Is One Billion Americans A Good Idea? | Matthew Yglesias | Modern Wisdom Podcast 218

Matthew Yglesias 0:00 There's a few different goals, but I mean, I think the primary one is to try to refocus the United States and American politics on big things, uh, which is what we have been doing for a long time. I think for all its many flaws of American policy over those years, it's been superior to the other alternatives that have been on the table, and I think that continues to be the case in an era of sort of rising Chinese power. But upholding certain values is important to us holding together as a nation, and it speaks to our international role. (wind blows)

Chris Williamson 0:36 What's the central thesis of One Billion Americans?

Matthew Yglesias 0:40 It's th- the United States should take seriously the sort of prospect of international competition with India and especially China, and see that the biggest edge that those countries have on us is their incredibly larger population, which gives China in particular an aggregate, you know, economic weight that by some measures already exceeds ours, and by other measures will soon. And we should act to try to grow, like, literally grow our country and become a denser, larger, more populated country, and to recognize that the current United States is, is really an incredibly sparsely populated country, and people perceive that there would be, like, some enormous burden in tripling the population, but actually there would be a lot of just pure domestic

Matthew Yglesias 1:28 advantages to it.

Chris Williamson 1:29 Yeah, for numbers, it's sort of 330 million or so at the moment, right?

Matthew Yglesias 1:34 Yeah, so we're talking about, about tripling. I, you know, I, I, I used, um, very rigorous mathematical formulas and I, I came up with nice round numbers. Uh, you triple what we have, you get to one billion. So that's, that's science of, uh, book writing. Um, so if, if you wanna, if you want a technical explanation, i- if the United States grew at the same rate, our population grew at the same rate that Canada's population is growing, uh, if we hit that target and maintained it, we would be at one billion, uh, by the end of the

Matthew Yglesias 2:05 century.

Chris Williamson 2:06 Wow, so Canadians are just having at it.

Matthew Yglesias 2:09 They're d- they're doing well. No, so Canada has, uh, more immigrants than, than the United States does, as a share of its population, of course, we have, we have more, there's, nobody lives in Canada, um, and a slightly higher birth rate, and, and, you know, that gets it done. And, and it's a good comparison, I think, because there's more immigration to Canada, and there's a, there's a higher level of fertility there, but neither of them are like crazy, you know? If you walk to Toronto, you know, it's a big city, it's an international city, but you're not like, "Wow, this is totally different from Chicago." You know, it's, it's just slight tweaks to the policy environment and they get you to a different outcome, and, and they get you to, I think, a better outcome ultimately.

Chris Williamson 2:48 The thing from my side being British is that I really can't tell the difference. None of us can tell the difference. You have to really know America and Canada-

Matthew Yglesias 2:56 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:56 ... and then you're like, "Ah, that one held the door open for me, is one of the Canadians."

Matthew Yglesias 3:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:01 Like, that's- (laughs) that's the way that you, that's the way that you tell. Um, so what's the goal?

Matthew Yglesias 3:05 Well, some of them are French, though. I mean, I'm sure you can figure that out.

Chris Williamson 3:08 I can tell the f- I can tell those, or I can tell, um, Georges St-Pierre. If he came up to me, I'd know that it was him. Uh, if Jordan Peterson came up to me, I'd know that it was him. And then everyone else could be-

Matthew Yglesias 3:19 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:19 ... it's down to the-

Matthew Yglesias 3:19 Yeah, who's to say?

Chris Williamson 3:20 ... the l- the canary in the coal mine is the, do they open the door or not. Uh, what's the goal that you want to achieve then, with a, a billion Americans?

Matthew Yglesias 3:28 Yeah, I mean, the- there's a few different goals. Uh, but I mean, I think the primary one is to try to, like, on a high level, refocus the United States and American politics on big things, uh, which is what we have, you know, been doing for a long time, for as long as everyone who's alive today has been here, the United States has been sort of the world's number one power. You know, we, we got the baton from you guys, uh, about a century ago in, in World War I, and I think for all its many flaws of American policy over those years, it's been superior to the other alternatives that have been on the table. And I think that continues to be the case in an era of sort of rising Chinese power, and that we should, like, take that seriously as a core part of America's national identity, that we, um... You know, we were joking around about being similar to Canada, uh, but obviously one big difference is that the United States is a major world power and Canada is not. And one reason for that is that a long time ago, you go back to, like, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, all of America's famous leaders, uh, they, they wanted this to be, like, a major country, you know? And they have different phrases for it, "Shining City on the Hill," and FDR, "The Arsenal of Democracy." Uh, but it's sort of been part of our mission, I think, not to necessarily, like... You know, when George W. Bush was president, things got a little out of hand, and there was this idea that we were gonna, like, conquer everyone and make them all democracies and, you know, that, that's not good. We, we shouldn't do that. Uh, but upholding certain values is important to us holding together as a nation, and it speaks to our international role. And the book is about trying to recapture those sort of very traditional, very American sentiments, and then also just discuss, um, a project that sounds a little loopy to people in sort of real, technical terms and see that it's, it's not as loopy as it sounds.

Chris Williamson 5:27 Why is America not as big and rich as it ought to be then? You are still very populous, huge in terms of actual space as well. I did a road trip across America last year and it took... There was a day that I went through four states and drove for 10 hours doing like 500 miles. If I drive for 500 miles in any direction from where I am in the UK, I'm in water.

Matthew Yglesias 5:51 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:51 Like, to drive 500 miles where you guys are from is just called a road trip.

Matthew Yglesias 5:55 Yeah, it's a big, it's a big country. Um, you know what I think traditionally, right?... well, not just traditionally, currently as well. A, a challenge for America is to develop that vast landscape to the sort of best of our possibilities, right? Uh, you look at, you know, p- people will say, "Oh, we, we don't have room for all those people." Um, you compare the United States to the UK, um, and it's not just that the UK is, is physically smaller, uh, but it's much denser, right? You have what, 80 million people? Um, so that's about what, a, uh, a quarter, uh, of America's population? Uh, but on a much, much, much smaller land mass. Um, and the truth is like, it's still a really nice country, you know? There's like a giant global cosmopolitan city there, but there's also lots of nice farms. You go up north and like, e- even in the UK context, Scotland is like virtually empty, right? Just like huge, vast countryside. Um, which just goes to show, it's like there, there's a lot of space for people. There's a lot of, there's a lot of ways human habitation can exist, and we can have farms and we can have wilderness and we can have like cool mountains, uh, but like, just also more people in it. Um, and that's part of reaching the sort of full potential that we have, both as an international player and as a sort of modern service-oriented

Matthew Yglesias 7:18 economy.

Chris Williamson 7:19 Why is it not as big and rich as it ought to be then, given all of this land?

