Noah, probably you know this already but there's one thing that people think immediately whenever anyone talks of migration: Reduced wages.
I think that the best way of getting people to come around to the counterintuitive idea that immigration doesn't reduce wages (and sometimes it can raise them!) is by asking people:
"When women entered the labor force, were men's wages cut IN HALF?"
Then let people wonder.
There's no better way of convincing someone of a counterintuitive concept but by trying to get them to think about how it works.
I bring this up because your idea about the need of visualizing this grand vision for America is right on-point. That's exactly what's necessary, specially with such a counterintuitive idea as this.
When it comes down to wages, the women-into-the-labor-force example is IMO perfect, because it's something that SOUNDS as if it should have reduced wages (it was a doubling of the labor force), but saying that it cut wages IN HALF would get anyone to pause and reconsider their priors.
The appeal of dramatically increasing the US population is not neatly geopolitical, in my view. It's also a way to shift and reframe domestic politics, including in ways that make the US more politically functional so that it can credibly rival China. Yglesias says some of this: the vision isn't just pro-immigration and pro-urban (things the left, mostly, wants), it's also pro-natalism/pro-family, which the right wants. What it means overall is that the US would not be *such* a rural country anymore. You can't keep the population of Wyoming so low if the population of the whole country is several hundred million more. And that solves a central problem: if there are large cities in Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Montana, if Ohio's cities are full of people again, then our political culture shifts. The US Senate is no longer the choke point.
One point I don’t recall Yglesias really addressing is Chinese population trends. As a result of the one child policy and other domestic cultural issues, current projections see a fairly rapid population drop in the not too distant future.
Hey Noah. One other reason I can think of for a bigger population is the need for global partnerships to oppose China. With 330Mn Americans, America needs the EU, Japan, Korea and many many more countries to be united in their vision and form a powerful coalition to oppose China, which is hard! If America wants to go at it alone, and it seems like more countries are shying away from multilateralism, it makes all the more sense to "bulk up". Great commentary! Can we expect a review of Goodhart and Pradhan sometime?
I think I read there was another book with a similar program for Canada, and it wouldn't surprise me if they beat the US to the punch. As the saying goes, America will always do the right thing--after exhausting every other alternative.
There's going to be a lot of pressure to migrate this century, what with climate change, technological developments with langauge translation/acquisition, increasing English education, desire to flee authoritatoon governments etc... Countries that take advantage and handle this correctly will see a benefit.
Interesting question about what it would look like. I think/hope the shift will basically be that most Americans won’t live in detached single family homes anymore - but that still leaves plenty of diversity in the housing stock and lifestyle choices. It would look pretty different across different cities, and there will be a range of densities that people can choose from in each metro area. A lot the growth in suburbs would be “missing middle” housing (as YIMBYs like to call it) which can take many different forms - rowhouses, duplexes, fourplexes, stacked triplexes like Boston). A lot of that new development would be transit-oriented, so suburbs would probably start looking more like Arlington, VA or Bethesda. Those areas aren’t going to become Manhattan. But the downtowns of smaller cities might become more like Manhattan. Surprising places like Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta are already seeing a lot of high-rise residential construction downtown.
Does Yglesias address where the new immigrants are coming from? The last major region on the planet on the planet that combines the poverty and excess labor to provide these kinds of numbers is Sub-Saharan Africa, whose population will increase from 1B to 4B during this century. (Also the Indian subcontinent, but to a much lesser extent, most Indian states have a TFR of 1.6-1.8 now). Will they be successfully integrated? Even if so, will it be a smooth process, or will the political shocks from such a radical re-engineering of US demographics incapacitate America's ability to project power during the given time period anyway?
What I wish Matt (or you) could tell us is how many of these 670 M new citizens will be willing to Put Country Before Party, and what will happen if the answer turns out to be 200 M. I haven't yet read the book -- does it touch on questions like this?
- Japan (126 mill) + EU (446 mill) + USA (328 mill) + New Zealand/Australia/South Korea/Taiwan/Canada (142.5 mill) = 1.2 billion people. So, is multilateralism dead?
Noah, probably you know this already but there's one thing that people think immediately whenever anyone talks of migration: Reduced wages.
