Great Britain. In the 1960s it became a desired haven for pirate radio broadcasters.  One pirate broadcaster, Major Paddy Roy Bates, forcibly exiled other broadcasters from the “island” and called it Sealand. At one point, a ship from the British Navy entered what Sealand considered to be “territorial waters,” so they fired warning shots. In short, Sealand waged war with the British and effectively won.

There was later a sort of “civil war” that involved a helicopter assault.

Popular torrent site “The Pirate Bay” has considered moving to Sealand with the idea of avoiding criminal prosecution.

Oh screw it, just read the whole article. It’s great.

New Atlantis (defunct)
Annual gross domestic product: negligible
Population: At one point, eight

I swear to God I am not making this up: Leicester Hemingway, brother of Ernest Hemingway, constructed an 8′x30′ bamboo raft, anchored it to an old Ford engine block a few feet off the coast of Jamaica, and called it “New Atlantis.” He made half of New Atlantis available to the United States so it could harvest guano (bird poop).

Hemingway made it clear that New Atlantis would not attack Jamaica or any other neighboring nation.

New Atlantis eventually issued postage stamps, one honoring American President Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson sent him a thank-you note.

Accounts are sketchy, but New Atlantis was apparently destroyed either by a storm or by pillaging fisherman. Another good read; you can find it here.