IF SCOTLAND becomes independent the early going will be good. The new country will be a wealthy one: at over £20,000 ($33,000), within Britain its output per person was only behind London and the South East in 2012 (see chart 1). Edinburgh, the new capital, and its oil hub, Aberdeen, are both cities where wages are growing fast, a rarity in Britain. But trouble would soon strike. Scotland’s long-term economic prospects are dire: it would be a rich country, set to get poorer quickly.
