One Billion Americans
by Matthew Yglesias
Rating: 5.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2023-10-04
Why increase US population? To increase US GDP. Why increase US GDP? To keep US as a leading player in global politics and economics. Why keep US as a leading power? Patriotism I guess.
How to increase US population? Immigration and birth rates. Drastically increase the number of people we legally let in. Encourage having kids with childcare and other subsidies.
How to deal with increased population? Spread people out to depopulated areas. Improve transportation infrastructure. Deregulate zoning rules to allow more types of housing in more places.
It’s my style of book - full of specific ideas. Some of them I totally agree with. Others I want more data. For example, how do we know that increasing childcare subsidies will result in more children? I want data to back it up. Maybe there are other reasons people don’t have children, and fixing one blocker will just expose another.
Housing is a big one too. Housing prices just keep going up and his recommendation is to “just” change policy. That’s hard. Every city seems to face pushback from NIMBYs.
It’s all probably pie in the sky thinking, but I love thinking about it. I find it both fascinating and inspirational. I’m going to check out The Weeds podcast now.
In other reviews, I see a lot of criticism on environmental grounds. It’s a good point. Immigration doesn’t increase the number of people on earth, but increasing income does increase consumption and carbon footprint. Increasing birthrates certainly does increase environmental footprint. I think his response comes down to a single line: “But limiting the actual problem with climate change limits the possibilities for human flourishing. That’s a huge problem and it’s worth doing a lot to avoid, but you don’t need to cut off the flourishing itself”. He cares about humans first and the environment second. I think that shows up in his desire to decouple consumption from carbon emissions through technology.
I’m also viewing this book through the lens of possible population collapse, which I started thinking about after watching the documentary “Birthgap”. Population is set to peak around 10 billion, and I now view the next century as a contest between nations for immigration before the supply of young people really dries up.