Matthew Yglesias 7:23 Hmm. Well, you know, these things take time. Uh, obviously there was indigenous inhabitants here once upon a time, um, uh, largely wiped out, uh, through some, some unfortunate incidents. Um, uh, recently though, the United States has taken a couple of, you know, unfortunate policy turns. One is this kind of hard tilt against immigration, which I don't, I don't blame people for thinking that the situation that prevailed about 15 to 20 years ago when a lot of people were coming in unauthorized-

Chris Williamson 7:59 (smacks lips)

Matthew Yglesias 7:59 ... you know, that, that upset people for good reasons. I mean, I, I think people feel, okay, if we have rules, people should be following the rules. Uh, but instead of moving from that system to like a better system in which we had legal channels and we were selecting people in a responsible way, but people were continuing to come, we really shut down the flow. We've been trying to terrorize, uh, under Trump, you know, millions of people who are living here not doing anyone any harm. And at the same time, since 1980, the number of children that people are having has been going down and down and down. And what's interesting is the number of children that people say they would like to have, the number of children in particular that women say they would like to have is not dropping, right? It's not that we're seeing some total revolution in values and people are like, "Ah, whatever. Who, who wants kids?" Um, instead people are saying, "Look, uh, childcare is too expensive. Uh, it's taking me a long time to achieve financial stability so I'm having that first child, you know, into my mid-30s." And, and you run out of time. Uh, they're saying, "My personal finances are not stable enough." So, you know, we can do things on both of these fronts. We can have an organized legal flow of immigration that is still at a high volume, and we can have supports for, for families with children. There are deep economic reasons why the relative cost of, of childcare has gone up over time, and we just, it's something societies, not just the United States, need to address if they see themselves as continuing multi-generational enterprises in which family life is an important aspiration, and we just sort of have to get over a certain level of libertarianism about these things.

Chris Williamson 9:44 I saw a statistic last week Tweeted out by my friend Rob Henderson that said 50% of US singletons are neither looking for casual dates nor a long-term relationship. 50% of people that's single-

Matthew Yglesias 9:59 I saw that too.

Chris Williamson 10:00 Yeah, 50% of it... That blows my mind.

Matthew Yglesias 10:04 That's one of those things that makes me wonder if people are telling the truth.

Chris Williamson 10:07 Yeah, maybe. I mean, you don't know.

Matthew Yglesias 10:09 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:10 It... But at the very least, even if you account for a ton of variance-

Matthew Yglesias 10:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:13 ... it's a lot of people.

Matthew Yglesias 10:14 It is.

Chris Williamson 10:15 You know? Um, unless it was, I, I don't know, like a, a weirdly really like ugly and imposing researcher-

Matthew Yglesias 10:23 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:23 ... that was like, "So do you want, do you want a date? Do you want a long term (laughs) relationship or a casual one?" I don't know. Um-

Matthew Yglesias 10:28 Oh, no thanks. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:28 Yeah. No, not for me. Not for me. Not for me. I'm thinking of going into, uh, into being a religious, religious institutions.

Matthew Yglesias 10:35 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:36 Um, is there a direct link between population and economic prosperity then? Are there not some other ways that you could do this?

Matthew Yglesias 10:44 Um, I mean, I think there is a clear relationship, right? I mean, I think in a... I, I think for the vast majority of human history, right, we were living off the land. We're talking about hunter-gatherer bands, we're talking about little agricultural communities, we're talking about peasant farmers, and you're dealing with a world in which more people means less prosperity, right? So there's extraordinary statistics that will show you that after the Black Plague, uh, wages go up in Western Europe because the worst land goes out of cultivation and everybody just sort of like grabs the best farms and you can pasture your cows instead of needing to eat like weird black bread all the time, um, and it's great. And that is so deep in our psyche, for, for good reason, because that was most of human history, that people tend to think in those terms. Uh, but if you look at a modern economy, right, what are most people doing? Um, we are, if we, uh, are, are privileged to be podcasters, we're like chatting on the internet to entertain and inform other people. Uh, if we're working class, we are maybe cooking food or cleaning up or taking care of people in a hospital setting. Uh, if we're professionals, we also may work in hospitals. We may work in schools. Um-... we might be architects, uh, but we're, we're doing things for each other, right? And the more people that there are, the sort of richer, deeper the market is that we have, right? I've been doing, you know ... I, I do a podcast. I've been appearing on a lot of people's other shows. Uh, we've been doing them in English, uh, which is great 'cause that's the language I speak. Uh, but English is a great podcasting medium because so many people speak English, right? That you don't need to appeal to 40% of the English-speaking population to have a good show, right? You can serve a niche audience. It could be hundreds of thousands of people, and that's still a trivial fraction of, of English speakers. If we wanted to try to have, you know, podcasts in, I don't know, what, Danish, uh-

Chris Williamson 12:54 Swahili or something, yeah.

Matthew Yglesias 12:56 ... it's just, it, it's hard, right? It's like it's hard to have a vibrant, uh, podcasting environment i- in something like that, right? And for in-person services, the same is true, right? If you got a tiny town, you wanna run a restaurant there, like, that's fine. Good for you. But it's gonna have to be very generic, right? Hopefully a nice place, you know, friendly, homey. But you can't specialize in one kind of food. If you've got a big city, right, you can be the greatest ramen shop in the world, right? You can pick a thing and try to excel at it. Um, and you can have a much more productive economy because not everyone has to serve everything. And that's sort of modern-day prosperity. But that's a very new kind of environment, and it's not the way people are used

Matthew Yglesias 13:42 to thinking.

Chris Williamson 13:43 Why is it important for America to be number one in the world? Remembering I don't have a dog in this fight. Beautiful thing being British.

Matthew Yglesias 13:50 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 13:50 Being British, I can play devil's advocate as much as I want today. So, why, why should America be number one? Why is it important?

Matthew Yglesias 13:56 You know, I think the British example though is actually very relevant to this, right? Um, the United Kingdom was the sort of number one power in the world, uh, for quite a while. Um, and, and then that stopped being the case. But I don't think that England's leaders, uh, and population were indifferent to that question, right? Uh, if, if the British Empire had been replaced by Nazi Germany as the world's number one power, that would've been really bad, right? Uh, and so one reason that, you know, decolonization and, and all that process was an acceptable outcome for Britain is that it was going to the United States, right? And if we were saying, "Okay, America is not gonna be the number one power in the world anymore. Uh, it's gonna be Finland. Uh, it's gonna be the nice Canadians who hold the door open for you," you know, I, I might be singing a different tune here. I'm not like a hyper-nationalist. Uh, but you look at the real world and what we are dealing with there, and the alternative to American leadership is quite a bit worse, uh, than the United States (laughs) on almost any dimension that you wanna talk about. And we see things that are happening domestically. They've got people in concentration camps in, in Xinjiang. They are breaking their agreements with Hong Kong regarding local democracy there. Uh, but they're also externalizing their political power. Uh, something that made a big impression on me, I'm a big, uh, pro-basketball fan, watch the NBA a lot, and I saw-

Chris Williamson 15:24 Not right now, you don't.

