Impact of population shrink is long term, president just need to hold on for four years, throw money at AI and claim robots will build all the homes etc, except the so-called technology miracle so far only managed to make American students dumber.
The US population can and has grown through fertility alone. Progressive birth rates have plummeted, while conservatives have remained steady above replacement rate. In an age of automation, we don’t need immigrants undercutting wages for American workers. Healthcare, education, and housing will improve if they are prioritized for Americans instead of 100 million foreigners - many of whom are on welfare. Democrats can’t keep importing voters and cheap labor. President autopen and his minions opened the floodgates to help blue states that were losing population keep their house seats by including illegals in the census.
I can’t bring myself to endorse this piece. It’s true that we need immigration. It’s true that Trump’s policies on immigration and a great many other things are detrimental to the economy. But the headline about negative growth is fear-mongering. There’s nothing special about zero. And the reason we’re near zero isn’t just immigration. It’s also that our housing crisis is so severe that young couples don’t feel like they can afford a child. It’s also that young couples simply aren’t forming because they’re too online and politically polarized. If you want to declare a state of emergency about population decline, which may be justified, you really have to express urgent concern for all of these factors. Otherwise, it’s a bad-faith effort to funnel all the attention to your pet issue.
I think national population changes might be subtle to people though, and what they notice is regional changes. There, we already have a mix of growing regions and shrinking regions. Like in NY, the city continues to grow while upstate shrinks. It's not clear to me that national changes would really feel different, or like just a subtle acceleration of the movement to winner cities that has already been happening.
Well said. I'd only add that NIMBY policies in most US cities are getting in the way, and need to be fixed so these cities can actually be economical attractive.
To see the endgame here, look to Japan. Practically everything important happens in Tokyo, even as the entire country is in a long-term intractable decline. I haven't experienced this personally, but I've heard people say even Tokyo feels less alive now than it did in the 90s.
we would start to look like Japan, slow growth, aging population, huge debt, hollowed out and depopulated rural areas. Pretty grim, and totally stupid and avoidable.
I am not convinced that population declines are inflationary. We have few manufacturing jobs, new housing is a vanishingly small part of the market, and most services are discretionary. Yes, produce on net might be slightly more expensive, but that’s just not a meaningful share of the economy.
Perhaps in the medium term price levels are forced to be elevated to compensate for the lack of available labor and increased worker power. But I don’t see how a shock like this which will primarily hit demand more so than supply is in fact going to drive up prices.
If you look at places like Japan, Europe, and China aging has been met with little price growth or deflation. Old people just do not consume much and our health care costs have little to do with wages and more with graft, self-dealing and inefficient markets.
Weird that the only baby boom in the modern era occurred during the post Johnson-Reed Act moratoria of 1924 and prior to the 1965 floodgate opening of Hart-Celler.
Also odd that every single Anglo nation and US state that decided to open their own floodgates has the exact same crisis of affordability, birth crash, and/or citizen outmigration; England, Australia, Canada, and in the U.S. CA, NJ, and NY.
Oddest of all though that a certain type of observer can write about the mystery of the baby boom, and advocate for “abundance,” while opining on immigration and still not connect any of these dots, or factor in the history of other periods of elevated immigration (in the Gilded Age for instance) when all of these same challenges arose.
What explains the blind spot? 1 in 5 nonwhite voters who just swing to Trump can see it. A majority of newly registered voters can see it. Is the multiculturalism or economic neoliberalism that the author was raised on to blame? Or is it just contrarianism at this point?
It’s fascinating. Almost every center left party in the developed world is riding the argument for more immigration out into the political wilderness. What explains it?
The important distinction between illegal and legal immigration is missing in this piece. Naturally, if one hates Trump, it easier to attack the current admin's attempts to fix the huge illegal influx issue by conflating the two groups.
A guest worker program could easily fix any labor shortage but Dems will block any law without amnesty for millions of illegals. The US needs some immigrants, but we should picking them just as some other developed countries do.
it seems like they don't want legal immigrants either. or did i miss their well thought out immigration plan? I think the point is that Miller etc are white nationalists, who only want "the right kind" of immigrants. We've seen this story before in American history. Certainly we've had too much illegal immigration and we need to fix the system. It will need to be more than just "guest" workers, and it's a both/and proposition. We can both grant amnesty to a certain number of people who have been here a long time and have established families, careers etc here, AND we can secure the border AND create a sound, sane immigration policy. I'm not sure you're right about it being the Dems fault, it seems like the GOP thrives on xenophobia and racism (look at Trump's success), and would rather campaign on anti-immigrant rhetoric rather than pro-immigration, growth-focused sane policies.
Unfettered illegal immigration is like a drug that felt good in the beginning but will ultimately kill us. There is room for a compromise: strict border control and visa enforcement coupled with expanded legal immigration, especially of seasonal workers. If the Democrats don't include border control in their 2028 platform, there is no way they will win.
The immigration question was always my biggest issue with Abundance: who is going to be doing all that building—of housing, energy infrastructure, etc? It’s sure as hell not going to be native-born American construction workers (excuse me while I laugh under my breath at the idea)
Why is that an "issue"? Any plan for the US to have a happy future involves some reasonable level of immigration. And any honest reflection on US history recognizes that persistently high levels of immigration has been one of our strongest assets.
