Rampant population growth threatens our economy and quality of life. Immigration, both legal and illegal, are fueling this growth.
I’m not talking just about the obvious problems that we see in the news – growing dependence on foreign oil, carbon emissions, resource shortages, soaring commodity prices, environmental degradation, etc. I’m talking about the effect upon rising unemployment and poverty in America.
As explained in Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge implications for U.S. policy toward population management, especially immigration policy. Our policies of encouraging high rates of immigration are rooted in the belief of economists that population growth is a good thing, fueling economic growth. Through most of human history, the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy.
But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of corporations to fuel population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.
For example, consider Japan. Their average dwelling is less than a third the size of the average American’s, simply because it is far too crowded for people to have decent-sized homes – they are ten times as densely populated as the U.S. But, because they are ten times as densely populated, and in spite of the fact that their per capita dwelling space is one third of ours, their total dwelling space is three times what it would be if they were no more densely populated than the U.S. Therefore, if you are a Japanese citizen, it is in your best interest to reduce your population, affording you the luxury of living in a larger home and increasing the percentage of the labor force that is employed in the construction of home and in the manufacture of housing materials.
On the other hand, if you are a Japanese corporation engaged in manufacturing housing or materials, it’s in your best interest to encourage never-ending population growth, because your total sales volume will still rise, even though per capita consumption may decline. This is why our government pursues policies that encourage population growth – because corporations and economists believe that it’s in our best interest. It was at one time, but no longer.
The U.N. ranks the U.S. with eight other countries – India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China – as accounting for fully half of the world’s population growth by 2050. The U.S. is the only developed country still experiencing third world-like population growth, most of which is due to immigration. It’s absolutely imperative that our population be stabilized, and that’s impossible without dramatically reining in immigration, both legal and illegal. It’s time to halt illegal immigration and deport those already here. And it’s time to reduce legal immigration from over one million per year to about 50,000, matching the rate of emigration and eliminating immigration from the population growth equation.
Pete Murphy
Author, Five Short Blasts
November 25, 2008 at 10:23 am |
Pete — By what means do you propose country’s like Japan and the United States decrease their populations?
November 26, 2008 at 7:35 am |
Thanks for stopping by, “hotoffthepress.” The primary means I see for accomplishing this for the U.S. would be a dramatic reduction in immigration accompanied by a system of economic incentives to encourage people to choose smaller families. Tax policy could be restructured to provide such incentives, as opposed to the current system that rewards people for choosing larger families.
Assuming that immigration is reduced to a level that balances with emigration, a decline in the fertility rate from 2.09 births per female to 1.79 would quickly yield a stable population. (A rate of less than 2.0 is necessary to compensate for steadily rising life expectancy.) A fertility rate of 1.52 would yield a population of about 280 million people in the U.S. by the year 2050, vs. the current level of 305 million – a small improvement, but way better than the 450 million that is currently forecast.
Japan already has reached a stable population, but at a density that is ten times higher than the U.S. Similar economic incentives would work there as well. But first, like the U.S., they have to get over their fear of a declining population.
January 19, 2009 at 7:12 am |
With the U.S.A. in the troes of an economic depression, fewer would immigrate and fewer would want the expense of additional children and more would emmigrate.
January 20, 2009 at 3:01 pm |
True enough, and we’ve already witnessed a decline in illegal immigration for exactly the reasons you’ve cited.
February 24, 2009 at 1:31 pm |
Smoot-Hawley was a major factor in exacerbating the GD. Anyone with even a little bit of effort can read the facts about the tumultuous drop in exports in Europe and the US after the retaliatory tariffs were enacted in Europe–while the populations of those nations didn’t change. Certainly the GD’s root cause was under consumption–but it was because of the increased concentration of wealth to a few and the subsequent loss of income to the masses leading to lowered consumption leading to job losses in the industrialized nations–and a vicious negative feedback cycle. Exactly what is occurring here again. Except, even worse, we have been overburdened with debt and over-inflated housing. The root problem is the real wage stagnation in the US since 1973. It was offset with spouses going to work and taking on more and more debt for a while but finally reached its limit and collapsed. Some elements of your theory are plausible–the over abundant supply of labor overseas did in fact suck out high paying jobs which further concentrated wealth in a smaller segment of the US population. But your theory is but a small piece and not the main pice of the puzzle. Your theory addresses symptoms more than root causes. And over all you model is too simplistic and doesn’t bear up under scrutiny.
February 24, 2009 at 4:32 pm |
Yes, I have read the facts, and the fact is that from 1929 to 1932, exports declined by $3.57 billion, but this decline was off-set by a decline in imports of $2.9 billion, resulting in an overall worsening of America’s trade balance of only $0.67 billion, compared to a decline in GDP of $33.1 billion. (Free traders always want to focus on exports and forget about imports. But that’s not how GDP is calculated.) Smoot-Hawley essentially left tariff rates unchanged and only changed the way they were set, and it wasn’t even signed into law until a full eight months after the October ‘29 stock market crash. To suggest that Smoot-Hawley contributed to the Great Depression in any measurable way is preposterous.