Matthew Yglesias 15:25 Well, (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 15:26 (laughs)

Matthew Yglesias 15:26 ... I, I, I saw, you know, a, a coach, um, I, I think, I think it was Daryl Morey from, from the Houston Rockets, and he tweeted in English in America, solidarity with protestors in Hong Kong. And China has already banned Twitter domestically, right? So he's using a platform that's illegal there, and the Chinese cut NBA off from broadcast in China to retaliate, and then there were all these criticisms. And so LeBron James says like, "Oh, he really shouldn't have said that." And that's not because LeBron is like a, like a bad guy. You know, he, um, in, in US domestic politics has been a real leader on a lot of issues, thoughtful person. Uh, but, you know, he, he, he's a business too and he needs the China market, and they need him to not be critical of anything that's happening there. So Chinese speech norms are coming into American sports leagues. Uh, Mercedes-Benz did an advertisement a few years ago and it quoted the Dalai Lama about something, you know, and it was something dumb, right? I mean, you got a Buddhist monk and they're like, "So buy our fancy car." Uh, but the Chinese government threw a fit and the CEO of Daimler ends up apologizing for this offense that they gave to the Chinese people. And again, that's, that's crazy. I mean, why shouldn't a German auto executive quote the Dalai Lama if he wants to? Uh, PEN America, this, this happened after my book came out, but PEN America did a report about Chinese censorship of Hollywood movies, and they said that it started with certain things couldn't be shown in China or certain scenes would have to be edited differently to go to China. But the Chinese government has gotten more aggressive and now they say, "Look, if you want your movie to show here, you have to change it globally." And because the Chinese box office is now larger than the American box office, movie studios do it, right? They change plot points. And so, um, in the, uh, uh, Avengers movies, uh, or Doctor Strange, right, there's a character, The Ancient One. And in the comic books, there's a Tibetan monk, but in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's Tilda Swinton, uh, with, you know, a, a white person, uh, denationalized, uh, because Disney is afraid that all Marvel distribution will be blocked i- in China if, if they don't do it. So this is a little bit like ticky-tack stuff, movies, basketball players, uh, but it, it speaks to the value system of the country that we are talking about, and it's no joke, uh, like bad and should be a subject of, of global concern.

Chris Williamson 18:08 There's some really slippery slopes that you're at the top of there.You know, you've got-

Matthew Yglesias 18:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:13 ... you've got producers of movies on the other side of the planet, like the biggest franchise. Marvel must be the, it must be one of the biggest franchises of the, you know, the last sort of 10 years.

Matthew Yglesias 18:24 Right.

Chris Williamson 18:25 And you're changing, globally changing the storyline, like, which is already written. Let's not forget that this isn't someone writing a script. It's an adaptation of a comic book.

Matthew Yglesias 18:35 Right.

Chris Williamson 18:37 So that's a really, really good example and also quite terrifying. I'm gonna guess that you'll have seen the UK has just rolled back the, um, 5G Huawei towers.

Matthew Yglesias 18:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:50 Did you see this?

Matthew Yglesias 18:51 I did.

Chris Williamson 18:51 Yeah, so the UK, that was in response to some concerns, some security concerns and stuff like that.

Matthew Yglesias 18:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:57 So you can see how this tit-for-tat game can escalate. "Oh, well, you did this." "Oh, well, we'll do that." Yes. "Oh, you did this. Well, y- we did that." And I suppose as well that when you have private companies, you know, if, if for some reason the Avengers movie had offended China, then, well, okay, who pays the price for that?

Matthew Yglesias 19:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:17 Is there some new trade tariffs nationally placed on America because the choice of a private company? That's kind of crazy.

Matthew Yglesias 19:26 Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a difficult one. And, you know, you could have imagined a, a different world. Uh, when, when I was in college, I, I had a professor as, um, a Welsh guy, I think, Glyn Morgan, and, and he wrote a book, and it was called The Idea of a European Superstate. Uh, and, and his thesis was that American global hegemony was unacceptable, that the United States is this, like, out of control country with religious fanatics and, and blah, blah, blah, and you need to supercharge the European unification project so that the EU could be a global military and economic actor. Um, it's a really interesting book, uh, particularly from a, a particular moment in time, uh, in the early 2000s. Um, but we know, like, world history has not gone in that direction, right? Uh, the UK is one of the largest European countries is leaving and certainly the European country with the most, um, uh, military clout and tradition of, of playing on an international stage. Uh, there has been, among the remaining countries, a, a weakening of ties rather than a strengthening and, you know, a more and more sort of German accent in Europe without the UK in it, which is good in some ways. I mean, there's a lot that's admirable about post-war Germany. Uh, but this is not an entity that is going to be a alternate beacon for sort of freedom and, and liberal values. Um, the UK is too, too small. I mean, right? You need much, much more than, than 80 million people. And the other countries, there's a lot of nice English-speaking countries out there, you know, New Zealand, Australia, all very admirable, but these are tiny, tiny places. Uh, so ultimately, it comes down to American leadership, um, hopefully in partnership with other countries, but American leadership or nothing, um, at least as I see it.

Chris Williamson 21:21 I was gonna say, what if you were number two behind, let's say, the EU, would you be so concerned or would you even be concerned? Is this... How much of this is patriotic America number one, and how much of this is anything-but-China number one?

Matthew Yglesias 21:37 You know, it's both. I mean, I, I'm a believer in America and the American project, but it is definitely true that if we were talking about an increasingly integrated Europe of, I don't know, 450 million people, uh, coming up, then I think we would be saying... I would be saying a different thing, right, about what is the international environment, and we're talking about a sort of a, a two-legged stool of, of global liberalism with a, a different set of equities. Managing that relationship, uh, would be different. I- I'm not, like, a, like, a super IR, uh, international relations kind of guy. Um, all I really know is, like, that is not the world. That's not the path that we have gone down. And, you know, one reason that we haven't gone down that path is, I don't think that it is in the, the nature of Europe as a, as a project, right? It was never sold to people ever as, like, this is going to be an international military force, right? It's meant to be a project of economic prosperity and to avoid, um, intra-European conflicts, right? And, you know, uh, Brexit, obviously, a very complicated phenomenon, uh, but part of it there is just a sense, I think, among, uh, many British people that the project had gone beyond the scope of what they'd intended to sign up for, right? Trying to get some better export markets, suddenly you have all these immigrants. I don't know. I'd like... I, I like immigrants, but it is true that, like, that is a different thing. Um, and, you know, so it's not gonna happen, whereas the United States, I think, has had, you know, global leadership aspirations for a long time, uh, implicitly in the 19th century and explicitly throughout the 20th century, and I think it's something that we can rally ourselves to. And then in the opposite, right, as we've sort of gone into Donald Trump... You know, Donald Trump talks a lot about greatness, right? But he's really giving a sort of little America vision, right, in which we don't participate in alliances, we don't uphold values abroad, we cut off immigration and trade, uh, you know, both domestically and internationally, and then you sort of have this ethnic conception of American-ness and exclusionary conception. Uh, and that's been a current in American politics for a long time but normally a minority current, right? Um-... southern segregationist politicians had influence, uh, for a long time, but did not win national elections. They did not lead the country. Um, and Trump has, is taking us down this path to being a kind of a, a lesser country, but it also pulls apart at the, at the fabric of the country to not uphold those kind of abstract, uh, ideas that can knit us together when we're sort of at our best.

Chris Williamson 24:37 Getting onto the immigration point, I think this is going to be a real point of contention for many people-

Matthew Yglesias 24:43 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:43 ... who read One Billion Americans. What is your proposal to get from 330 to one billion? What, uh, how many were you gonna breed? How many are we gonna import?