On the contrary, the data does not support this mindset. In 2024, the BLS found that 14.1% of native born men worked in natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations. Lower than the 22.7% of foreign born men, but hardly an all or nothing proposition. Given that there’s slack in youth employment, especially young men, I think we’re far for running into any issues.
I’m all for more immigration, but I don’t think it’s worth overstating the stakes.
You cited a study that purports to show that three years after removal of immigrants the building industry reduced their building activities by one year’s worth of new house supplies. You immediately jumped to the conclusion that this caused housing price inflation. But you didn’t say that this conclusion was from the study. So it’s your conclusion. And it’s flawed, because you failed to account for reduced demand.
Why can’t we tax the top 1% of individuals and Fortune 500 companies to pay for Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare? It all doesn’t have to fall on the upper middle class
Targeted and overly unfair tax policy results in capital flight. France has dealt with this with many of its highest tax payers leaving the country. Broad taxes that must be paid by anyone that participates in the US economy work better at brining in revenue without chasing away payers.
Social Security and Medicare are not welfare programs. One earns benefits by paying into the system for decades.
No one has to buy their way into Medicaid though, which is as it should be. But the world's most successful safety-net programs (EU/UK mostly) work because taxpayers at every level, except the poor, pay relatively high tax rates.
Derek, Well thought-out and constructed essay. Thanks. Too bad your readers of it are not the people who should read it. Looking back, one can feel the changes caused by the SCOTUS Citizens United decision and a few other decisions that followed which created unchecked corporate bribery. Just consider the mute GOP Congress. These legal changes placed the country on a glide path towards a future with dragons ahead.
No surprise here - nixing immigration is going to kill the economy. The US has always been dynamic BECAUSE we welcome people here who want to work hard and improve their lives.
The business community, the heads of the Fortune 500 (many of whom are immigrants), and the very wealthy, surely realize this. When will they stand up and show some courage? We know they don't care about the cruelty, but maybe they'll care about their own wallets? Or do they already have so much money they just figure they'll ride it out?
Impact of population shrink is long term, president just need to hold on for four years, throw money at AI and claim robots will build all the homes etc, except the so-called technology miracle so far only managed to make American students dumber.
The US population can and has grown through fertility alone. Progressive birth rates have plummeted, while conservatives have remained steady above replacement rate. In an age of automation, we don’t need immigrants undercutting wages for American workers. Healthcare, education, and housing will improve if they are prioritized for Americans instead of 100 million foreigners - many of whom are on welfare. Democrats can’t keep importing voters and cheap labor. President autopen and his minions opened the floodgates to help blue states that were losing population keep their house seats by including illegals in the census.
Did you even read the article?
It wasn't written in MAGA and you also may be responding to a bot.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I can’t bring myself to endorse this piece. It’s true that we need immigration. It’s true that Trump’s policies on immigration and a great many other things are detrimental to the economy. But the headline about negative growth is fear-mongering. There’s nothing special about zero. And the reason we’re near zero isn’t just immigration. It’s also that our housing crisis is so severe that young couples don’t feel like they can afford a child. It’s also that young couples simply aren’t forming because they’re too online and politically polarized. If you want to declare a state of emergency about population decline, which may be justified, you really have to express urgent concern for all of these factors. Otherwise, it’s a bad-faith effort to funnel all the attention to your pet issue.
I think national population changes might be subtle to people though, and what they notice is regional changes. There, we already have a mix of growing regions and shrinking regions. Like in NY, the city continues to grow while upstate shrinks. It's not clear to me that national changes would really feel different, or like just a subtle acceleration of the movement to winner cities that has already been happening.
Well said. I'd only add that NIMBY policies in most US cities are getting in the way, and need to be fixed so these cities can actually be economical attractive.
To see the endgame here, look to Japan. Practically everything important happens in Tokyo, even as the entire country is in a long-term intractable decline. I haven't experienced this personally, but I've heard people say even Tokyo feels less alive now than it did in the 90s.
we would start to look like Japan, slow growth, aging population, huge debt, hollowed out and depopulated rural areas. Pretty grim, and totally stupid and avoidable.
I am not convinced that population declines are inflationary. We have few manufacturing jobs, new housing is a vanishingly small part of the market, and most services are discretionary. Yes, produce on net might be slightly more expensive, but that’s just not a meaningful share of the economy.
Perhaps in the medium term price levels are forced to be elevated to compensate for the lack of available labor and increased worker power. But I don’t see how a shock like this which will primarily hit demand more so than supply is in fact going to drive up prices.
If you look at places like Japan, Europe, and China aging has been met with little price growth or deflation. Old people just do not consume much and our health care costs have little to do with wages and more with graft, self-dealing and inefficient markets.
Weird that the only baby boom in the modern era occurred during the post Johnson-Reed Act moratoria of 1924 and prior to the 1965 floodgate opening of Hart-Celler.
