Great Britain as a U.S. State?

Fraser Nelson of The Spectator claims that Britain would be the second poorest state.

“…if Britain were to somehow leave the EU and join the US we’d be the 2nd-poorest state in the union. Poorer than Missouri. Poorer than the much-maligned Kansas and Alabama. Poorer than any state other than Mississippi, and if you take out the south east we’d be poorer than that too.”
Rank State/country GDP per capita:

1 Alaska $80,741
2 Wyoming $77,974
3 North Dakota $77,868
4 Connecticut $69,312
5 Delaware $67,732
6 New York $66,699
7 Massachusetts $66,687
7.1 Norway $65,515
8 New Jersey $61,024
9 Nebraska $58,664
10 Washington $58,532
11 Texas $57,948
12 Maryland $57,749
13 Minnesota $57,575
14 California $57,462
15 Illinois $55,945
16 Colorado $55,889
17 Oregon $55,874
18 South Dakota $55,312
19 Louisiana $54,822
20 Virginia $54,790
20.1 Switzerland $54,133
21 Iowa $53,639
22 Hawaii $53,584
23 New Hampshire $51,266
24 Rhode Island $50,579
25 Pennsylvania $50,487
26 Kansas $49,780
27 Wisconsin $49,190
28 Ohio $48,853
29 Utah $48,689
30 Indiana $48,259
31 North Carolina $47,864
32 Nevada $47,318
33 Oklahoma $47,288
34 Vermont $47,092
35 Missouri $45,721
36 Georgia $45,489
37 Tennessee $44,279
38 New Mexico $44,236
39 Michigan $43,714
39.1 Germany $42,549
39.2 Sweden $43,497
40 Montana $43,382
41 Arizona $42,107
42 Kentucky $41,720
43 Maine $41,222
44 West Virginia $39,891
44.1 Euro area $36,979
45 Idaho $38,612
46 South Carolina $38,443
47 Arkansas $37,628
48 Florida $37,263
49 Alabama $36,356
50 UK (Treaury/OECD) $36,202
51 Mississippi $35,157
Source: Fraser Nelson / The Spectator

“In America poverty is more obvious due to White Flight, a phenomenon we just didn’t have. In the era of the motor car, the middle class (who tended to be white) worked out they could buy a lovely house in the safer suburbs and commute…Any Brit who has walked the streets of today’s Detroit will be stunned: this supposed city looks like a bombed-out ghost town. But 45 minutes up the I94 lies the gorgeous sprawl of Ann Arbor, and some of the loveliest spots on earth. America’s White Flight has created a visual spectacle with no equivalent in Europe. When urban trouble kicks off in America, this spectacle is there for all to see.

Britain has no space for white flight, we’re forced to live closer together. And we fool ourselves into thinking that proximity has brought cohesion. In fact, we have developed a new kind of segregation: keeping the poor cooped up in council estates, a stone’s throw from the posh parts – yet abandoning them in a welfare trap from which escape is pretty damn hard. Brits may be appalled at America’s gap in black-white life expectancy. But our Liverpool-SW1 life expectancy gap is just as big; we just don’t get upset about it. When you walk south over Westminster Bridge from the House of Commons, life expectancy drops five years.

No one beats up America better than Americans. They openly debate their inequality, conduct rigorous studies about it, argue about economics vs culture as causes. Their universities study it, with a calibre of analysis not found in Britain… And the debate is so fierce that the rest of the world looks on, and joins in lamenting America’s problems. A shame: we’d do better to get a little angrier at our own.”

Read more: Why Britain is poorer than any US state, other than Mississippi