Have you asked yourself why wages have stagnated since 1973? Do you think it could be related to the fact that we haven’t had a trade surplus since 1975, that we’ve racked up a cumulative trade deficit of $9.2 trillion and have shed six million manufacturing jobs since then? Or how about the fact that our population has increased by 50% since then, adding to the labor force faster than their productive output can be consumed?
I think you’re the one focused on symptoms and you’d do well to read the book. All it takes is “a little bit of effort.”
March 30, 2009 at 1:33 am |
I have a different take on the population sustainability question but agree with you that immigration laws need to be enforced and reformed to meet our country’s needs. There is a limit to how many immigrants that can be assimilated at once and too much immigration can lower wages for already struggling American workers. Immigration is a good thing in moderation but it is completely out of control.
March 30, 2009 at 11:21 pm |
RD, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the population sustainability issue if you’d care to share them with us. And thanks for stopping by.
April 13, 2009 at 3:20 am |
You say, “It’s time to halt illegal immigration and deport those already here.” (Your words, not mine.)
You may be encouraging deporting the next founder or the parent of a founder of a major company. See post below:
http://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/04/intels-founder-on-americas-future.html
The most successful American cities, in terms of GDP, have all experienced massive population growth. Meanwhile, smaller cities–who have the population schematic you desire–are all dying out and/or losing their younger residents. A simple analysis of wealth in larger, immigrant-based cities seems to refute your anti-immigration argument.
April 13, 2009 at 6:51 am |
You have your cause and effect backwards. The “massive population growth” you cite is the cause of the increase in GDP in the big cities, just as it is the primary cause of GDP growth throughout the U.S. The problem is that the growth in GDP isn’t translating into growth in incomes because rising overpopulation is driving down per capita consumption (and thus per capita employment). The fact is that the only two major cities in the U.S. to ever declare bankruptcy also happen to be our two largest – New York and Los Angeles. California, our most populous state, is a fiscal disaster, thanks in large part to immigration.
That argument that we may deport the next founder of a major company is without merit. We have plenty of Americans without jobs who’d love to be the founder of the next major company. We don’t need to stockpile more potential founders.
April 13, 2009 at 7:56 pm |
1. I agree that California is a fiscal disaster. That’s because California spends most of its tax revenue on education. In addition, the salaries, medical costs, and pension obligations of public sector employees–officers, firefighters, teachers, etc.–create a significant impact on CA’s budget. Illegal immigration is a convenient scapegoat for CA’s refusal to cut spending across the board. See this PDF file for more information:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/SummaryCharts.pdf
It shows that education is the #1 spending item in CA, by far; then comes health and human services; then jails (CA jails too many nonviolent criminals). Some illegal immigrants may receive health and human services, but until we receive a breakdown of how much money or services is given to illegal immigrants, blaming them for CA’s budget crisis is, at best, resorting to speculation, and at worst, scapegoating. Keep in mind also that immigrants pay sales taxes.
2. As for your dismissal of the idea that you might be deporting our next generation of ideas, you don’t have any statistics supporting your view. My previous posting had a link showing that at least 1/2 of the companies in Santa Clara County were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. If we accept your philosophy of slow growth, San Jose, S.F., L.A., and N.Y. all disappear as we know it.
Gone are also Google (Russian immigrant), eBay (Iranian French immigrant), Sun (Indian immigrant), Intel (Hungarian), and so on. Basically, if we followed your advice 20 years ago, we’d be decades behind in technological progress.
3. You want America to look like Indiana–a nice place, certainly, with good schools, low population growth, and ample land. But let’s not confuse economic growth with other amorphous variables, such as happiness or quality of life. It is clear that more immigration leads to more jobs and more overall income. If that wasn’t the case, immigrants and younger Americans would not be flocking to the larger cities. Your distinction that per capita income declines as more people gather in a particular place isn’t significant in a globalized world where companies can ship jobs anywhere. There must be a reason companies and their employees stay in a particular city, even as per capita income declines. If declining per capita income was a problem, intelligent Americans would be flocking to smaller or low growth cities. They are not.
I am actually in agreement with you re: your main thesis. If you want a slower pace of life and a more close knit community, I agree that lower growth policies and protectionism are conducive to those goals.
The trade-off, however, would involve a serious reversal of American dominance and prestige. Other countries would start creating jobs and companies, immigrants would start going elsewhere (like to Canada and Australia), and America would be decades behind in job growth. This reversal of overall growth would lead to future generations of Americans moving to India, China, and Singapore to find jobs or deciding not to work at all (e.g., Japan’s “hikikomori”).