Also odd that every single Anglo nation and US state that decided to open their own floodgates has the exact same crisis of affordability, birth crash, and/or citizen outmigration; England, Australia, Canada, and in the U.S. CA, NJ, and NY.
Oddest of all though that a certain type of observer can write about the mystery of the baby boom, and advocate for “abundance,” while opining on immigration and still not connect any of these dots, or factor in the history of other periods of elevated immigration (in the Gilded Age for instance) when all of these same challenges arose.
What explains the blind spot? 1 in 5 nonwhite voters who just swing to Trump can see it. A majority of newly registered voters can see it. Is the multiculturalism or economic neoliberalism that the author was raised on to blame? Or is it just contrarianism at this point?
It’s fascinating. Almost every center left party in the developed world is riding the argument for more immigration out into the political wilderness. What explains it?
The important distinction between illegal and legal immigration is missing in this piece. Naturally, if one hates Trump, it easier to attack the current admin's attempts to fix the huge illegal influx issue by conflating the two groups.
A guest worker program could easily fix any labor shortage but Dems will block any law without amnesty for millions of illegals. The US needs some immigrants, but we should picking them just as some other developed countries do.
it seems like they don't want legal immigrants either. or did i miss their well thought out immigration plan? I think the point is that Miller etc are white nationalists, who only want "the right kind" of immigrants. We've seen this story before in American history. Certainly we've had too much illegal immigration and we need to fix the system. It will need to be more than just "guest" workers, and it's a both/and proposition. We can both grant amnesty to a certain number of people who have been here a long time and have established families, careers etc here, AND we can secure the border AND create a sound, sane immigration policy. I'm not sure you're right about it being the Dems fault, it seems like the GOP thrives on xenophobia and racism (look at Trump's success), and would rather campaign on anti-immigrant rhetoric rather than pro-immigration, growth-focused sane policies.
Unfettered illegal immigration is like a drug that felt good in the beginning but will ultimately kill us. There is room for a compromise: strict border control and visa enforcement coupled with expanded legal immigration, especially of seasonal workers. If the Democrats don't include border control in their 2028 platform, there is no way they will win.
The immigration question was always my biggest issue with Abundance: who is going to be doing all that building—of housing, energy infrastructure, etc? It’s sure as hell not going to be native-born American construction workers (excuse me while I laugh under my breath at the idea)
Why is that an "issue"? Any plan for the US to have a happy future involves some reasonable level of immigration. And any honest reflection on US history recognizes that persistently high levels of immigration has been one of our strongest assets.
It's an issue with how they wrote the book—in that they didn't address immigration—not that immigration is an issue!
On the contrary, the data does not support this mindset. In 2024, the BLS found that 14.1% of native born men worked in natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations. Lower than the 22.7% of foreign born men, but hardly an all or nothing proposition. Given that there’s slack in youth employment, especially young men, I think we’re far for running into any issues.
I’m all for more immigration, but I don’t think it’s worth overstating the stakes.
"Many voters hated the era of record immigration. They might hate the era of record deportations even more."
+1
You are being disingenuous.
You cited a study that purports to show that three years after removal of immigrants the building industry reduced their building activities by one year’s worth of new house supplies. You immediately jumped to the conclusion that this caused housing price inflation. But you didn’t say that this conclusion was from the study. So it’s your conclusion. And it’s flawed, because you failed to account for reduced demand.
So either you are disingenuous or plain stupid.
Why can’t we tax the top 1% of individuals and Fortune 500 companies to pay for Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare? It all doesn’t have to fall on the upper middle class
Because the tax deficit is large enough that taxing the 1% is not sufficient.
Targeted and overly unfair tax policy results in capital flight. France has dealt with this with many of its highest tax payers leaving the country. Broad taxes that must be paid by anyone that participates in the US economy work better at brining in revenue without chasing away payers.
Social Security and Medicare are not welfare programs. One earns benefits by paying into the system for decades.
No one has to buy their way into Medicaid though, which is as it should be. But the world's most successful safety-net programs (EU/UK mostly) work because taxpayers at every level, except the poor, pay relatively high tax rates.
Never stop conflating illegal immigration and legal immigration. That’s your THING! Yay
not just his thing! it's the way he's been taught to think
Derek, Well thought-out and constructed essay. Thanks. Too bad your readers of it are not the people who should read it. Looking back, one can feel the changes caused by the SCOTUS Citizens United decision and a few other decisions that followed which created unchecked corporate bribery. Just consider the mute GOP Congress. These legal changes placed the country on a glide path towards a future with dragons ahead.
You meant "Last year, deaths outnumbered births by 519,000 people," not the other way around.
That is not correct. This article is correct per the linked citation.
"Natural increase also contributed to the population growth, as births outnumbered deaths by nearly 519,000 between 2023 and 2024."
No surprise here - nixing immigration is going to kill the economy. The US has always been dynamic BECAUSE we welcome people here who want to work hard and improve their lives.
The business community, the heads of the Fortune 500 (many of whom are immigrants), and the very wealthy, surely realize this. When will they stand up and show some courage? We know they don't care about the cruelty, but maybe they'll care about their own wallets? Or do they already have so much money they just figure they'll ride it out?