if the u.s Broke up

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if the u.s broke up,would each state become it's own country?

I would imagine so. Each state is governed by its own constitution, so if the Federal government were dissolved and the US Constitution nullified, those would remain. That's kind of the idea behind federalism. For much of early US history, 'each state being a separate country' effectively was the order of things.

Some people were proposing breaking up California into six states just because a lot of California is rural and sick of how LA, San Fran, etc. are ripping through government money.

The US could break up into 50 countries but it would be utterly dumb and disadvantageous. We'd lose the UCC, landlocked states would be stuck in a rut on trade and many coastal states would have their own problems with food, water, etc. if they couldn't get quick supplies from the inland states without different 'countries' raising huge transportation tariffs, taxes, and the like. I think it'd be much more likely that maybe five or six groups of states would team together and, with our tendencies, we'd be trying to reunite things as best we could and realizing we're open to invasion from all sides at that point.

If we broke up into fifty nation-states by state then the world's second largest nuclear power (after the Russian Republic) would be the now independent nation of North Dakota.

North Dakota could then extort priviledges from the other 49. Including having North Dakota's most famous son, Lawrence Welk, worshipped as a god!

I doubt the 50 states as they exist geographically could remain as they are as independent countries.

Does rural California not realize that the role urban centres play as economic engines?!

A lot of rural California's economy is under the table, so it looks more impoverished than it actually is.

That said, the idea didn't come from a rural area; it was more oriented to getting the people of CA more senate votes.

Well, the informal sector isn't taxed, so that makes it even less likely that middle income hardworking rural folk are subsidizing those spendthrift city slickers with their hard earned tax dollars.

Without doing a detailed analysis of State taxation and spending in California, I'd expect that the redistribution probably goes from the rich urbanites to the poor, or maybe from rich urbanities to poor urbanites (if the State Government disproportionately spends on public services that mainly benefit urbanites).

Sad but true, at least in this instance. A study in January by the state's Legislative Analyst's Office showed that the 18% of Californians who live in Silicon Valley (about 6.8 million people) pay 33% of the state's personal income taxes. That's $14.5 billion annually, or three Stanford Universities.

Unfortunately the real estate prices in San Francisco are so high now that only the rich can now afford them. Liberals always crow about the social responsibility to provide low to moderate income housing, thereby maintaining diversity. But of course when it is your own neighborhood it’s easier to pass around the Kool-Aid and say “Let Them Eat Chocolate Soufflé Cake at Tartine.” Protesters are attempting to highlight this issue of growing inequality and disparity by stopping and sometimes vandalizing the private “Google buses” that take tech workers to their jobs at companies like Facebook and Apple.

I doubt it would be fifty individual countries, unless the governors declared themselves President or King or whatever it would be. More likely, there would be clusters of nation states based on resource necessity or other concerns.

We had this thread last year but it was rather silly.
The United States of Canada & Jesusland

Oh yeah -in that thread we hashed it out with colorful maps -how if both Canada and the USA were to "balkanize" -it would work out ( states would group together by region- but by which region is hard to say).

My guess: the American Blue States would join the English speaking Canadian provinces to form one big "greater Canada". The American Red states would be a second country (Jesusland), and French speaking Quebec would be a third sovereign country. Texas ofcourse would be its own fourth country. And there would be the large by area, but tiny by population, Mormonland (Utah and adjacent chunks of Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, and Nevada) as a fifth nation.

Have you ever heard of megaregions, as defined by the Federal Highway Administration? They are collections of cities in close geographic proximity that share strong trade links, transportation infrastructure, and increasingly a common labor pool. The major Northeast cities form one megaregion, as do the cities in Texas. This is likely what the U.S. would look like if it ever broke apart.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/megaregions/

Support for Quebecian separation is quite low at present, but I guess it's higher than those wanting to repartition the two countries.

I have knocked up a quick map based on the 2012 Presidential Election results in the USA, and added the most conservative Canadian provinces - Alberta and Saskatchewan - to the conservative country.

Progressive = blue, Conservative = red, Quebec = yellow. "In reality" (as much as this could ever happen in reality), I imagine Quebec would choose the USC over independence. Similarly, maybe Colorado, New Mexico and even Florida would join the conservative country just for convenience.

Each state is its own sovereign body. The national government is supposed to only oversee issues of a national concern.

This is a big reason for the fuss over the "national guard." National guard units are supposed to answer only to the state governor...not to be deployed for national military use.

Most states would likely for alliances in their regions. They would also probably adopt former federal law (like the UCC) until they could create new laws that better serve their needs. Continuity of commerce would be a chief concern for each state.

The question would be one of regional alliances. If America was to fracture, it would likely be on ethnic stress lines building across the country because we do not require a cultural homogeneity as we once did. "Diversity" is more dangerous than helpful once you start encouraging people to embrace their differences rather than that which bring them together.

Most likely the states would just come back together but different than it was before.
The Confederacy didn't immediately begin with South Carolina seceding, the first seven seceding states were their own republics until the Confederacy was officially established a few months later then the later states joined it.
If DC lost control of the 50 states a similar thing would probably happen and they come back together but in two separate countries.
Some states could further split because of differences in regions like South Florida and Northeast Virginia.