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New England can’t feed itself and the outflow of wealth to pay for energy would be astounding. And if you make New York a separate country, much of the wealth in Connecticut withers. So whatever the correct answer, not New England.
Though I can’t help thinking the correct answer is the obvious one. The one defined region that actually managed to secede.
There is Oil in the Atlantic the reason they don’t drill is political and it would probably go away if it wasn’t part of the US.
Dixie (The American South)
Georgia
Alabama
Mississippi
Louisiana
Arkansas (including extreme southern Missouri)
Kentucky (including Missouri Bootheel and excluding the Cincinnati suburbs)
Tennessee
South Carolina
North Carolina
North Florida (north of Orlando)
South Virginia (from Charlottesville southward, including most of Shenandoah Valley and southern West Virginia)
Capital: Atlanta (or Montgomery, Chattanooga, Huntsville, or Columbus-GA)
California
Present-day U.S. California (Alta California)
Baja California (in Mexico)
Nevada
Capital: Sacramento
Texas
Present-day U.S. Texas
Oklahoma
New Mexico
Capital: Austin
There is no such thing as "South Virginia", and the part of Virginia which would be defined as that would not just assuredly encompass everything south of Charlottesville...
The best way to answer this question is to think about what would/will be the allegiances if/when the nation breaks apart and subdivides...
Due to all kinds of political, economical, social, and cultural ties, if/when this happens, the vast majority of Virginia would side with wherever DC is at. The vast majority of Virginians dont even view themselves as "Dixie" today...
That would also open up some water sources for California. If California bailed out, all that water they import would go away. I suppose their agriculture industry would adapt to the loss of all that water welfare but you're not raising cattle, almonds, and pistachios in California when you have to pay market rate for water.
California doesn't import water. All our water comes from sources in the state or along it's border. People point to the Colorado River as imported water, but the Colorado forms the Eastern Border of SoCal. California has senior rights to that water, as negotiated in compacts between the Colorado River states and the country of Mexico. It would be similar to the relationship Texas has with the Rio Grande (which is also shared by treaty with Colorado, New Mexico, and the country of Mexico) or any of the various Mississippi River states which border that river.
And California produces 15% of the food for the entire U.S.A., by far the most of any state. This doesn’t even include the food it exports. This, and countless other reasons is why California is the number one answer to this question. The thread really should be titled “After California which....”.
If you were to step back and look at this objectively there’s no other clear choice for number #1. Texas is clearly number #2.
And California is 11% of the population. So? Texas, the South, and most of the Midwest could easily feed their own populations. New England and the Northeast would have big problems, however.
In truth, the Southern states are likely the ones to be most self-sufficient, given the combination of water, energy resources, heavy manufacturing, agriculture, and diverse economies.
Well, 150 years ago. But the South is a radically different place today. Whereas it was a region heavily dependent on cotton exports with almost no manufacturing, it's today a region with heavy manufacturing and a large population. Add a strong agricultural base, plentiful energy resources, a huge power generation base, good infrastructure, tech industries, and more, it would likely do fine.
I voted for California. It has all sorts of climates and geographic landscapes. It has the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles---both of which are economic powerhouses and global cities. It has ~40,000,000 inhabitants.
If you cut off water from the Sierra Nevada region that originates at least partially on the Nevada side of the state line along with the Colorado River supply into southern California suddenly their natural resources become a lot more constrained for supporting those 40M people. Of course they could work on desalinization but it's foolish to pretend that CA doesn't benefit greatly from being part of the country.
In addition to that, from an electrical standpoint CA also imports a lot of power from outside of it's on generation capacity and it's giant farming industry depends heavily on exports to the rest of the US for food sales.
I think CA is the best positioned out of this list but I don't think any state would do better alone than as part of the country.
California doesn't import water. All our water comes from sources in the state or along it's border. People point to the Colorado River as imported water, but the Colorado forms the Eastern Border of SoCal. California has senior rights to that water, as negotiated in compacts between the Colorado River states and the country of Mexico. It would be similar to the relationship Texas has with the Rio Grande (which is also shared by treaty with Colorado, New Mexico, and the country of Mexico) or any of the various Mississippi River states which border that river.
What? The Colorado River forms in, you guessed it, Colorado. And it's headwaters are about 1,000 miles upstream from the first place it runs along the CA state-line, just look at map. It created the canyon that is now Lake Powell on the Utah/Arizona boarder and also the grand daddy of them all, the Grand Canyon. You could shut off flow on the Hoover Dam at Lake Mead and the river would run completely dry along the entire stretch of the AZ/CA boarder.
I think ti's a big assumption that water would stay the same if CA were to leave, much like London's succession from the EU, I see no reason the US government would do anything to make it easy.
I also don't think the US or CA would better off independent from one another.
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