A good idea. Certainly needs time to think about it. Not sure that you fully appreciate the appeal of the nation state to the Scottish nationalists, and maybe Slovaks, Bosnians, Croats, Catalans, Basques, Kurds, etc. Also interesting to see the difference a state makes: compare East and West Germany, and North and South Korea — makes for a dramatically different way of life. But still well worth thinking about.

If the USA expenditure / income imbalance was copied by another country would you get something like Venezuela?