Thanks for that. It also doesn't matter how rich a state is if all the wealth is concentrated in a small few while everyone else struggles. This is also compounded by the fact that the wealth in a state controls government spending to a large degree. The antebellum south is a good example of this historically.
Your statistics are a decade old - in the meantime California continued to climb, there's updated numbers. The fact that a state that huge is competitive in GDP per capita with extremely tiny flyover states, is extremely telling.
California also has a massive homeless population and one of the worse police states in the country, and that's saying something. But hey, a small percentage are really rich!
So what you're saying is - money from the coasts provides money to flyover states. Thus, my point - with further balkanization, less economic benefits for the whole country.
This thing doesn't work as a "European Union." we're all tied together, for better or worse.
