In my political junkie experience, there are two things I can say people underestimate about people: a.) I already said it, but people underestimate people: the greatest renewable resource for human flourishing is human ingenuity; and b.) more people is a good thing, not a drain on programs, systems, the economy, the environment, and so on. If both of those are correct, which of course I think they are, then it stands to reason that one of the greatest engines of the United States’ success is immigration. We are the country we are today — the most successful, rich country in the history of the world — because of immigration, and more precisely, because of more people leveraging their human ingenuity to move us forward. If you haven’t noticed, the United States is quite a large country, and the United States could hold quite a lot more people than it currently does, and not just from a literal geographical sense. Vox co-founder and blogger, Matt Yglesias, argues in his 2020 book, One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, that for the United States to remain competitive in the global economy, particularly with China’s 1.4 billion people population, we ought to become a nation of one billion Americans.
As you can already imagine, I agree with Yglesias’ basic premise. More immigrants, and thus, more Americans, is a moral good, and sure, if it helps us stay ahead of China (while not depleting China, thus making them poorer), then all the better. Yglesias also argues to get to one billion Americans, we can institute a variety of policy incentives to increase birthrates among Americans. I’m less sold on that side, as I tend to not favor policy incentives and the other menu of options Yglesias has in mind. With respect to immigration, it’s not so much a policy incentive that is needed, but for the government to get out of the way of immigration. Right now, the status quo is for the federal government to stop people from coming to the United States, deport them back to their home countries, and hold them in cages in the meantime. But even the higher level aspects, like green cards for doctors and lawyers the world over is too limited, involving too much red tape. The Visa point system Yglesias highlights in the book is mystifying that it’s a system we engage in at all. Make it easier to come here for people who want to come here! It benefits everyone: native Americans, and the immigrants. Yglesias argues that counter to what people think, what’s hard is stopping from people coming here, not letting them in.
Yglesias also argues in his book — he’s a policy wonk, so his book gets into the weeds (he literally used to host a show called The Weeds) about policy and data — 100 million people globally would come here, if only we would let them. Imagine turning our backs on all of that human ingenuity! Of course, that’s the benefit to us, but the first order moral good is to let them come here … because they want to come here, and a basic right of human beings is to move freely within the world, particularly from bad places to better places. Even with one billion Americans from shore to shore, Yglesias argues we’d be as dense as France. In other words, we’re not too full. Far from it. By any metric, we’re virtually “empty.”
I’m more of a hardliner on the question of letting people come here than Yglesias is, as he argues he’s not arguing for open borders, just letting more people come here while being selective, nevertheless. I’m for fully open borders.
But back to incentivizing Americans to have more babies. Yglesias is largely preaching to the choir in his book, which I listened on audio and he narrated quite well, as it concerns immigration and building more housing. However, I think our most fundamental disagreement is about which direction change flows. I tend to think policy is downstream of culture — the culture changes, and then later on, the policy reflects the changed culture — whereas, Yglesias thinks we can use policy to influence (incentivize) culture and the culture we want. I don’t doubt his premise that we could implement policy incentives that would encourage more Americans to have babies. But I don’t want the federal government in the business of encouraging more Americans to have babies.
Two other areas I found interesting, as Yglesias tries to answer the logistical questions of how one billion Americans would work is how to scale transportation, and reallocating the federal workforce to agencies throughout the Midwest. If we want to imagine an America with one billion Americans, we’re certainly going to have to think creatively and outside the box on how we currently operate in what is largely a system not meant to be scaled in the first place.
What makes Yglesias’ book interesting is it has appeal to what people have taken to calling “neoliberals,” libertarians, and conservatives interested in pro-natalist policies. But it will also frustrate conservatives because of the immigration and expansive welfare state issues, and progressives because of the environmental concerns (and also probably because of immigration concerns and/or overstating America’s goodness in the world, as it were). Yglesias addresses the environmental aspect, and without possibly doing justice to the argument, I think it comes down to two threads: a.) he’s not as pessimistic as other environmentalists are, but sure, there’s plenty the U.S. could be doing to address climate change; and b.) the U.S. is better positioned than most countries to “weather” climate change.
I’m not sure if his arguments will be compelling to conservatives or progressives who have good faith concerns or not, but I, of course, did find them compelling since I was halfway bought in before I started the book. Even if we disagree on the pro-natalist aspect, if we did half of his project (letting more people in), that would make the U.S. a much better, richer (monetarily and culturally), and most importantly, more moral country.
Milam's Musings 
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