It states that all security council members(US, UK, Russia, China and France sure $1M vs $1B I gotta go, but I will follow up..
He's not comparing them as political units but rather as entities at which people project their nationalistic feelings and/or prejudiced stereotypes.
They are still not comparable. The European countries have distinct languages and cultures and have existed longer. The American states have pretty similar culture. They are all part of a single country and were all founded a short time ago. There has been one major inter-state conflict in the US (The Civil War) and there is still plenty of resentment and prejudice left over from that, and it was 150 years ago.