Guy's Book Reviews, Chapter #1: One Billion Americans by Matt Yglesias

I'm writing reviews of interesting books I read... you can find my reading list here.

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger (Amazon link)

by Matt Yglesias (LinkedIn, Twitter, Newsletter)

I've been reading Matt's writing for a long time - probably almost 20 years, since he was blogging on his own. He's best known for his work at Vox, though recently he struck out on his own and currently publishes his own newsletter.

Matt's writing usually has a contrarian, iconoclastic center-left perspective, and this book comfortably fits into that characterization. (Some of Matt's critics argue that his writing sometimes lurches toward the deliberately provocative.)

The book's thesis is a simple one: the US has a strong geopolitical motivation to remain the largest economy in the world, and that the best way to achieve that goal is to massively increase the US population. (Despite the title, Matt doesn't seem to be anchored to any specific number.) Why the best? Because he believes the alternative approach, of intentionally keeping other countries poor, is inhumane. (I agree with him.)

How would we go about massively increasing the population? Matt says it's simple - financially encourage Americans to have more kids (via government subsidies that reduce their cost), and allow in a lot more immigrants. He effectively dispenses with a lot of the "technical" arguments against a greater population - that we don't have sufficient resources or rooms for more people. Probably the biggest technical hole in his argument is the positive correlation between per capita carbon emissions and per capita GDP - moving people to the US from poor countries will probably boost global emissions, at least in the short run. Matt acknowledges this criticism, says we'll have to come up with a technology to deal with the problem, but to some readers it will feel unanswered. (Matt's counter: keeping people poor in order to limit emissions is ethically dubious and politically unsustainable.)

So if the problem of increasing the US population is not a technical one, it comes down to politics. We live in a world of increasing hostility toward pro-immigration policies (not just in the US). My sense is that Matt's argument is intentionally pitched to convert pragmatic immigration skeptics in America's policymaking elite and thought leadership; hence his reliance on the geopolitical premise, which probably comes off as abrasive or even jingoistic to other readers who otherwise agree with Matt's proposed pro-family and pro-immigration policies.

Whether that pitch is successful I don't know - I was already persuaded. An America where families can afford to have more kids if they want, and where immigrants join those of us already here in "growing the pie" and making this a more interesting country to live in, is a worthwhile goal. If this book helps in achieving that goal, it was well worth writing (and reading).