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A review by danquayle
One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias
3.0
Big on ideas, light on data. I'm not as anti-1 Billion as some of the other reviews are - and I certainly detected a little bit of anti-intellectual sentiment and stick-in-the-mud-ness from those other reviewers. I take Matt at face value with this idea while acknowledging it's mostly a vehicle for him to wax on about how he would fix many of America's systemic problems. Also, my bias: I like Matt Yglesias for the most part.
That being said, and with all that credit given, this book reads like an extra-long Vox article. I e-Read this, but I wasn't shocked to find the conventional page count didn't even crack 300. It's guilty of stretching out a somewhat simple premise while also lacking detail in many of the policies introduced. Massive issues that arise from tripling the population are often handwaved off with assurances that more people will bring about higher levels of innovation. That's certainly possible, but it didn't make me feel any better about climate change.
Again, as a thought exercise, this book mostly works. But don't expect a complex, highly wonky policy framework.
That being said, and with all that credit given, this book reads like an extra-long Vox article. I e-Read this, but I wasn't shocked to find the conventional page count didn't even crack 300. It's guilty of stretching out a somewhat simple premise while also lacking detail in many of the policies introduced. Massive issues that arise from tripling the population are often handwaved off with assurances that more people will bring about higher levels of innovation. That's certainly possible, but it didn't make me feel any better about climate change.
Again, as a thought exercise, this book mostly works. But don't expect a complex, highly wonky policy framework.