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A review by whitakk
One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias
4.0
The main point is fresh and at least on the surface compelling -- making the US more populous has been a key to our strength historically and will be needed to continue to remain the largest global economy. The arguments for which policies will make it happen are weaker; child-friendly policies sound great but there's no evidence showing that it actually moves the needle on birthrates significantly, and the case on immigration is stronger but lacks grounding in how much would actually be needed to accelerate population growth and how that compares to current levels.
I didn't learn much that I hadn't seen before, but having heard a lot of podcasts and other stuff around the book already I may not have a fair perspective. It's written in basically a Vox article style, which didn't work well for me as a full book, and it was sloppier than most books. The question I would have liked to see explored is, is what matters how many "Americans" there are, or how many people in the American sphere? (More than a billion people already live in the West where they buy a lot from American companies, import a lot of American culture, are influenced by American institutions, etc.)
I didn't learn much that I hadn't seen before, but having heard a lot of podcasts and other stuff around the book already I may not have a fair perspective. It's written in basically a Vox article style, which didn't work well for me as a full book, and it was sloppier than most books. The question I would have liked to see explored is, is what matters how many "Americans" there are, or how many people in the American sphere? (More than a billion people already live in the West where they buy a lot from American companies, import a lot of American culture, are influenced by American institutions, etc.)