Matthew Yglesias 24:54 (laughs) Uh, you know, I mean, uh, I don't think it's an either or in a certain sense because there's, uh, strong complementarities. Uh, a lot of the people working in childcare are immigrants. Um, so what I say about immigration is just that immigration is incredibly underrated. Uh, you ask normal people about immigration, I shouldn't say normal people, the median voter about immigration, um, she has a lot of concerns. You know, she's not against it necessarily, but she have a lot of concerns about economic impact, about crime, about schools, about all kinds of things. Uh, you ask economists, right? You find the most immigration skeptical prominent economist in America, George Borjas up at, up at Harvard. He's cited by Jeff Sessions, by Stephen Miller. Uh, the, the restriction is they love him. Um, so his research project, he claims o- on a big thing that a huge, totally uncontrolled influx of Cuban refugees into Miami hurt the wages of non-Cuban Hispanic people who don't have a high school degree. Right? So, that's not nobody, but that's like 30% of the population of Miami, 8% of the population of the United States globally fits that view. So among experts, even the restrictionists are kinda optimistic about immigration. And among normal people, there's a lot of pessimism, a lot of skepticism about immigration. So I think the real issue is to say, look, what are the most politically feasible channels we could find to increase the number of people who are able to move here? Um, and we can't totally know a priori. We have to find it out. But one thing we do know is that when you select immigrants based on their sort of education and language skills and likelihood of labor market success, um, that's more politically popular. That's how Canada and Australia have larger levels of immigration than we do. Um, there's sort of detailed surveys, uh, taking place in, in Europe that show countries with more skilled immigrants a- are sort of happier with it. So I do think we should make that change, which is associated with the political right in the United States, uh, but they wanna say, "Well, let's have fewer immigrants, but make them highly skilled." I say no. Like, let's have higher skilled immigrants and then have more of them, right? The other thing is I think we should be willing to an extent to cater to people's prejudices, right? If people wanna say, uh, "I'm fine with Canadians moving here," like, let's open the door to Canadians, right? You could have free trade agreements in goods where we don't say, "Oh, it has to be non-discriminatory." You can pick the countries you're comfortable with that you think will respect environmental and labor rights, things like that, and it could be the same. Like, we should, we should look at it, you know? We should, uh ... There's all these people living in England in, in your tiny houses and, you know, ventless dryers and like, "Come here." You know, "Life is good. Uh, we've got ice cubes and giant sodas and, uh, take big-ass road trips." You know, it's amazing. Um, uh, and I think, you know, on specific terms, I think one thing we should really do is look at local option for immigration, uh, which is to say there are mayors of some cities, primarily in the Midwest, that have lost population, and they are saying, "Look, we would love to have more immigrants in Cleveland, in Akron, in Buffalo, in Springfield." Um, and we should let localities that want to sponsor a sort of extra tier of immigrants, right? So if you're the people living in the belt where they hate immigrants, like, sure. Okay. Like, do the immigrants even wanna move to West Virginia and northern Alabama? Like, probably not, right? To be frank about it (laughs) . Um, and let them come to the places where, uh, people see that it can revitalize communities that have been hollowed out by de-industrialization and could really benefit from, you know, some of the best and brightest people in the world moving to them.

Chris Williamson 29:03 Is economic prosperity worth diluting down American culture though? So if someone is American ... If someone's Mexican, they're not American, and if they become an American citizen, that doesn't change the fact that their culture will be that of Mexico. So if you were to import, you know, 100 million Mexicans and then, you know, a couple of million Canadians-

Matthew Yglesias 29:23 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 29:23 ... and then some Cubans and all the rest of it, you could end up being a minority within your own country.

Matthew Yglesias 29:28 Well, you know, but that is America's culture, right, is people coming from all kinds of different places. I think it's reasonable to say, look, you don't wanna let any one particular other place, uh, sort of predominate, right? I mean, you wouldn't wanna add, I think, um, 300 million people from India. Not that there's anything wrong with people from India, but then it's like, okay-... that maybe isn't America anymore, right? But if you have a bunch of people from India and a bunch of people from Mexico and a bunch of people from the Philippines and people from Africa and people from South America, right, then that's America. That's the American story. Once upon a time, this was a country of English religious dissenters, right? That's the sort of original core proposition of the United States. Uh, but we have evolved so far beyond that so many times, big waves of immigration from Germany, from Ireland, you know, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, uh, come here, um, Asians, Latin Americans. You know, some of my family is Eastern European Jews from Russia and Poland, some of my family is Cuban, and that's a very American sort of family story. My wife's family is, like, longtime, you know, uh, Ulster-Scots, uh, whatever you call them, uh, you know, 18th century came in. So then our son is, like, even more blended, and that's, that's America, like, at its core, is just, like, a lot of weird shit coming

Matthew Yglesias 30:58 together.

Chris Williamson 30:59 Downstream, I can see how immigration would then eventually blend into a culture, but you're going to get pockets of people, the particular people from particular countries are going to find microcosms where other people-

Matthew Yglesias 31:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:11 ... from their country are as well. And I can see, no matter how progressive you are with regards to immigration-

Matthew Yglesias 31:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:17 ... if you become a minority within your own city, I can see that being very unpopular.

Matthew Yglesias 31:22 Yeah, I mean, look, uh, you know, this has always been a sort of question about immigrant niches. Um, and, you know what I mean? So I, I grew up in New York, which is a very immigrant-heavy city and is full of places like that, right? I mean, as a sort of native-born American, native English speaker, I was not a "minority," quote unquote, in my city. But you go to parts of Jackson Heights and you're like, "Oh, this is the subcontinent," right? Then you go two stops further down on the 7 train and you're in China. Um, and it's part of what, you know, people who love New York love about it. Uh, there's also a reason lots of people don't love New York. And, you know, one thing I, I, I wanna say is that we should, I think we should push back against the idea that we need to be homogenous and that we need to exclude people to have a successful country. But I also wanna push back against cosmopolitan liberals' tendency to deride people who have different preferences from theirs. Like, it's fine. It, it's just a fact of life that people, for arbitrary reasons... Like some people would find it incredibly boring to live in a very ethnically homogenous place because they would say, "There's no good restaurants here." Right? And it's-

Chris Williamson 32:41 "I love my Mexican food, I love my Japanese food," and...

Matthew Yglesias 32:43 Right. And it's, you know, and it's the kind of people who, like, like, will say, like, "The, the greatest thing to happen to Britain is that, like, now there's all these Indian restaurants," right? Like, "It's way better." Um, other people don't think that way. Like, some people don't like to try new stuff. They don't like spicy food. And like, that's fine, you know? Like, that's, that's part of accepting diversity is that some people don't have that kind of cosmopolitan, hyper-openness, easily bored sort of mindset and mentality. And, you know, I, I, that's why, that's one reason why having local differentiation in immigration policy I think can be useful and important. Uh, one of the things I try to show in the book though is that there is an economic interlinkage, right? That we have seen, uh, incredible decline in the rural population in the United States over the past couple of generations. Um, and that's because... I mean, it's because of several different things, but one main factor is all throughout human history, look thousands of years, right? People leave the countryside to go live in the big city. Um, but how many children are born there in the first place makes a big difference, right? If you have three kids and one of them moves to the big city, well, you have stable population in the countryside. If you have four and one moves to the big city, you have growth in both places. If you have two and one goes to the city, then your countryside is shrinking, right? And what people are doing in rural areas economically, right, is they are engaged in primary production, right? Farm, timber, mining, things like that. The market for that stuff is in the cities, right? So there's a cultural contrast between the kind of people who like small towns and the kind of people who like big cities, but, like, I don't wanna starve to death because, uh, have no food, and farmers don't wanna be broke because nobody's eating it. And, like, we really are, like, in it together as a country. And having a more dynamic, more rapidly growing place, both in terms of, uh, you know, domestic family life and in terms of immigration is like a win-win for everyone. Uh, and America has become... A, a lot of countries frankly, but the United States, too, has become so consumed with domestic cultural conflict that it is making it hard for us to see what are sort of concrete... Like, like, what really matters, right? And one thing that I think is useful about thinking in international terms, thinking in global terms, is it helps remind us of a sort of sense of common purpose and togetherness and the fact that we want to have, you know, mutually beneficial arrangements with each other, uh, to defend certain things. Like, everybody in America, like, thinks it's bad to have, um, uh, the, the stuff we were talking about earlier, you know, the exporting of Chinese censorship. Like, nobody wants that, right? And nobody wants us to be poor. Nobody wants people to not be able to raise children, uh, because it's impossible to get a daycare, right? Like, there's a lot that we have in common, and our politics has become incredibly focused on what differentiates us on symbolic levels. And I think we would be, like, we would be happier in our day-to-day lives as well as, uh, in, in our politics if we could focus on some of the bigger-picture

Matthew Yglesias 35:58 things.

