Apologies -- as you were...

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

Well that's not quite true, because the linkage between NYC and Arkansas includes federal tax rates, the regulatory environment, and free travel of labor and enterprize between the two. The linkage between NYC and London is the big city culture, which applies as well to Singapore and several dozen other large cities.

I disagree.  I think what Colman is picking up on is the financial ties.  New York and London have been, arguably, the world's two financial centers for nearly a century, and there is a great deal of interdependency between the two.  (Interdependency is what we're really talking about, when we discuss economic ties.  New Yorkers have money in London, and vice-versa.)  The connections you're drawing are political (governmental) ones rather than economic ones.  There's much more to the London-NYC connection than simply big-city culture.

Even setting aside the fact that NYC is a big city, and that the largest city in Arkansas is only a small fraction of NYC's size in terms of population, NYC and Arkansas have very little in common, other than falling under the "USA" label.  The Arkansas economy is ruled by agriculture, manufacturing, and maybe a few high-tech jobs (probably connected with the university towns).  New York is a well-developed global center of economic activity.  (Try owning a farm in New York in this housing market.)

I'm sure there are exceptions.  There are probably a few very large Arkansas-based companies with offices in New York.  But it still doesn't compare with London.  Remember that you also have major ports in the Northeast, too, which connect the area with Europe.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin