> "But we are so much bigger" seems to be the standard excuse for the US not looking at what other countries are doing successfully and learning from them.

Except we have evidence of what happens when a much larger fraction of the economy does what Iceland did. It was called the Great Depression. Small economies can borrow from abroad without destabilizing everything. Unless you are willing to directly take on the analogy of the Great Depression the 'Iceland for everyone!' argument is dead in the water.

I believe it was called the depression of 1920-21. I would certainly be up for it, as an alternative to following in the footsteps of Japan.

You assume scale invariance. There is abundant evidence that this is not the case in the field of economics.

If the argument that scale hurts (all small western countries are very rich, but big countries complain "we're too big because we can't do that and that), then the obvious solution would be to split up. For me it seems just too easy. I think the reasons are more related to the culture than to the size.

It's not that scale hurts; there are many benefits to scale. But obviously, it makes some things harder to deal with. Iceland has a population of 320,000 or so people and only one major city. Politics is a lot simpler with a population that small.

Indeed. Scale has benefits, one can see that for big companies, which have, despite bureaucracy and politics, quite some advantages - scale, wide skills, easier access to financing, global resource access etc.

How does splitting up a country seem easy? It didn't go so well for the US in the 1860's. Over 600,000 people died.

That's because some idiot decided not to let the worst states in the Union leave the rest of us alone.

Right - the process may get ugly.

I am not assuming anything. As a recent citizen of the US I am just observing that the US doesn't seem to be willing to look at other countries and learn from them because somehow the US is perceived as special. Examples where the US could learn a lot IMO are:

- health system

- broadband coverage (argument "the US has low population density". But why does the coverage in LA suck then? It should be a dream for a competitive market.

- murder rates

- incarceration rates

- poverty rates

Reflexively rejecting other countries' experiences is hurting this country big time.

But it's a pretty valid excuse. Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita in the world, but you can certainly find places in the US with roughly the same population that would have a higher GDP per capita were they independent countries.

Why bother with Iceland when we can be following the economic policies of Beverly Hills?