Chris Williamson 35:58 Totally makes sense to say that w-... if you can't sort your own shit, why should you be focused on trying to import some people from a different country? Like, if you guys are going absolutely crazy at the moment-

Matthew Yglesias 36:11 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:11 ... and it's just pandemonium, which, you know, from the UK looking over, it does look like quite a lot of chaos is happening at the moment. It's like, maybe, maybe you need to kind of clean the, clean the bedroom-

Matthew Yglesias 36:21 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:21 ... before you talk about adding an extension on in the garage type thing.

Matthew Yglesias 36:25 Well, there's something to that. Um, by the same token, though, I feel like, you know, Americans have gotten so ... Part of how we've gotten off the rails is people becoming so obsessed with, uh, the idea that, like, things are terrible here, right? Like Trump running around talking about American carnage. Um, the fact that lots of people from around the world would like to come here, uh, tells us something, right? Like, about our own society, uh, and its value, and to sort of recognize some of the blessings that we have fundamentally, and that it's worth actually trying to keep them and not just tear ourselves apart in, like, a small-minded conflict about, you know, the people who drive pickup trucks and the people who drive Priuses. Um, you know, I, I drive a Prius. I live in a big city. I, I, I do ... Like, I have a dog in this fight. Um, but, like, is it actually the most important thing? Or conversely, just to say to progressives, right? Um, it's obviously true that racism has structured American society, uh, for a long time and continues to in important ways, and people have important claims for justice and redress that they want to make. Uh, at the same time, um, people move here voluntarily from the West Indies, from Latin America, from Africa, from Asia, knowing these negative facts about American society, but also seeing a lot of positives to it, right? And when it comes to, "Okay, Trump is being cruel. He's mistreating these would-be immigrants," people on the left see that, that, like, that's wrong, that that's bad, that we should be nice to them. Uh, but you should also learn the lesson of the fact that they want to come here, right? That America has something valuable to offer to the world. And that people on the right who want to be patriotic and want to have pride in the country and want to say that, like, "America is good, and we should all have little flags in our yards," um, that there's something to that, right? And then to say to those people, "Well, look. If you want to be patriotic, if you want to talk about American ideals, then you have an obligation to try to live up to them. Like, you yourself have not, like, done anything great, like as an individual," right? It's like, wha- like, what do we do? What are the ideas that we stand for, and, and how can we sort of live them?

Chris Williamson 38:46 It does seem like the messaging's got very confused and conflated, I think. Like, you've got people on the left sounding like people on the right 25 years ago, and you've got people on the right who I, I don't even know what they sound like anymore. But you're correct. Like, Black people in America are the most affluent Black people on the planet. Like, that's a reason for people from other Black countries to want to move there. So, for me, as a good example, I'm, I'm British. Like, if I want to come to America at the moment, I can get an E-2 visa, and I need to get about $150,000 together to invest into a company, either an existing one or a new one.

Matthew Yglesias 39:23 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 39:24 Or I need to be an O-1, which is person of extraordinary abilities.

Matthew Yglesias 39:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 39:27 I need to be with- in, in the top 1 to 2% in my field in the world. This podcast is pretty good, but-

Matthew Yglesias 39:33 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 39:34 ... it's, it's a ... You know, there's, there's some big hurdles for me to get over there.

Matthew Yglesias 39:38 Yes.

Chris Williamson 39:39 Am, am I ... Is, is the door gonna be easier for me to step through?

Matthew Yglesias 39:43 Yeah, I mean, you know, one of my sort of deep inspirations for this was, a long time ago when we, we were launching vox.com, uh, you know, we were hiring people. And we got a resume from a woman who was a health reporter, Canadian born. At the time she applied, she was living in the UK. We're like, "We read her clips." Uh, they were really good. Um, she had, like, a good plan for coverage. So we're like, "All right. We're gonna hire you." Uh, and then we, like, took that over to the HR department, and they were like, "Whoa."

Chris Williamson 40:13 (laughs)

Matthew Yglesias 40:15 (laughs) "We gotta talk about visas." And in a weird way, it had never occurred to me, because the immigration debate is always about, like-

Chris Williamson 40:23 Mexicans and Cubans-

Matthew Yglesias 40:24 Oh, the, those people, you know? Like, nobody has ever expre- like vocalizing a concern that Canadian journalists-

Chris Williamson 40:33 "There's too many British people coming over here."

Matthew Yglesias 40:36 ... are, are gonna come here from London-

Chris Williamson 40:38 Yeah.

Matthew Yglesias 40:38 ... and, like, write hot takes on the internet, especially because we, we have free trade in takes, right? Like, I, I could read Guardian columns. I can read, uh, what's a Canadian newspaper? The Globe and Mail. Like, your podcast will play in America. (laughs) My podcast pay- plays in Britain. So, like, what's the point even? And, like, who knows what the point is, you know? Like, uh, uh ... So we got it done, right? We, we got her an, an O-1 visa, and she is in fact extraordinary. Uh, but it was, it was a big pain in the ass. And to what end? Like, nowhere in the pain-in-the-ass process was there actually, like, an angry immigrant-hating person being like, "America for the Americans. We don't need these Canadian health reporters." You know? It's just a kind of, um, bureaucratic autopilot because we cap the total number of visas. So, to ease up on what should be the easy cases, Canadian health journalists, British podcasters. Like, why not? Why not, right? Um, but right now, you would have to take a visa away from a Filipino person or, or a Mexican or, or an Indian American. Um, so that becomes its own contentious politics, right? Where because we've decided to limit the total number of visas, you can't expand the sort of no-brainers. Like-

Chris Williamson 41:57 Here's a, here, here's a-

Matthew Yglesias 41:57 ... O-1, top, top 1%. Why not top 10%?... who would be hurt? Ten-

Chris Williamson 42:03 I didn't- (laughs)

Matthew Yglesias 42:04 90th percentile is pretty good, right?

Chris Williamson 42:06 90th percentile is pretty good.

Matthew Yglesias 42:06 If my podcast was the e- e- if my book, right? If One Billion Americans becomes a top 10% book, I'll be pretty pleased. (laughs) Like that's, that's good stuff. We, we could use those people.

Chris Williamson 42:18 I heard from a friend who got an O-1 a couple of years ago, and his attorney is one of these absolutely shit hot, very, very smart, knows all the tricks in the book attorneys and he flew, I wanna say Madrid? So he flew to the US Embassy in Madrid-

Matthew Yglesias 42:37 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 42:37 ... to do that because there's, like, weird different allocation-

Matthew Yglesias 42:40 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 42:40 ... difficulty levels.

