One billion Americans The case for thinking bigger

Matthew Yglesias, 1981-

Book - 2020

"A bold case for massive population growth in the name of national greatness--from Vox co-founder and host of "The Weeds" podcast Matt Yglesias. America is in decline. Fewer children are born each year due to financial pressure. Thousands flee our iconic cities with their housing shortages and broken infrastructure. While we tie ourselves into knots trying to stop the flow of immigrants, our exhausted economy deflates the heartland's already shrinking population. To survive China's impending global takeover (not to mention Russia), we can't afford to be weak. We need to get bigger, much bigger. We need one billion Americans. In this timely and provocative book, Matthew Yglesias makes the case for massive popula...tion growth through humane family and immigration policy. Of course, more people requires more housing, not to mention better transportation, improved education, a revitalized welfare system, and climate change mitigation. Why not do it all, and stay on top forever? Written with Yglesias's signature humor and analytic rigor, One Billion Americans challenges readers across the political spectrum to take decline seriously. Drawing on economic theory and research from leading policy experts, he offers ideas from around the globe--from Singapore's approach to traffic jams to Canada's town planning--that move us beyond left-right divides, to explore the practical and creative solutions our times call for"--

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Subjects
Published
[New York, New York] : Portfolio / Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Matthew Yglesias, 1981- (author)
Physical Description
xx, 267 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9780593190210
  • Introduction: America Is Too Small
  • Part I. The Problem
  • Chapter 1. A Very Short History of American Power
  • Chapter 2. America Is Empty
  • Chapter 3. The Dismal Economics of Child Rearing
  • Part II. The Solution
  • Chapter 4. Taking Families Seriously
  • Chapter 5. More and Better Immigrants
  • Chapter 6. Comeback Cities
  • Part III. We Can Have Nice Things
  • Chapter 7. Curing Housing Scarcity
  • Chapter 8. Getting Around
  • Chapter 9. A Land of Plenty
  • Epilogue: We the (Not Enough) People
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this provocative treatise, Vox cofounder Yglesias (Heads in the Sand) argues that a large-scale population increase brought about by higher birth rates and relaxed immigration policies will improve America's overall wealth, health, happiness, and productivity. He explains that the country's current population decline makes it difficult to keep pace with China economically; examines how child-rearing costs have prevented people from having as many children as they want to (or any at all); and weighs options for alleviating those costs, including universal child subsidies and more liberal parental leave policies. Meanwhile, immigration benefits American society, according to Yglesias, by contributing new ideas and technologies and, in some cases, lowering health care costs. An increased population, he writes, could help to revitalize cities and towns that have suffered declines in recent years, such as Baltimore, Cleveland, and Detroit, and spur improvements in education, transportation, and housing. Though he points out that promising alternative energy solutions are already available or in the works, and that the U.S. "does not hold the fate of global atmospheric conditions solely in its hands," Yglesias's attempt to persuade environmentalists concerned that more people means more emissions isn't entirely convincing. Still, his views on immigration and urban renewal are well researched and convincing. This optimistic call to action is worth considering. (Sept.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An argument that blends demography, economics, and politics to suggest a way to maintain America's great-power status in the 21st century. It's enough to make a zero population growth advocate faint. Vox co-founder and editor Yglesias proposes that the only way to keep China at bay is to beat the Chinese at their own game, growing a population of 1 billion Americans. But how? One ingredient is a far more liberal immigration policy: "The solution to the illegal immigration crisis is to let more people come legally, not tie ourselves into knots trying to stop the flow." Another ingredient is a massive expansion of the social welfare state to allow for such things as family leave and tax concessions. And what of already overcrowded American cities and their minuscule amounts of affordable housing stock? It's the last matter at which the author's argument really takes off. He offers a well-deliberated critique of housing policies that he does not hesitate to call racist, policies that forbid the construction of multiple-family dwellings in suburban and exurban areas. Yglesias proposes that immigrants be encouraged to live in uncrowded cities in the interior, bringing new vigor to American places that lack cultural or economic life. Still, the author is a celebrant of the metropolis, noting that, for instance, if a given town builds a base to accommodate 30 restaurants, "not only do you get specialization, you get competition--two different burger joints offering a slightly different approach"--as well as "a deeper labor market." However, won't 1 billion people crowd out nature, farms, etc.? In his proposed scenario, the density of the lower 48 states would be 3.5 times lower than England today, resembling France more than overstuffed Holland or Italy. He sees nothing but economic good in population growth. "A bigger country will need a lot of new stuff," he writes. "So will a zero-carbon economy." The thesis is eminently arguable, but the book is packed full of provocative ideas well worth considering. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Introduction America Is Too Small The American political system has fallen into a state of torpor and dysfunction driven by, among other things, the absence of a shared sense of purpose. Disagreement and debate are vital in a free society. But it's also useful at times to have common goals--settle the West, beat the Nazis, win the Cold War--that structure the disagreements. What we've been doing lately isn't so much debating how to proceed as a country as it is simply fighting with one another. And now the country faces a very real challenge that we must meet: rapid ongoing economic growth in India and especially China is leading to the relative decline of the United States of America as a great power and threatens its position as the world's number one state in the not-too-distant future. Contemporary American politicians give no sign of wanting to accept that decline, but they're also not proposing to do anything about it. There's no way that all the specific ideas in this book will ever command broad consensus in American society. But I think the big picture idea of the book, that America should try to stay number one, already does. The question is what follows from that. For starters, it is beyond