What is the United States — country, federation and system

The United States covers 9,833,517 square kilometers including inland and coastal waters, making it the third or fourth largest country on earth depending on how China's disputed territory is counted. Only Russia and Canada are unambiguously larger.

Abstract numbers do not convey it. New York to Los Angeles is about 3,940 kilometers — further than London to Baghdad — and takes six hours by air or four days by car. The distance from Miami to Seattle is greater than from Lisbon to Moscow. Alaska alone is larger than the three largest states in the contiguous US combined, and Hawaii sits 3,900 kilometers from the mainland in the middle of the Pacific.

The population is large and unevenly distributed. About 342 million people live here, roughly 83 percent of them in urban areas. The northeast corridor from Boston to Washington holds around 50 million people in a strip narrower than many single western states, while Wyoming has fewer residents than several American cities.

The fifty states are not administrative subdivisions created by the federal government. They are sovereign entities that predate it — the original thirteen were independent states that created the federal government, and every state admitted since has entered on an equal footing. The Tenth Amendment states the principle directly: powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people.

Washington, D.C. is a federal district, not a state. Its residents pay federal taxes and vote for president, but have only a non-voting delegate in the House and no senators — a long-running political grievance summarized on the city's license plates as 'End Taxation Without Representation'.

Five inhabited territories — Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa — are US soil. People born in the first four are US citizens at birth; those born in American Samoa are US nationals but not automatically citizens, a distinction that exists nowhere else. Territories have non-voting delegates in Congress and do not vote in presidential elections.

Puerto Rico alone has about 3.2 million residents — more than 20 states.

The Constitution enumerates federal powers. Anything not listed, and not prohibited to the states, stays with the states. The practical division looks like this.

Federal: income tax administration through the IRS, Social Security and Medicare, immigration and citizenship, the military, foreign policy, currency and monetary policy, interstate commerce, patents and copyright, the postal service, federal criminal law, and a floor of civil rights and labor protections.

State: landlord-tenant law, driver licensing and vehicle registration, minimum auto insurance, property law and property tax, most criminal law, marriage and divorce, professional licensing, public schools, business incorporation, insurance regulation, and any employment protection above the federal minimum.

Local government — roughly 90,000 units including counties, municipalities, school districts and special districts — handles property tax assessment, zoning, police and fire, schools, local roads and water. The United States has more separate governments than any comparable country, which is why local rules vary so sharply even within a single state.

The federal government has three branches, deliberately set against each other. Congress makes law, the President executes it, and the federal judiciary interprets it. Each can check the others: Congress can override a veto and impeach; the President appoints judges and vetoes bills; the courts can strike down laws as unconstitutional, a power the Supreme Court claimed for itself in Marbury v. Madison in 1803.

Congress has two chambers. The Senate has 100 members, two per state regardless of population, serving six-year terms. The House has 435 members apportioned by population, serving two-year terms. Equal Senate representation means a Wyoming voter has roughly 68 times the Senate weight of a California voter — a deliberate feature of the 1787 compromise that made the union possible.

The President is not elected by direct national vote. Each state appoints electors equal to its total congressional delegation, 538 in all including three for DC, and a candidate needs 270. Almost all states award electors winner-take-all, which is why a candidate can win the presidency while losing the national popular vote — as has happened five times, twice since 2000.

The Supreme Court has nine justices appointed for life. There is no mandatory retirement age and no term limit, which makes each vacancy politically consequential in a way it is not in most democracies.

The United States is among the most demographically diverse large countries in the world. At the 2020 Census, about 13.6 percent of residents were foreign-born — a share close to the historic high reached around 1890 — and the country has admitted more immigrants in absolute terms than any other nation in history.

The 2020 Census recorded a substantial rise in people identifying with more than one race, driven partly by changes in how the question was asked. The largest groups by the Census categories are White alone (about 58 percent of the population as White alone, not Hispanic or Latino), Hispanic or Latino of any race (about 19 percent), Black or African American (about 12 percent), and Asian (about 6 percent). Native American and Alaska Native peoples are around 1 percent, with 574 federally recognized tribal nations exercising varying degrees of sovereignty.

There is no official language at the federal level, though English is the language of government in practice and more than 30 states have designated it official at state level. About 22 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home, most commonly Spanish, followed by Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Arabic.

Religious affiliation has shifted markedly. The share identifying as Christian has fallen substantially over two decades while the religiously unaffiliated — often labeled 'nones' — have grown to roughly a quarter to a third of adults depending on the survey. The US remains considerably more religious than most wealthy democracies.

Americans drive on the right. Electricity is 120 volts at 60 hertz with Type A and B plugs, which means most European and Australian appliances need a converter rather than just an adapter. Tap water on public systems is regulated by the EPA and safe to drink almost everywhere.

Sales tax is added at the register rather than shown on the shelf price, and it varies by state and often by city. Five states — Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon — have no statewide sales tax at all.

Tipping is not optional in practice. Restaurant servers in most states can be paid a tipped minimum wage far below the standard minimum, on the assumption tips make up the difference. 15 to 20 percent is the working norm for table service.

Health care is the single biggest structural difference from most other wealthy countries. There is no universal system; coverage comes from an employer, a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid, or a plan bought on the ACA Marketplace. Being uninsured is expensive and legally permitted.

A small number of systems govern most of American administrative life: a Social Security number for anything financial, a state driver's license or ID as the default identity document, a credit score that gates renting and borrowing, and health insurance that gates care.