Matthew Yglesias 42:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:42 So there's English guy, oh sorry, yeah. English guy, um, a- applying to O-1 in America but went via Madrid because-

Matthew Yglesias 42:50 Wow.

Chris Williamson 42:50 ... that's the case. So, you're right, like this, this sort of level of bureaucracy ... And in all that bureaucracy does really as far as I see is put a intellectual hurdle or a cash hurdle on that. Because if you've got enough money or enough smarts, you can get around rules.

Matthew Yglesias 43:07 You know-

Chris Williamson 43:07 It's one of the things I'm increasingly learning-

Matthew Yglesias 43:09 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 43:09 ... as I get older. The all, all, all the rules are is just a problem to be solved, and if you put more rules in the way then you select for a particular type of people who can bend those rules. So, I don't really-

Matthew Yglesias 43:20 Well, and it, it expresses this kind of paranoia about immigrants that is, um, visible in, in our political culture that ... I looked at this, uh, this, this legislative proposal called The RAISE Act that President Trump has endorsed, it's written by Tom Cotton, um, and, you know, it wants to change how the immigration system works. They say, "Okay, we want a merit based system. We're gonna select people based on their skills." And, you know, fine. This is not a crazy idea. Um, then you dive into the details and it is so stringent that, like, the, uh, the MVP of the NBA, not to make everything about the NBA, uh, he wouldn't have qualified as sufficiently skilled because ... unless he could get a top 10% test of English as a foreign language score. He, he needs those English language points. And you say, "Well, why?" Right? I mean, he, he speaks English okay, but like it's not great. But like it's a ... he's a basketball player (laughs) . Like it- it's fine that his English isn't great. Plus, he'll learn, you know? Like, somebody comes here when they're 21 years old and their English is only so-so. Like it'll get better. There's, there's no problem there, um, or you look at ... and then the same thing. Well, so you get extra points for winning Olympic medals,

Matthew Yglesias 44:35 but only in individual sports.

Chris Williamson 44:38 No way.

Matthew Yglesias 44:40 You get extra points for winning a Nobel Prize, but only a science prize. Like, like-

Chris Williamson 44:45 Fucking hell. So all the eco- all the economists aren't coming over.

Matthew Yglesias 44:47 Right. Or, well, but the literature, right? Like what, what is the concern? Like our country is going to be flooded with Nobel Prize in Literature winners who are gonna be what? Like a, an excessive burden on society? They're gonna drive down the pay for domestic novelists? Like it doesn't make sense, and I think if you put it to them, they would say, "Okay, you're right," right? But they're working with a mindset that is so terrified of immigration that instead of asking like, "Okay, what's the real problem here? Like who do we really need to exclude?" They're doing the opposite. They're like, "Let's exclude everyone and then let's think of a couple scenarios in which somebody could come in." But, look, you think about it the other way. Okay, you don't want somebody to come who's 60 years old and they're only gonna work a couple years and then they're gonna go on, uh, we call it Social Security, I, I don't know what ... you know, it's a, it's a old age pension scheme. Um, so okay, you, you want younger people to come in. Um, you don't want people who are gonna be totally impoverished, right? Or maybe you want some refugees 'cause th- that really is an act of charity, you know, which is fine. That's good. Uh, but you don't want your typical immigrant to be somebody who's gonna have absolutely no wages. Um, so that's good. Okay, you want people with job offers. Uh, you want people, you know, you got a college degree. Like that's good. Come on in. Uh, you win a Nobel Prize? I don't care what Nobel Prize (laughs) . Like, come on in (laughs) . Uh, maybe even if you're just on a short list, you know (laughs) ? Booker Prize short list, come on in, right? Like we should be looking for reasons to say yes to people. Um, it's not to say that, like, you need to open the borders, have totally uncontrolled flows, but just, like there's a lot of good, good people out there (laughs) in the world. Uh, many of them don't wanna come to America. A lot of people find this country to be, uh, off-putting in various ways. Uh, but if they do wanna come, like that's great and that's like, that's how we got to where we are is like all kinds of people came here.

Chris Williamson 46:41 I know there's a lot of room by vacant square mileage, but isn't there a housing shortage in America?

Matthew Yglesias 46:48 There is.

Chris Williamson 46:48 Where, where's, where's everyone gonna live?

Matthew Yglesias 46:50 Yeah, so this is, uh, here we go. This is my, my true passion in life is, uh, nitty-gritty about housing policy, so we got a whole chapter in the book about this. Um, the, you know, planning paradigm in the United States is very localized, um, so these decisions about where you're allowed to add more houses are made essentially on the neighborhood level. And if you think about it, there's just been this, uh, apartment construction on my block, uh, for the past year or so. It just wrapped up. Um, it was super annoying. Uh, like it's really loud, it like stirred up all kinds of rats who started running around the block.

Chris Williamson 47:27 (laughs) Oh my god.

Matthew Yglesias 47:28 Um, and when it's done, you know, um,

Narrator 47:30 (laughs) .

Matthew Yglesias 47:30 Yeah, but they kept needing to close the street to put cranes in. I mean, all that annoyance is experienced locally. Uh, but there's also benefits, right? To the city. Like more people will live here. We're gonna have a broader house, uh, tax base. We're gonna have a little bit more affordability. We're gonna have-

Chris Williamson 47:48 Right.

Matthew Yglesias 47:48 ... extra jobs. Uh, but the benefits are very broad and diffuse, and the harms are very, very local. So when you make the decision about what to allow super-duper local, people err on the side of saying no to extra houses.... when you broaden it out, in Canada, they make planning decisions at the provincial level. In Japan, they do it at the national level. Um, and so they say yes, right, because you incorporate the broader scope of interests. So we've seen some changes in that direction in West Coast states, uh, just over the past couple of years. So it hasn't had, you know, a huge impact on the built environment yet. But by shifting that planning decision up to a higher level, they are now opting in Washington and Oregon and California, but especially in Oregon, uh, to say yes to sort of more housing, and that, you know, creates the opportunities. We have plenty of space for more people, uh, but we need a, um, a planning paradigm that, you know, makes places for them.

Chris Williamson 48:48 I got to say, the houses are gonna have to come before the immigration. You're gonna have to have-

Matthew Yglesias 48:52 Uh, well, yes and no. You know, it's ... Uh, I- it's a little bit paradoxical because, uh, we- immigrants work very heavily in the building trades. Uh, so right now-

Chris Williamson 48:59 They build their own housing. "Get yourself over here. Bring a, bring a trowel and a, a pot of cement, and crack on."

Matthew Yglesias 49:04 Well, I mean, right now, we're experiencing a shortage of, uh, people actually to build houses, um, happening in, in the US right now because of some of, some of Trump's policies. Obviously, that can be reworked. I mean, people can retrain. They can do different things. Uh, but at the moment, it's like we don't have enough carpenters, uh, which is one of the reasons we don't have enough houses.

Chris Williamson 49:25 What about second order effects then? If we can get the houses right, what about increased rent, water shortages, traffic, pollution, overcrowding?

