Name: Why Matthew Yglesias Thinks There Should Be 1 Billion Americans
Uploaded: 2020-12-03T23:03:15.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Matthew Yglesias Thinks There Should Be 1 Billion Americans' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Matthew Yglesias Thinks There Should Be 1 Billion Americans' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-03. Transcript available.

How much pushback have you gotten from this idea? Because it seems like a lot
of people think that overpopulation is a giant problem. And then when you say
we should triple plus the amount of people in the United States we want to
compete with the rest of the world, I would imagine a lot of people are like,
what are you smoking, Matthew Iglesias?
No, I mean the book's really good, so everyone who reads it is just like, oh,
you convinced me. At least you're humble. There's no pushback at all. No, yes,
there is concern about overpopulation. That's something that, you know, so
there's people from the right, they don't like immigrants, they don't like
immigration, and they see it through that lens.
Let's start with that, because this is a country of immigrants. It's a very
strange thing to have a country that is entirely comprised of people who came
from somewhere else other than Native Americans, right? Entirely comprised. And
yet, there's a giant population that doesn't like immigrants.
Yeah, I mean, look, some of it's a question of taste. You know, people like
different places, people like different kinds of things. I think the best parts
of America are places that have a lot of people from different places. To me,
you know, whether that's Austin, where we are, New York, where I'm from, it's
like, it's cool. Like, that's America at its best. Some people don't like it.
There's also the legality question, though, right? Starting in the 1980s and
1990s, we built up a substantial group of people who were living here illegally.
I'm for, you know, a-
It started in the 80s? Is that when it really started?
Yeah, I mean, that's when it really took off.
Was it because the regulations were made more stringent?
Well, so what happened was in 1996, they changed the law. IRERA is the acronym
for it. And they made it a lot harder for people who had come here without
papers to quote, unquote, get legal. So even if you put roots down, even if you
were married to an American citizen, there was no way to obtain legal status.
They also made it harder to cross the border. So it used to be people would
come over, they'd pick vegetables in California for a season, and then they'd
just go back, right?
They'd go back to Mexico, take their money with them, get a nice house. They
made it harder to cross the border so people would stay. And people who stayed
had no way to get a legal status here. So unauthorized population, it built up,
it built up, it built up. There's a movement on one side to say, well, we
should create a path to citizenship for those people. Most of them, they're
living here peacefully. They're working hard. They're not doing anything. That's
where I stand. But there's people who say, look, you know, they broke the rules.
We've got to be harsh.
So we've been arguing about that unauthorized immigration so viciously. And I
think we've lost sight of the fact that, you know, we can just create legal
pathways for people to come. You know, some people will say, well, my
grandparents, my parents, whoever, they came the right way. They did it when it
was legal.
Well, it was easy then.
Exactly. And it's totally true. So my great grandparents, they came to this
country at a time when there was no restriction on people.
Yeah, my grandparents as well. They just came over from Italy. It was not that
hard.
So good for them, right? And so like, yes, like we should have a legal process
for people to come. We can have rules, you know, try to make sure you're like,
say, you should be working age, right? You should come here, get a job, pay
taxes. You can't just like come across and collect Social Security.
Yeah, but obviously, you're okay with children coming across as well, like,
whether they're adopted once they get here, or whether they come here with
their parents, or, yeah.
I mean, we should make it possible, right?
Yes, we should make it possible. That's a great way of putting it.
And that's how you could not have people breaking the rules. That's to me. But
you know, a lot of people on the right don't see it that way. Now on the left,
there's some folks, you know, people are concerned about the environment.
I mean, I'm concerned, too. I don't want to breathe polluted air. I don't want
like cities underwater. But there's a strain of sort of eco-apocalyptic
thinking, you know, where people say, oh, like, we can't handle it. Like, only
degrowth is gonna save us.
And I just don't think that's right. You know, I am bullish on technology,
right? We've got more and more clean energy sources. We've got better and
better electric cars. There's more stuff we can do with electrification. We
need to take those steps.
But we can have a prosperous, sustainable society that has plenty of people in
it that has high living standards, things like that. So we don't need to worry
about that.
A lot of Americans also just overestimate how many people are here. So a
billion sounds like a lot. It's about triple our current population.
But that would give us the population density of France. It would give us about
half the density of Germany, way less than half the density of the United
Kingdom.
And, you know, if you've ever been to the UK, it's like, it's a nice country.
They got London, big city. They got countryside. They got rolling hills. They
got sheep. You go up to Scotland, like, there's fucking nobody there.
So, like, we could have all kinds of places with a billion Americans. Countryside,
suburbs, cities, all kinds of stuff.
What's the benefit of having all those people, though?
So two benefits, right? So one, I think internationally, you know, the United
States has been, like, the number one country for 100 years, give or take.
Right? We're the biggest dog out there. You know, everybody knows better than
to mess with us. And we're losing that status. You know, we're losing that
status economically to China.
They're doing more stuff, like, you know, telling NBA coaches, like, what they
can tweet, what they can't tweet. They're censoring Hollywood movies because
they've got the number one market out there.
You can get into scarier stuff eventually, you know, South China Sea, naval
battles. I'm not, like, a war guy, but you don't want that. I think we want to
stay number one.
And growth has been important to that historically, right? Like, why is the
United States a big deal country and Canada is, like, you know, like our cute
little brother?
And it's because a lot of people live here. You know, Canada's nice, but there's
no people, no real strength there. Second, I think it'll make us a more
prosperous country.
What we do as modern day Americans is we do stuff for each other, right?
Whether that's we make show, we write books, we teach in schools, we run
restaurants, we're doing services to each other.
And you get more prosperity when you have more people and more ability to sort
of have those interactions.
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