dispute that there are fewer Americanpeople than there are Chinese or Indian people, as is the fact that China and India are trying to become less poor and seem to be succeeding. Maybe they'll just stumble and fail, in which case we will stay number one. But it would be unfortunate for hundreds of millions of people to be consigned to poverty forever. It's not an outcome we have it within our power to guarantee. And even if we could, it would be hideously immoral to pursue it. By contrast, tripling the nation's population to match the rising Asian powers is something that is in our power to achieve. It would require more immigrants and more programs to support people who want to have additional children. And of course if we had a lot more people, we'd need to adjust a number of other things to make sure they had jobs and places to live. Working out the exact details of how best to structure family support programs, how best to pay for them, exactly which additional immigrants to let in, and how to improve our infrastructure and increase our housing stock are good things to argue about. The ideas laid out in this book are the best ones I could find. But nothing will command universal assent or be beyond the realm of political dispute and political bargaining. But think of how much healthier our politics would be if there were really a debate about how to accomplish great things rather han a food fight over semi-imagined offenses to "real Americans" that serves as a mask for an endless procession of tax cuts for the rich. Why not make America greater than ever instead? Conservatives argue that the country is "full" and we can't take more immigrants. Progressives tend to disagree, even while being inclined to say that the particular towns and cities they live in are full and don't need more real estate development. America's birthrate has slipped to historic lows and nobody in the political mainstream seems to think we can or should do anything about it. Meanwhile, the seemingly unstoppable rise of China as a world power hangs like a dark cloud over American politics. None of this is right. Early in my career, I focused largely on foreign policy topics. But for more than a decade, I've primarily covered domestic issues. And as I've done so, I've been struck by the growing popularity of the view that somehow foreigners--whether through immigration or trade--are to blame for our various domestic problems. The truth is exactly the reverse. We didn't prosper in the late twentieth century because we won the Cold War; we won the Cold War because our underlying political and economic system was a lot better than Soviet communism. Today our international situation is imperiled because we have let a staggering array of lingering problems fester and prevent us from becoming as big and as rich a country as we ought to be. But the United States is not "full." Many of its iconic cities--including not just famous cases of collapse like Detroit but also Philadelphia and Chicago and dozens of smaller cities like Rochester and Erie--actually have fewer residents than they had decades ago. And virtually all of our thriving cities easily have room to grow and accommodate more people. And we should accommodate more people. Immigrants of virtually all stripes help make native-born Americans richer, make our retirement programs more sustainable, and offer the fuel for innovation that can help the country grow. Housing shortages are endemic in many parts of the country, but the tools to surmount them are easily available and--like immigration--would cost taxpayers nothing. Providing adequately for America's families--by offering not just paid leave but financial assistance, preschool and aftercare services, reasonable summer programming, and affordable college for all qualified students--would cost money. But it would greatly benefit America's children and make it much easier for middle-class people to have the number of kids they say they want. As a policy reporter, I'm much more a generalist than a specialist. And I like doing stories about solutions. Like many people, when I look at something long enough I start to see patterns in it. --The solution to America's new urban housing crisis is to build more houses so more people can move to in‑demand cities. --The solution to the illegal immigration crisis is to let more people come legally, not tie ourselves into knots trying to stop the flow. --Both America's vast rural hinterland and many of its agingn ortheastern and midwestern cities need an influx of people to prevent their current priceless assets from wasting away. --America's families need help from a more robust welfare state in order to be able to have and raise children with secure middle-class lifestyles. But for a long time these patterns seemed to be parts of a puzzle whose pieces didn't quite fit together. More immigration is good, but the cities the immigrants tend to move to already don't have enough housing. More housing is good, but that might only exacerbate rural depopulation. What put it all together was glancing back into the foreign policy realm. What the various diplomats and admirals and trade negotiators and Asia hands who think about the China question don't want to admit is that all the diplomacy and aircraft carriers and shrewd trade tactics in the world aren't going to make a whit of difference if China is just a much bigger and more important country than we are. The original Thirteen Colonies, by the same token, could have made for a nice, quiet, prosperous agricultural nation--like a giant New Zealand. But no number of smart generals could have helped a country like that intervene decisively in World War II. If sane, humane child and family policy gives us more people; and sane, humane immigration policy also gives us more people; and if declining areas need more people but expensive areas also need more housing, then the solution to the puzzle is that we shoulddo it all and stay number one forever. A more populous America--filled with more immigrants and more children, with its cities repopulated and its construction industry booming--would not be staring down the barrel of inevitable relative decline. We are richer today than China or India. And while we neither can nor should wish for those countries to stay poor, we can become even richer by becoming larger. And by becoming larger we will also break the dynamic whereby growth in Asia naturally means America's eclipse as the world's leading power. The United States has been the number one power in the world throughout my entire lifetime and throughout the living memory of essentially everyone on the planet today. The notion that this state of affairs is desirable and ought to persist is one of the least controversial things you could say in American politics today. We should take that uncontroversial premise seriously, adopt the logical inference that to stay on top we're going to need more people--about a billion people--and then follow that inference to where it leads in terms of immigration, family policy and the welfare state, housing, transportation, and more. Excerpted from One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.