[nopehnnope]

Some problems with that:

* The US had a single national language (despite regional linguistic minorities). In the EU, the closest would be English, which is the universal second language but very few people’s first language.

* Relatedly, the US in 1789 was very culturally homogenous by modern standards. Europe is not.

* The wealth disparity between countries inside the EU is absolutely massive. Federation would lead to unfathomably massive wealth transfers from the North and West to East and South. This would lead to resentment and rekindled nationalism that would create extreme political strife and tear the whole continent apart.

[lostmsu]

I think the only real problem in this list is convincing countries to adopt English (people tend to be self-important).

Culturally, EU is quite homogenous. There may be 1-2 small countries with moderately different approach, but if you compare to the rest of the world, it is basically the same.

The wealth disparity in the US does not cause what you describe, so why would it happen in EU?

[nopehnnope]

The disparity is much greater among EU countries. The average Bulgarian income, for example, is well below bare survival income in Western Europe. US geographic disparities are much smaller, and less geographic than racial (which then bears out geographically through different demographic mixes). Also, for the first 150 years of existence, the US was not a federal welfare state. The federal government was even limited to taxing states at an equal per capita rate until after the 16th amendment, ratified in 1909.