Talk:United States's states, from annexation to statehood

Article space...

I put a noindex on this page, so it is protected from search engines. Having done that I slipped into editorial mode, with comments about Donald Trump, and Canadian statehood, specifically. All that should be trimmed before the noindex is removed. Geo Swan (talk) 11:10, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Some context

• Guam is tiny.
• Puerto Rico has repeatedly voted to keep the status quo.
• The District of Columbia was intentionally set up the way it was to avoid giving outsized power to the capital city (avoid a situation like London or Paris) and avoid a sectional power struggle. If we had proposed that Maryland have four senators and the capital, none of the northern states would have agreed and it would have stayed in Philadelphia. Which would have been better because slavery would have been outlawed in the capital from Day 1. Enki (talk) 14:11, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

• Thanks

Guam's area is one quarter the size of Rhode Island. It's population is one sixth Rhode Island's, one third Wyoming's. The 19th century population criteria for statehood was 60,000 people, but that was waived a couple of time, and states enrolled with lower than 60,000

I am not an expert, but I think I remember Puerto Rico's status is complicated by debt.

I am not familiar with the Paris or London problem. Americans living in DC are still disenfranchised, don't get to vote for the POTUS.

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 02:30, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

• I am not an expert. Since I wrote the above, I checked.

Puerto Rico's debt is massive. Crippling.

• If Congress were to pass a bill, making Puerto Rico a state, would it mean that the Federal government would have to officially take on Puerto Rico's debt?
• Are there fiscally conservative people in Congress who would refuse to vote for Puerto Rican statehood to punish Puerto Rico for that debt?

I thought that US states were legally barred from running a deficit. I asked the Google AI answer bot, and it told me most US states were barred. I am not an expert, and I am not an AI expert, but I don't trust AI when it hedges it bets. YouTube comedian Ryan George asked LLM AI chatbots how many rocks he should eat per day. AI told him he should eat no more than one rock per day. I think this is a sign of AI hedging its bets, when summarizing conflicting results, without the benefit of human judgement. Zero rocks is the correct answer, and AI got it wrong. My recollection, from years ago, when I wasn't really paying attention, was that ALL US states were barred from running a deficit, and so I suspect the AI answer of most was a sign of AI unreliably hedging its bets. Geo Swan (talk) 02:56, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Federal responsibility for state debts was a big issue in the late 1700s. Alexander Hamilton was on the side that wanted it. I'm not sure of the exact rules today. Probably a mix of state laws and federal. Lately the federal government has been crossing a lot of lines it used to respect. It directly funds many state programs, which causes a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse because elected representatives tend not to care how money is spent if their constituents aren't paying for it. It also gives Washington the power to tell states what to do, or they don't get the money. And it probably violates the US Constitution. You're not alone in being confused about this. We all are.

Puerto Rico has had budget problems but almost all Democrats would love to have another blue state in the Union. Many Republicans would be ok with it too. But the status quo seems to be working somewhat and really it's up to voters in Puerto Rico to decide if they want to be a state.

By Paris or London I meant countries where the capital city is so huge it basically calls the shots. Too much power centralized in one place. The UK seems to have found more of a balance recently with devolution. Enki (talk) 13:49, 17 January 2026 (UTC)