Matthew Yglesias 49:34 Yeah. Uh, so we've just got ... We've got tons of water in this country. This is like ... America's a bonanza of fresh water. So that's fine. Traffic is a real concern. You know, uh, a lot of cities have bad traffic jams. Um, if you have way more people, you're gonna get worse traffic jams. Some of that is, you know, improving your public transport, things like that. Uh, but, you know, I think really, we do have to look at, um, the sort of congestion pricing paradigms that they have in Stockholm and Oslo and London, um, I, I think maybe another British city. Uh, Singapore was the sort of originator of, of these things. It works well. Uh, every place it's been tried, it's been very contentious at first, with a lot of naysayers and a lot of doubts. Uh, but it's been fairly politically durable, um, in all the European cities that have done it, you know, even as parties sort of change hands, they tweak the system, you know, as we should in a democracy, uh, but stick with it. So New York is going to implement congestion pricing soon. Uh, they have been a little bit, uh, tied up with the pandemic slightly, um, and not all that focused on, you know, commuters to lower Manhattan. Uh, but hopefully, you know, when the, when the dust clears from that, you know, we're gonna see that this is a ... Like, I have this joke. It's like the only political issue people actually care about is traffic and parking. Um, they like to talk about other things. (laughs) Uh, so, you know, I get it, right? Uh, it's a, it's a pain in the ass to be stuck in traffic. Uh, but this is also a technical problem that has technical solutions.

Chris Williamson 51:06 Have you ever been to Dubai?

Matthew Yglesias 51:08 No.

Chris Williamson 51:09 So Dubai is a, a, especially-

Matthew Yglesias 51:12 But I went to the airport.

Chris Williamson 51:13 Oh, everyone's been through. You gotta go through the airport.

Matthew Yglesias 51:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:15 You gotta go through the air- ... Well, I mean, you can see, perfect example, the airport, the efficiency, the size of it, the newness of it. Um, you can see what it's like.

Matthew Yglesias 51:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:22 But, um, I was struck, having recently been to New York and then going to Dubai shortly afterward-

Matthew Yglesias 51:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 51:28 ... I saw what happened when you have modern building materials, a modern understanding of traffic flow, a city which is built to get bigger, not one that you just presume is going to stay the same size as it is now and no new people are gonna be there-

Matthew Yglesias 51:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 51:40 ... and you can be doing 70 miles an hour on a 10-lane, either side, motorway.

Matthew Yglesias 51:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:48 And look at, look on the little map on Uber and it says, "Three minutes to your destination." And you're like, "We're doing 70 miles an hour. How can it be three minutes to your destination?" And then sure enough, the driver pulls off, peels off at this junction, does a little loop- loopty-loop, and then deposits you outside of the restaurant that you're going to.

Matthew Yglesias 52:05 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 52:05 Because every different section has been designed for, for maximum flow, for maximum, uh, volume.

Matthew Yglesias 52:12 Correct.

Chris Williamson 52:12 Um, and then you go (laughs) to somewhere like LA and you have traffic in different towns, almost different cities, that you can go in San Bernardino Valley, be suffering the effect of a- a traffic jam that's on the coast. And you're like, "This can't be the ... What, what's going on?" So I can see, you know, you add in an extra few people, people are gonna go to the popular places. I know Joe Rogan and everyone's doing mass exodus out of LA at the moment, but like-

Matthew Yglesias 52:42 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 52:43 ... uh, it's gonna take a little bit of time for that to slow down. People are gonna go to New York. People are gonna go to LA. People are gonna go to Dallas, I think, which is like the third most populous or second most populous city.

Matthew Yglesias 52:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:53 Um, you're gonna, that's gonna get worse. And then pollution as well.

Matthew Yglesias 52:58 Right. Well, b- you know, this is like, it's kind of paradox, right? They say, it's like, "Well, nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." Right? Um, the ... I grew up in New York. It's weird to me. Like, it's ... I find the level of crowding there to be unpleasant, uh, even though it's, it's what I grew up with. Um, that said, just like empirically, people keep going there, right? I, I remember I was, I was pitching the, the book and, you know, so I, I took the train up to New York and I was in, um, I was in Midtown, uh, where my publisher's office is. And, you know, Midtown is the part of New York that even New Yorkers hate.

Chris Williamson 53:31 (laughs)

Matthew Yglesias 53:32 And they say, "Well, nobody goes there." Um, and so I'm there, and it's terrible. You know, like everybody says it's terrible at- because they're right. Uh, but one of the things that's so terrible about it, I mean, again, not now 'cause of the pandemic, uh, but-

Chris Williamson 53:44 If your publishers listen 'cause I've got to send this to your publisher, so when they listen back to this-

Matthew Yglesias 53:48 Oh, absolutely. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 53:48 ... they're gonna be saying, "Do you know what Matthew just said on that episode?"

Matthew Yglesias 53:51 No, but they're not against it either.

Chris Williamson 53:53 (laughs)

Matthew Yglesias 53:53 I, but it's so crowded. (laughs) Like all these people are there, right? And so it's like, "Well, why is everybody there?" Right? And well, we're there for each other. Like I was there to have the meeting. They're there so people can have meetings with them.... it's where the transportation hubs go, uh, it's where the other people's offices are, and it's great, right? It's this incredible beating heart of commerce and prosperity. Uh, and nobody has to be there, right? You've always had the... Like, a book publisher, I don't know, they could be in a mountain retreat someplace, uh, but like, that's where they wanna go. And what's been limiting people's ability to pour into New York, uh, is just the price of houses there. Same as London, right? These global world cities, um, they're almost like, uh, like black holes of, uh, growth and, and attraction, right? Um, and like foreign people, like wanna get a second house there, right? So they can come and drop by and have their pied-à-terre and stuff, you know, weird Russian billionaires everywhere. And it's, it's kind of crazy, but I mean, it shows that on some level like more is more, uh, when it comes to growth and opportunity and things like that, even if there are traffic jams, right? Um, so pollution, you know, like pollution is a real thing, like we should get people to drive electric cars, like we know how to do that, we got to shut down coal plants. Like I, I agree with all the like normal environmentalist stuff (laughs) except that like I want to actually do that stuff and solve these problems and not ha- have it wielded as an excuse to not have a growing economy or a growing society, uh, because like they're right. Like these technologies exist. Like I've got, um, my, my, my hybrid car five years ago, it's good, but it's like it's already outdated today. Like I'm using a little bit of gasoline. The people with their Chevy Volts and stuff, they're using nothing. And like we, we can do that. We can zip around, no weird toxic fumes, uh, I'm gonna... I got solar panels on my roof, like it's, it's good, like I'm a, I'm a... Mm. I say, I think I say somewhere in there that, that I'm against eco-pessimism, right? But I'm, but I'm for the environment. Like people have worked really hard (laughs) on trying to solve these problems and unfortunately, we have not been aggressive enough at actually deploying the solutions that are available to us. Uh, but that's like, that's in keeping with the themes of the book, like we just gotta, we gotta do more stuff.

Chris Williamson 56:21 It's a curse of the 20th century, I th- or the 21st century, that people love an exciting, vibrant, popular talking point like this to, as you say, wield like a sword in debates with friends or on, o- o- on the Senate floor or whatever it might be and you're like, "Right, okay. We've kind of got to the stage now when, when nothing gets done, you almost get bored when someone brings it up." Because you know, it's almost like a signal that it's not gonna happen.

Matthew Yglesias 56:47 Ah.

