- NYT has ideas about regulating immigration, given the assumption that America needs more people;
- Paul Krugman looks at economic growth (and Scott Bessent);
- But neither of them addresses the impact of continued economic growth, or expansion of the population, on the Earth’s biosphere and the survival of the human race.
I find this piece interesting, but for reasons different than a concern about the immigration crisis.
NY Times, Opinion by The Editorial Board, 10 Jan 2025: A Big Idea to Solve America’s Immigration Mess
The problem is immigration, the board says, and the inability to regulate it. (But the real problem is something else, I would say.)
There’s a more basic imperative, too. America needs more people. Americans no longer make enough babies to maintain the country’s population. To sustain economic growth, the United States needs an infusion of a few million immigrants every year.
Without immigrants, the population would start to decline immediately, leaving employers short-handed, curtailing the economy’s potential and causing the kinds of strains on public services and society that have plagued Rust Belt cities for decades.
In Japan, where the population has been in decline since 2009, there are no longer enough postal workers to deliver mail on Saturdays. Nine million homes have been abandoned, and a recent report estimated that more than 40 percent of Japanese municipalities might disappear. The challenges prompted Fumio Kishida, then the prime minister, to declare in January 2023 that “Japan is standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society.”
I have two or three reactions. First, this concern about a shrinking population is also part of the right-wing’s panic machine. You hear this especially from Musk. Have more babies! And in other countries: Japan, mentioned above, and China, which repealed its one-child policy meant to control overpopulation. Second, this is a legitimate problem, in some sense, as some argue, for reasons like the unsustainability of keeping the older population alive with a shrinking base of younger people to pay social security taxes, or occupy the jobs needed to take care of those olders.
But third, taking the bigger picture, humanity cannot simply keep expanding its population indefinitely, without further ruining Earth’s ecosphere and exacerbating climate change, which is a far bigger problem than putting a strain on public services.
I’ll summarize the pieces recommended “three big shifts in federal policy” to solve current concerns.
1. Prevent illegal immigration;
2. Expand legal immigration;
3. Deal humanely with the illegal immigrants already here, including the “Dreamers.”
Versions of this tripartite approach were once embraced by political leaders in both parties. But in recent elections Democrats increasingly cast themselves as full-throated defenders of immigrants, regardless of legal status, while Republicans increasingly portrayed even legal immigration as a negative force in American life. The influx of immigrants into the country, in record numbers in the modern era, has overwhelmed red and blue state approaches. Both parties need a reality check.
…
Mr. Trump, for his part, is mistaken to portray immigration as a drain on the nation’s resources. He should be condemned for his routinely bigoted portrayal of immigrants, often in defiance of the facts, as a danger to the American people and to the nation’s identity.Instead, immigration ought to be regarded as an investment in the nation’s future.
The piece goes on at great length with examples of immigrants’ stories. But it never deals with the issue of an indefinitely expanding population, and its strain on the Earth’s biosphere. *That* is the real issue, the existential problem to be solved: How can humanity adopt a “sustainable” existence on Earth that does not threaten its ability to sustain us? This will entail massive shift in cultural assumptions and priorities, and an end to the idea that the economy needs to “grow” indefinitely. That, I recall someone saying, is the policy of the cancer cell.
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As it happens, we have this complementary piece from Paul Krugman.
Paul Krugman, Krugman wonks out, 17 Jan 2025: Voodoo, MAGA Style, subtitled “Republicans still believe in magic-based policy”
Beginning:
Patriotism is still, I guess, the last refuge of scoundrels. But for the past 45 years or so — ever since Reagan — economic growth has come a close second. The left isn’t completely free from this nonsense, but mostly what we see are right-wing politicians justifying cruel and/or irresponsible policies — massive tax cuts for the rich, harsh treatment of the poor and working class — with the claim that all will be well because these policies will unleash rapid economic growth.
Donald Trump has brought his own brand of nonsense, with claims that tariffs can make foreigners pay for everything. But the old voodoo is still very much part of the mix.
And then he talks about Scott Bessent, Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary.
The other day I wrote about Trump’s team of economic yes-men, but I didn’t say anything about Bessent, who was widely regarded as a relatively conventional, reassuring pick. Yet Bessent’s “3-3-3” economic plan — or maybe it’s just a concept of a plan, since he has provided no specifics about how he might achieve his goals — is full-on magical thinking.
I won’t talk right now about Bessent’s implausible claims that he can increase oil production by 3 million barrels a day or reduce the budget deficit to 3 percent of G.D.P.; Catherine Rampell is good on these. Instead, let me narrow the focus to his claim that he can raise economic growth to 3 percent.
And then follows many charts and technical discussion — remember this Substack blog is called “Krugman wonks out.” I’ll reproduce just the first one here, above, which he refers to as “a stylized picture of how the economy behaves over time.”
Yet Krugman doesn’t challenge the presumption that the goal is indefinite economic growth. What he does is challenge how Republicans think they can accomplish this; thus the allusion to “voodoo economics.”
Well, Republicans believe, or claim to believe, that they can sharply raise productivity growth by cutting taxes on the rich. You could say that claim is unsupported by evidence. But that’s too weak; in fact, it’s powerfully rejected by the evidence.
With more charts.
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I’ll save kibble for next time.
