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A review by stephenmeansme
One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias
3.0
Matt Yglesias, late of Vox and possibly my favorite take-haver in the left-of-center blog world (I'll explain later), argues that the United States of America can really be made great if we tripled in population.
Why? (1) On a very basic level, it's easier to get things done with more people rather than fewer; (2) Many places, cities and suburbs alike, are actually shrinking in population, so backfilling them with new people lets that infrastructure work better; (3) If we're big and rich we can more easily compete with China, and competition with China is probably better than ceding ground to China (the Uighur genocide and the Hong Kong crackdowns are just examples from the recent year or so for why we might want to dis-prefer China); (4) Americans actually say they want to have more children than they end up having (2.4 wanted vs. fewer than 2 actually had); (5) Lots and lots of foreign-born people want to move here, and immigrants are good, actually.
And this really is more of a "why/why-not" kind of book than a "how" book, although Yglesias notes that a lot of the barriers to population growth and the levers to enable it are actually pretty simple and well-understood policies. We can give people money when they have a child, either as an allowance or as a lump sum (or both) - like European countries do. We can let dying towns and cities sponsor visas for skilled foreign workers, that get converted to green cards after a certain number of years. We can drop the gas tax and do congestion pricing instead. We can let people build more kinds of houses because right now it's illegal. We can build transit infrastructure like Spain and Germany do, and get more bang for our buck.
In many places, this seems less pull-your-hair-out complicated than questions of systemic racism and online disinformation, to pick two hot topics from $CURRENT_YEAR. (Although there's reason to believe that universal programs like a child allowance would increase racial equity!) So that makes it even more frustrating that there's so little political will for these policies, or against current bad policies. You don't even need to sign on to the "One Billion Americans agenda" to support many of them: in my view they're just good, clean policy.
So that's the book: basically a long-form gonzo polemic in the vein of "hey, why not." It's convenient that the single goal of getting a billion Americans allows Yglesias to play his greatest hits (on land use policy, say) and it's somewhat obvious which ones those are, since they get more meaty bits. It doesn't present as "serious" or "sober" policy advocacy, but the steady refrain of "why not though" keeps it worthy of consideration.
So while I give it a fun-loving 4 stars for the ideas (again, "why not?"), Yglesias' style is pretty idiosyncratic and I can see it turning people away. Personally, I love the way he uses thuddingly obvious statements as conjunctions, like an extreme version of the "Beltway style." I also love the way he can distill and reframe objections as provocative policy choices. Some might call it strawmanning, but I think it's more of an obvious view that should be explicitly refuted. :)
So overall, 3.5 stars rounded down. I do suggest that people read it, but if you're not a specific kind of wonk, maybe check it out from the library.
Why? (1) On a very basic level, it's easier to get things done with more people rather than fewer; (2) Many places, cities and suburbs alike, are actually shrinking in population, so backfilling them with new people lets that infrastructure work better; (3) If we're big and rich we can more easily compete with China, and competition with China is probably better than ceding ground to China (the Uighur genocide and the Hong Kong crackdowns are just examples from the recent year or so for why we might want to dis-prefer China); (4) Americans actually say they want to have more children than they end up having (2.4 wanted vs. fewer than 2 actually had); (5) Lots and lots of foreign-born people want to move here, and immigrants are good, actually.
And this really is more of a "why/why-not" kind of book than a "how" book, although Yglesias notes that a lot of the barriers to population growth and the levers to enable it are actually pretty simple and well-understood policies. We can give people money when they have a child, either as an allowance or as a lump sum (or both) - like European countries do. We can let dying towns and cities sponsor visas for skilled foreign workers, that get converted to green cards after a certain number of years. We can drop the gas tax and do congestion pricing instead. We can let people build more kinds of houses because right now it's illegal. We can build transit infrastructure like Spain and Germany do, and get more bang for our buck.
In many places, this seems less pull-your-hair-out complicated than questions of systemic racism and online disinformation, to pick two hot topics from $CURRENT_YEAR. (Although there's reason to believe that universal programs like a child allowance would increase racial equity!) So that makes it even more frustrating that there's so little political will for these policies, or against current bad policies. You don't even need to sign on to the "One Billion Americans agenda" to support many of them: in my view they're just good, clean policy.
So that's the book: basically a long-form gonzo polemic in the vein of "hey, why not." It's convenient that the single goal of getting a billion Americans allows Yglesias to play his greatest hits (on land use policy, say) and it's somewhat obvious which ones those are, since they get more meaty bits. It doesn't present as "serious" or "sober" policy advocacy, but the steady refrain of "why not though" keeps it worthy of consideration.
So while I give it a fun-loving 4 stars for the ideas (again, "why not?"), Yglesias' style is pretty idiosyncratic and I can see it turning people away. Personally, I love the way he uses thuddingly obvious statements as conjunctions, like an extreme version of the "Beltway style." I also love the way he can distill and reframe objections as provocative policy choices. Some might call it strawmanning, but I think it's more of an obvious view that should be explicitly refuted. :)
So overall, 3.5 stars rounded down. I do suggest that people read it, but if you're not a specific kind of wonk, maybe check it out from the library.