I think that the best way of getting people to come around to the counterintuitive idea that immigration doesn't reduce wages (and sometimes it can raise them!) is by asking people:
"When women entered the labor force, were men's wages cut IN HALF?"
Then let people wonder.
There's no better way of convincing someone of a counterintuitive concept but by trying to get them to think about how it works.
I bring this up because your idea about the need of visualizing this grand vision for America is right on-point. That's exactly what's necessary, specially with such a counterintuitive idea as this.
When it comes down to wages, the women-into-the-labor-force example is IMO perfect, because it's something that SOUNDS as if it should have reduced wages (it was a doubling of the labor force), but saying that it cut wages IN HALF would get anyone to pause and reconsider their priors.
The appeal of dramatically increasing the US population is not neatly geopolitical, in my view. It's also a way to shift and reframe domestic politics, including in ways that make the US more politically functional so that it can credibly rival China. Yglesias says some of this: the vision isn't just pro-immigration and pro-urban (things the left, mostly, wants), it's also pro-natalism/pro-family, which the right wants. What it means overall is that the US would not be *such* a rural country anymore. You can't keep the population of Wyoming so low if the population of the whole country is several hundred million more. And that solves a central problem: if there are large cities in Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Montana, if Ohio's cities are full of people again, then our political culture shifts. The US Senate is no longer the choke point.
One point I don’t recall Yglesias really addressing is Chinese population trends. As a result of the one child policy and other domestic cultural issues, current projections see a fairly rapid population drop in the not too distant future.
Hey Noah. One other reason I can think of for a bigger population is the need for global partnerships to oppose China. With 330Mn Americans, America needs the EU, Japan, Korea and many many more countries to be united in their vision and form a powerful coalition to oppose China, which is hard! If America wants to go at it alone, and it seems like more countries are shying away from multilateralism, it makes all the more sense to "bulk up". Great commentary! Can we expect a review of Goodhart and Pradhan sometime?
I think I read there was another book with a similar program for Canada, and it wouldn't surprise me if they beat the US to the punch. As the saying goes, America will always do the right thing--after exhausting every other alternative.
There's going to be a lot of pressure to migrate this century, what with climate change, technological developments with langauge translation/acquisition, increasing English education, desire to flee authoritatoon governments etc... Countries that take advantage and handle this correctly will see a benefit.
A billion Americans would have even more mutual enmity and even less solidarity than the current number of Americans do, though.
Interesting question about what it would look like. I think/hope the shift will basically be that most Americans won’t live in detached single family homes anymore - but that still leaves plenty of diversity in the housing stock and lifestyle choices. It would look pretty different across different cities, and there will be a range of densities that people can choose from in each metro area. A lot the growth in suburbs would be “missing middle” housing (as YIMBYs like to call it) which can take many different forms - rowhouses, duplexes, fourplexes, stacked triplexes like Boston). A lot of that new development would be transit-oriented, so suburbs would probably start looking more like Arlington, VA or Bethesda. Those areas aren’t going to become Manhattan. But the downtowns of smaller cities might become more like Manhattan. Surprising places like Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta are already seeing a lot of high-rise residential construction downtown.
The US on its own might be too small for 1 billion people, but if you include Canada and even perhaps Mexico in that landmass, 1 billion isn't much.
Does Yglesias address where the new immigrants are coming from? The last major region on the planet on the planet that combines the poverty and excess labor to provide these kinds of numbers is Sub-Saharan Africa, whose population will increase from 1B to 4B during this century. (Also the Indian subcontinent, but to a much lesser extent, most Indian states have a TFR of 1.6-1.8 now). Will they be successfully integrated? Even if so, will it be a smooth process, or will the political shocks from such a radical re-engineering of US demographics incapacitate America's ability to project power during the given time period anyway?
What I wish Matt (or you) could tell us is how many of these 670 M new citizens will be willing to Put Country Before Party, and what will happen if the answer turns out to be 200 M. I haven't yet read the book -- does it touch on questions like this?
One thing:
- Japan (126 mill) + EU (446 mill) + USA (328 mill) + New Zealand/Australia/South Korea/Taiwan/Canada (142.5 mill) = 1.2 billion people. So, is multilateralism dead?