Why Matthew Yglesias Thinks There Should Be 1 Billion Americans

How much pushback have you gotten from this idea? Because it seems like a lot of people think that overpopulation is a giant problem. And then when you say, we should triple plus the amount of people in the United States we want to compete with the rest of the world, I would imagine a lot of people are like, what are you smoking Matthew, you glacius? No, I mean, the book's really good. So everyone who reads it is just like, oh, you convinced me. At least you're humble. There's no pushback at all. No, yes, there is concern about overpopulation. That's something that, you know, so there's people from the right. They don't like immigrants. They don't like immigration. Why is that? Let's start with that. Because this is a country of immigrants. It's a very strange thing to have a country that is entirely comprised of people who came from somewhere else other than Native Americans. Entirely comprised. And yet there's a giant population that doesn't like immigrants. Yeah, I mean, look, some of it's a question of taste. You know, people like different places. People like different kinds of things. I think the best parts of America are places that have a lot of people from different places. To me, you know, whether that's that's Austin, where we are in New York, where I'm from, it's like, it's cool. Like that's America at its best. So people don't like it. There's also the legality question, though, right? Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, we built up a substantial group of people who were living here illegally. I'm for, you know, what started in the 80s. Is that when it really started? Yeah, I mean, that's when it really took off. Was it because the regulations were made more stringent? Well, so what happened was in 1996, they changed the law. Ira is the acronym for it. And they made it a lot harder for people who had come here without papers to, quote unquote, get legal. So even if you put roots down, even if you were married to an American citizen, there was no way to obtain legal status. They also made it harder to cross the border. So it used to be people would come over, they'd pick vegetables in California for a season, and then they'd just go back. Right. They'd go back to Mexico, take their money with them, get a nice house. They made it harder to cross the border so people would stay. And people who stayed had no way to get a legal status here. So unauthorized population, it built up, it built up, it built up. There's a movement on one side to say, well, we should create a path to citizenship for those people. Most of them, they're living here peacefully. They're working hard. They're not doing anything. That's where I stand. But there's people who say, look, you know, they broke the rules. We've got to be harsh. So we've been arguing about that unauthorized immigration so viciously. And I think we've lost sight of the fact that, you know, we can just create legal pathways for people to come. You know, some people will say, well, my grandparents, my parents, whoever, they came the right way. They did it. It was easy then. Exactly. And it's totally true. So my great grandparents, they came to this country at a time when there was no restriction on people. Yeah, my grandparents as well. They just came over from Italy. It was not that hard. So good for them, right? And so, like, yes, like we should have a legal process for people to come. We can have rules, you know, try to make sure you're like, say you should be working age, right? You should come here, get a job, pay taxes. You can't just like come across and collect Social Security. Yeah, fair enough. But obviously, you're OK with children coming across as well. Yeah. Like whether they're adopted once they get here or whether they come here with their parents or... I mean, we should make it possible, right? Yes, we should make it possible. That's a great way of putting it. And that's how you cannot have people breaking the rules. That's to me. But, you know, a lot of people on the right don't see it that way. Now, on the left, there's some folks, you know, people are concerned about the environment. Yeah. I mean, I'm concerned, too. I don't want to breathe polluted air. I don't want like cities underwater. But there's a strain of sort of eco-apocalyptic thinking, you know, where people say, oh, like we can't handle it. Like only degrowth is going to save us. And I just don't think that's right. You know, I am bullish on technology, right? We've got more and more clean energy sources. We've got better and better electric cars. There's more stuff we can do with electrification. We need to take those steps. But we can have a prosperous, sustainable society that has plenty of people in it, that has high living standards, things like that. So we don't need to worry about that. A lot of Americans also just overestimate how many people are here. So a billion sounds like a lot. It's about triple our current population. But that would give us the population density of France. It would give us about half the density of Germany, way less than half the density of the United Kingdom. And, you know, if you've ever been to the U.K., it's like it's a nice country. They've got London, big city. They've got countryside. They've got rolling hills. They've got sheep. You go up to Scotland, like there's fucking nobody there. So, like, we could have all kinds of places with a billion Americans, countryside, suburbs, cities, all kinds of stuff. What's the benefit of having all those people, though? So two benefits, right? So one, I think internationally, you know, the United States has been like the number one country for 100 years, give or take. We're the biggest dog out there. Everybody knows better than to mess with us. And we're losing that status. You know, we're losing that status economically to China. They're doing more stuff like, you know, telling NBA coaches like what they can tweet, what they can't tweet. They're censoring Hollywood movies because they've got the number one market out there. You can get into scarier stuff eventually, you know, South China Sea, naval battles. I'm not like a war guy, but you don't want that. I think I think we want to stay number one. And growth has been important to that historically. Right. Like, why is the United States a big deal country? And Canada is like, you know, like our cute little brother. And it's because a lot of people live here. You know, Canada is nice, but there's no people, no real strength there. Second, I think it'll make us a more prosperous country. What we do as modern day Americans is we do stuff for each other, right? Whether that's we make show, we write books, we teach in schools, we run restaurants. We're doing services to each other. And you get more prosperity when you have more people and more ability to sort of have those interactions. And that's what we do.