Chris Williamson 56:47 Like the chance of... The, the policy is probably made by the guy that's not talking about it. You know the, the couple that always post their favorite couple photos when they're on holiday together? And you're like-

Matthew Yglesias 56:56 Ah.

Chris Williamson 56:56 ... "That, that relationship is breaking up. That relationship is breaking down." (laughs) Because that's a signal. My final, final question, your, um, concern, your primary concern is about China. I think anyone who fully understands the sort of threat that they pose, um, quite rightly is concerned about that. In terms of population, I had a look at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a study that they recently did at the start of this year, said that China is facing its most precipitous decline in population in decades and that China will be back under one billion by 2100. And there's-

Matthew Yglesias 57:32 Yes.

Chris Williamson 57:32 ... there's huge swaths of millions of men that are single, childless and have no way to have a family.

Matthew Yglesias 57:39 That's the dream.

Chris Williamson 57:40 Too bad.

Matthew Yglesias 57:41 I mean (laughs) that's, this is what I'm saying. We're... At, at 2100, we're gonna be at a billion, they're gonna be under a billion and that's it. America number one forever. Um, th- but this is serious. I mean, I, I think it's... You know, it's worth looking at the way they are thinking about this in China, right? They had this one child policy era, uh, which people know of some of the cruelty that was involved with that. Uh, but the extent to which the Chinese policy community now views that as a huge mistake-

Chris Williamson 58:13 Is that correct?

Matthew Yglesias 58:13 ... that has given them this kind of... Yeah. They, they now have this, um, demographic momentum, right? Toward incredible aging and population shrinkage, and some of that is the legacy of the one child era, but some of it is just the knock-on effect, right? So you're talking about people who have very few cousins, people who don't have a sister who can help out with the kids, right? People who, uh, can't find a wife because there's a mismatch-

Chris Williamson 58:43 There's an amazing... Or I think it might be in The Washington Post that wrote this unbelievable article that broke down or like very personal stories about all of the different men and then some really cool sort of animated statistics and things as well.

Matthew Yglesias 58:55 Right.

Chris Williamson 58:55 But I remember, I remember seeing that, that there's a, there's like a fat, a fat bit in the graph-

Matthew Yglesias 59:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:01 ... that's slowly reaching like I think it's maybe at the twen- late 20s to 30s now, and this is the age of, of some of the women that are in China, and this big fat bit of the graph is gonna pass 40. And then you're correct, there's, there's not a whole lot that can be done.

Matthew Yglesias 59:15 I mean, it's really screwed up and, and you think about-

Chris Williamson 59:17 It's so fucked up, man.

Matthew Yglesias 59:17 ... how normal families operate, right? You assume... You know, look, dating is hard, right? But you assume that like mathematically-

Chris Williamson 59:24 (laughs)

Matthew Yglesias 59:24 ... there's somebody out there for me, right? Not like, not like, "No, literally there isn't," right?

Chris Williamson 59:30 Yes. Yeah, there's a c-

Matthew Yglesias 59:30 That's like a, that's like... We would say now if your friend, he's depressed, he's like, "Oh, I'm never gonna meet a girl." And we'd say, "No, no, you will," right?

Chris Williamson 59:37 "Get yourself out there, man. Yay."

Matthew Yglesias 59:38 But in China, you're like, "No, actually you won't." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:40 "I'm very sorry."

Matthew Yglesias 59:41 Like that's, that's not good. And people rely on extended family networks for support when they have young kids at home. If that doesn't exist, it's, it's very disruptive. And, you know, I mean, I think on, on one level, I'm glad that they're hitting some problems. Uh, on another level though, it's very sad, you know, when you ho- hope they can find a way to do better. Um, this is of course one reason why it's not, you know, good to have a totalitarian system of government because like a bad idea does not get-... fully aired in a discussion. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:00:15 Iron sharpens iron when it comes to this-

Matthew Yglesias 1:00:17 The way it would-

Chris Williamson 1:00:17 ... sort of stuff, right?

Matthew Yglesias 1:00:18 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's good, you know, uh, it's easy... I, you meet people sometimes who'll be like, "Oh, I just went from LaGuardia to the awesome new airport in Beijing," and it's like, "Why can't we have a dictatorship that just cuts through problems-"

Chris Williamson 1:00:30 (laughs)

Matthew Yglesias 1:00:30 "... and gets things done?" But like, sometimes what they get done-

Chris Williamson 1:00:33 I love the slow airport please, you know.

Matthew Yglesias 1:00:34 ... is like, is like really, really bad, um, and it is good to have a, a discussion and debate about ideas 'cause the legacy of that particular idea, I mean, it w- it was bad in its moment. In the long term, it's not, it's hard to fix.

Chris Williamson 1:00:47 Have you considered portioning off a bit of Alaska and just taking loads of Chinese people there?

Matthew Yglesias 1:00:53 Uh-

Chris Williamson 1:00:53 Because that fixes both of your problems at once.

Matthew Yglesias 1:00:56 Yeah, there's always interesting, you know, Alaska things. I, I don't know if you know the Michael Chabon's novel, um, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but it, i- it's basically like alternate history, like what if they, what if they had just kind of built Israel in Alaska, right?

Chris Williamson 1:01:09 Right.

Matthew Yglesias 1:01:09 As a, as a, as a refuge. (laughs) I should have called it. It's this idea that always kind of recurs to people 'cause Alaska's just sitting there big and empty.

Chris Williamson 1:01:17 Yeah.

Matthew Yglesias 1:01:17 Um, and I do think it's appealing. I mean, I would have to talk to some Alaskans about it. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:20 See what's goi- see what's going on. Yeah, exactly. Wasn't Donald-

Matthew Yglesias 1:01:23 See, see how they feel about it.

Chris Williamson 1:01:23 ... wasn't Donald Trump gonna buy Greenland at one point?

Matthew Yglesias 1:01:26 Yes. Uh, the possibilities of Greenland are, are quite large. Um, uh, you know, so I, so I'm all for it. I, I think, you know, by... We got... I, I think originally we tried to buy Greenland, uh, about 100 years ago, and we took, um, what's now the US Virgin Islands instead. Uh-

Chris Williamson 1:01:45 Shit deal.

Matthew Yglesias 1:01:46 That was-

Chris Williamson 1:01:46 Shit deal.

Matthew Yglesias 1:01:47 ... that was the deal.

Chris Williamson 1:01:47 Did no one th- did no one think, "Shouldn't have got that." Could've, could've got Alaska.

Matthew Yglesias 1:01:50 That was, that was the deal the Danes made with us, but you know, I'd... So I originally had a chapter about like, "Well, maybe we should have an accession process like the EU and, you know, maybe Jamaica will become the 51st state." Uh, we wound up cutting it 'cause it was... I don't know, I, I couldn't really work out the details (laughs) to my satisfaction. Uh, but it's an interesting idea. Fun to think about.

Chris Williamson 1:02:10 Got you. Matthew, thank you very much for today, man.

Matthew Yglesias 1:02:12 Thank you. Thank you.

Chris Williamson 1:02:12 One Billion Americans will be linked in the show notes below. Anywhere else that people should go to check your stuff out?

Matthew Yglesias 1:02:19 Uh, you know, I'm on, at vox.com. I'm on Twitter, MattYglesias. Um, love to see you there.

Chris Williamson 1:02:25 Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, man.

Matthew Yglesias 1:02:27 Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Love is.