Be careful what you wish for. Societies that fall behind the global race rarely catch up.
April 13, 2009 at 10:25 pm |
Matt, first of all, virtually every business in America was started by descendants of immigrants. We should be proud of our immigrant heritage, but there comes a time when we have a full house and can accept no more. It’s like a building made of concrete. Once the building is complete, you don’t keep pouring concrete in through the windows just because the building has a tradition of using concrete. It’ll soon collapse.
You are correct that more immigrants mean more jobs and more income. What you are missing (which is understandable if you haven’t read my book) is that adding more population (whether through immigration or through growth in the native population) adds workers faster than their productive output can be absorbed, because over-crowding begins to drive down per capita consumption. Such growth, even though it adds to GDP, essentially becomes cancerous, raising unemployment and eroding people’s incomes and net worth.
Regarding your last paragraphs, you don’t seem to appreciate that, ultimately, an extremely dense population is a source of weakness, not strength. A balancing of trade by America would leave the parasitic economies of overpopulated nations without a market for the exports they rely upon to sustain their glutted labor forces. They’d be forced to confront the consequences of overpopulation that, until now, they’ve been able to sweep under the rug by exporting them. The global race for growth that you speak of is clearly doomed to failure, since growth cannont be sustained. It will be the nations who have stabilized their populations at sustainable levels that will come out the winners, not the ones who collapse into abject poverty under the weight of crushing overpopulation.
May 4, 2009 at 11:29 am |
Our Immigration Laws are not broken, what is broken is our Political system when we elect Corrupt/Pandering politicians that puts votes ahead of American Citizens or the future of this Nation welfare. Our government fails the most basic task of government, namely to protect this Country and its Citizens from invasion and enforce its laws. Our Government, past & present, has allowed the invasion of 20 to 40 million criminals and uneducated peons which is the largest invasion of any Nation, at any time, by any means & in direct violation of Article IV, Section IV of our Constitution, this refusal to abide by our Constitution or enforce our Laws should be classified as Treason of the most foul kind, & grounds for impeachment & worse!
Not only have they allowed the invasion, they force American tax payers to pay Billions on Billions of dollars to provide Welfare, Prison cells, Educate the invaders numerous spawn, and free medical care, at the same time the invading horde break numerous laws and destroy our schools, hospitals, communities, culture and standard of living while Robbing, Raping, Killing & Assaulting American Citizens at an rate the terrorist can only dream about.
It seems like our Politicians & our Government do more harm to American Citizens & the future of this Nation than any of the terrorist organizations or diseases like Mexican Swine flu!
May 5, 2009 at 10:53 am |
Thanks for stopping by, Black Saint. I feel your anger about the way our immigration policy has been handled, but encourage you to keep your anger focused on those crafting and executing our immigration policy and not so much on the immigrants themselves. The vast majority of them are just people desperate to improve their lot in life. To be taken seriously, those of us opposed to immigration policy need to stay focused on the economic realities of excessive immigration contributing to soaring overpopulation, and not attack the people themselves; otherwise we risk being dismissed as racists or xenophobes.
May 21, 2009 at 12:59 am |
Pete Murphy is absolutely correct about the current immigration intake — it is too high.
Currently, we graduate about 3.5 million of our kids from High School every year, the death rate is about 2.4 million. So, in a given decade, domestic growth is about 11 million.
The BLS population (noninstutionalized 16 and over) has grown by 26,254,000 this decade. Employent however, has only increased 5,137,000 since the beginning of the decade. One job for every five entrants into the population, 2 million fewer new jobs than were created in the 1950’s.
The oft overlooked factor that immigration causes is hyper-inflation in the housing market 309% from 1980 – 2007. These housing costs have driven salary requirements beyond globally competitive levels. Some employment is now created abroad rather than domestically.
For every action, there is a reaction.
Even if the migrant was underutilized in his home country, he was still a consumer, renter or homeowner. His emigration causes some supply-demand inequities in housing availability. Ownership equity is retarded in the foreign country, wages flattened in America and this lowered labor rate allows monopolist leaning companies to dump (excess) product into the foreign economy.
Temporary dumping into foreign industries bankrupts these industries, increasing the need to emigrate. Once the bankruptcy of an industry is complete, the monopoly is free to raise prices to profitable levels.
May 24, 2009 at 7:38 am |
Thanks for stopping by, Weaver. I agree with you regarding hyper-inflation in the housing market. It’s one of the key drivers behind our ridiculously high rate of immigration – pumping up demand for housing. But I think I disagree on the supply/demand imbalances. The evidence (our enormous trade deficit) is that it’s America that’s become a dumping ground for foreign companies, not vice versa.