Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1573 - Matthew Yglesias
Uploaded: 2020-12-03T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1573 - Matthew Yglesias' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1573 - Matthew Yglesias' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-03. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1573 - Matthew Yglesias

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Since we don't record an intro for Spotify anymore, so tell me who you are and
what you do.
I'm Matthew Iglesias. I'm the host of the Weeds Podcast, the Vox Media Podcast
Network.
I'm also the author of the Slow Boring Newsletter and a book, One Billion
Americans.
And that's what I want to talk to you about.
Pull the sucker up so it's like one fist away from your face.
All right. Perfect.
All right. Closer.
One billion Americans.
It's a lot.
So explain, if you could, give us the cliff notes of what the concept of one
billion Americans is.
Okay. So the concept is that there should be a billion Americans.
I like to keep it simple.
So here's the idea, right?
So we've got China. It's growing out there.
There's a lot of concern, you know, internationally about America's role in the
world.
We've also got a lot of polarization in our politics, a lot of sort of gridlock,
deadlock, kind of stagnation and infighting.
And I'm a politics guy.
I live in D.C., cover Congress.
I wanted to write a book that kind of elevates beyond that, thinks about
America's role in the world and says the way we are going to meet this
challenge of rising international competition is the way we became such a great
power historically.
And that's by growing our population with more openness to immigrants, doing
more to support parents and young families.
And then everything that comes downstream from that, you know, where are people
going to live, how are we going to get around, how are we going to solve those
problems?
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.
Why is that?
They see it through that lens.
Let's start with that.
Why?
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 what?
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.
It's not 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.
Fair enough.
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 –
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.
Yeah.
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 going to 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 U.K., it's like, it's a nice country.
They've got London, big city.
They've got countryside.
They've got rolling hills.
They've 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, yeah, 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.
When you're talking about China and the NBA and Hollywood movies, a lot of
people think of those things, the interactions that Hollywood has and the NBA
has with China as being insidious.
They don't think it's a good thing at all that China has that kind of an
influence.
And they also think it's embarrassing.
Like, a lot of people think that it's embarrassing for the NBA to, when the
negative tweets, when they're in support of Hong Kong.
And then all of a sudden there was some pushback and the NBA was removed from
viewership in China.
And there was a lot of sponsorships being pulled and it became a giant issue.
And then all of a sudden you saw the NBA kind of backtrack and kind of kowtow.
And a lot of people found that to be pretty disgusting.
We don't want the United States to ever be a country that's doing that to China,
right?
If China has a bunch of, I don't know what they're really into over there, ping
pong players?
Like, what's their primary sport?
I don't know.
They have a lot of basketball over there.
Basketball, they like basketball.
So imagine if Chinese basketball becomes super popular in the United States.
And then the Chinese basketball players in the United States start talking shit
about how Apple uses slave labor.
And we go, hey, hey, watch your fucking mouth, bro.
We won't pay for your Chinese basketball anymore.
And then all of a sudden China backs off.
Like, we would think of that as being pretty gross by the United States of
ignoring some human rights violations.
Or trying to whitewash them.
And trying to economically attack another country.
So, like, saying that it's a positive that China has all these people and using
as an example the fact they strong arm Hollywood and they strong arm the NBA, a
lot of people think that's moving in the wrong direction.
Me included.
Like, I don't want that.
Well, no, I don't think it's positive.
I'm saying we need to be in a position to level the playing field.
But is that leveling the playing field or will we just – look, corporations
have a giant problem with infinite growth, right?
Yep.
This is a thing that seems completely, totally preposterous, but it's the norm
and the standard in the business world.
You want your growth to increase every year no matter what.
And God knows where that goes.
I'm not a mathematician or an economist, but if you extrapolate and keep going
with that, it leads to preposterous outcomes, right?
That's what people would be worried about tenfold if there's a billion people
here.
They'd be like, oh, my God, we'd be even more ruthless and more cutthroat and
maybe more competitive with the rest of the world.
But in what way?
Well, so here, let's talk about the China thing, right?
So the NBA is under China's thumb because they need access to that market.
Do they, though?
Hollywood?
Do they, though?
Well, they think they do.
Aren't they rich as fuck?
So we could say, right, maybe we need to have a rule that says, like, well, you
know, you can't let the Chinese censor your shit, right?
Yeah.
But the relative size of the markets is going to matter, right?
So we're on Spotify here, right?
So that's a Swedish company, I think.
They make great meatballs, I hear.
Absolutely.
It's a lovely country, right?
It's a small country.
So Sweden's a little country, right?
All their companies, you know, you're talking Volvo, Scania, Spotify, they're
dependent on a global marketplace.
They need acce