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But the EU has a population about twice that of the US. So why shouldn't we impose trade barriers within the EU to bring this awful competition down to American

But the EU has a population about twice that of the US. So why shouldn't we impose trade barriers within the EU to bring this awful competition down to American levels? Similarly, India should perhaps split herself into US-sized chunks, and Biharis shouldn't be allowed to migrate to Bombay? (Shiv Sena would love this.) Similarly, as the US grows, shouldn't we start imposing internal trade barriers to keep our size down to the optimum? This idea that there is some optimal size that just magically happens to correspond to national boundaries is belied by the fact that countries have hugely different sizes.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
But India does have a problem with excessive competition keeping wages low. The rest of the EU might actually be better off with fewer countries in it (e.g. without Greece). Measures to keep the US population stable rather than growing could be beneficial. And there are obviously political considerations. Nobody is going to let you carve up national borders over this, so we're stuck with the existing borders even if that isn't 100% perfectly optimal. Estimating the optimal size is going to be at the "orders of magnitude" level anyway.