> While US states share a common fate
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Individual US states are pretty close to sovereign. Other than ability to tax and a few other things, the US federal government doesn't have much power.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Individual US states are pretty close to sovereign. Other than ability to tax and a few other things, the US federal government doesn't have much power.
But the idea of the geographical transfer of resources is there. While Texas may not want to refinance american banks, the FED doesn't care. Germany may not want to refinance Greece, and the European Central Bank can't enforce it. [0]
>> While US states share a common fate
> Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
It's a great question. You can get the best answer from the following article: https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100510_europe_nationalism_...
[0]: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/lehman-brothers-and-germany-...
The shared taxes that you mention are also huge: how different would Europe be if Germans were really on the hook for Greek budgetary issues?
Look at this in practical terms: if the US states really resembled sovereigns, you'd have far wider differences in economic performance. Outcomes would diverge more widely if states were really doing things that were really all that different. We'd see incredibly different unemployment rates too. But in the US that can't really happen, because ultimately the federal government has everyone's back, and you don't see big, country threatening arguments about how California federal taxes are spent in other states: Those situations were possible back when the federal government was really weak, but the aftermath of the civil war took care of all of that.
Along with the legislative differences, there's also a far more unified culture across states, if just for the shared language, and thus media. I can move from Missouri to California pretty easily: Better weather, higher taxes, but most of the rest stays about the same. Moving from an EU country to another is far more traumatic in comparison, which also makes each country be far more unique than US states.
At this point US states are mostly satrapies of the federal government, since the feds can withhold block grants to the states who don't fall in line.