Obviously if tiny San Marino can run itself there’s no reason “West America” would be too small. But it’d be vastly more expensive than running their current state governments. The OP suggested there’d be an additional $20bn/yr in State revenue from California citizens no longer paying Federal income tax, and presumably California replacing it with an equivalent tax from the new government. Canada spends about $13bn/year in defense, and it’d be a smaller (population size and economy size) country than West America. It’s unlikely West America would spend less, and likely it’d spend more. That’s much of the $20bn in revenue gain gone.
California doesn’t have anything like a foreign office, America’s state department budget is $65bn. It’s hard to imagine California getting by on less than 5-6 billion.
The thing is States simply don’t do a lot of things that every country does, and a new country would have to do all of them. This isn’t an economy of scale problem but a lack of competency problem, and the simple fact that the simplistic “net contributor” formula doesn’t properly account for building entire new organs of government de novo. Could West America do it? Sure, but you’re not going to do it at a cost savings versus your current relationship with the Federal government.
The biggest problem I’ve already mentioned–you won’t be able to keep the country together, once you’ve fractured it once any part that doesn’t like liberalism/progressivism (which will dominate) will leave. You might even see Silicon Valley leave purely for “economic independence” reasons. Why the hell not? You’ve already established you can break up.
I don’t want to prolong this discussion of fantasy, but Mr. Hyde’s perspective and mine are quite different. In his scenario, the 45 states (or whatever it is) would be “the U.S.” and the five states of W.A. would be a defenseless runt. I was taking the viewpoint that assets would be split (mainly based on location) and they’d be co-equal federations; each with a Navy, nuclear weapons, central bank, etc.
“Co-equal” is misleading — obviously the 45 states would be far more powerful, but W.A., bigger than Canada or Italy, would presumably be admitted to the G-7. Frankly, given the present debacle in Trumpwash, D.C., I think New York (and much of New England) might want in — can we keep the name West America if N.Y. joins? Economically, the deal would probably be rather bad both for W.A. and the Remaining 44, of course, but it’s not at all clear to me that W.A. gets the worst of it. Au contraire, I think there may be a flood of immigrants to West America!
I won’t get involved if the thread turns to the Tom Clancy-novel details of how W.A. gets its hands on the nukes and aircraft carriers in its domain.
I mean but let’s look at proposed/attempted national splits. Dealing with “national” assets like military bases is no simple matter. In fact our actual Civil War went from a standoff to a shooting war over such a thing. I guess if we want to assume somehow that stuff magically gets split, okay. You still need a department of defense. There’s sure as hell no Pentagon, no top military leadership etc. in the current states. No civilian military leadership. Like I said, no State department. No FCC, no FTA, no Federal Reserve or etc. I just cannot fathom you replace all that for less than $20bn.
Why would you want it to do so? It’s a major expence, California is the main benificiary, and you wouldn’t be the only country with foreign (American) bases on it’s soil. California has never been part of the southern honour/respect that led the South to attack, why start now?
… returning to the original question, California would reduced power in international trade negotiations, and your courts would not be recognised by the East, leading to another set of trade and investment problems.
