It's incredible what is happening. It's like watching a slow moving train wreck and there is nothing we can do to stop it. :/

I think it's possible to be a superpower and maintain America's identity while also having the population be as happy as that of Sweden's. That's how I view(ed) the country heading during the 2008-2016 years. Maybe I'm naive but I was seeing a lot of social issues change for the better. We were working towards gay rights. There were discussions around discrimination and racism. We were also bringing a lot more attention to the healthcare issues we have here. There's a trend around being healthy and educated. There was even talk about wages, work/life balance, and the cost of living. I figured things would improve as these discussions began to get louder and take up more of the country's focus.

My views are starting to get a lot more cynical nowadays. I wouldn't mind if the U.S. just turtled and gave up on the dream of being the best. Is it silly to want to be the best country on Earth? Do people from outside the U.S. share that same mentality or is it just some culturally-imposed ideal that the U.S. has?

I think the latter, the whole notion of "The Land of the Free" always feels more like aspirational marketing than something true, and real.

I'm from the UK, although these days I've moved to Finland for personal reasons. I'm proud of the UK, and proud to be from the UK, but at the same time we're a country that used to have an empire, and due to a variety of changes we lost it. Some of the things we did when gaining or maintaining that empire, were terrible, others were generally positive.

But either way I think the UK has largely given up on being a world-leader. In some fields they still have a big edge, in others they're falling behind. Either way I think it is fair to say there is no cohesive push for greatness, just different people/groups/fields individually doing what is best for them. (Which could be extrapolated to extremes, e.g. Brexit.)

That wasn't my impression at all. During that time, I lived and worked in Baltimore and Philly. The inner city poverty there was as bad as ever--indeed worse because those cities, like many parts of the country, are getting left behind in the "new economy." In my view, America has a culture problem, not a talent or technology problem. We're people who dish out life sentences for a string of non-capital crimes; in Germany (much less Sweden) the maximum for murder is 15 years. Our state and local mismanagement is more reminiscent of a third world country than a western democracy. Our local governments are insolvent, we're incapable of building infrastructure despite throwing tons of money at it. I just returned from visiting Tokyo. The trains there are so smooth and reliable that they were a revelation to me coming from D.C. Not only do we not have anything like that, I can't even picture how our incompetent governmental units would build something like that.

I'm sure I'm viewing things with rose colored glasses. Germany and Japan are significantly poorer countries than the US, after all. But they manage to get really basic aspects of their society right in a way the US seems culturally incapable of doing.

I think the best example was with gay marriage. I definitely saw how much opposition there was to that, but seeing a lot of the country get dragged into progress made me feel more hopeful. That's the feeling I had in general, about everything. "Here's where we have progress to make; we'll definitely drag along a good portion of the country into it, but we'll get there eventually." Now it seems like the trend is in the opposite direction, or that it'll take way longer than I thought to see any kind of real improvement. Even with the infrastructure you mentioned, it seems like there's a big push to keep things exactly as they are now.

Certainly wanting to be the "best" as defined by richest and strongest is limited to a tiny handful countries (Russia, US, China basically), but even Russia and China seem more willing to concede the many flaws in their county. Countries like Sweden on the other hand will happily concede that they'll never be the richest or strongest and so aim to be "best" along other dimensions like equality and social care. Then there are other countries again that would be more than happy to simply make into the next decade more or less in one piece.

The whole "We're number One!" attitude is pretty limited to the US (possibly because they're really the only country that could make a strong argument for actually being "number one").

I've never seen any observer come to that conclusion lately (other than those with transparent agendas). For an overall take considering all the data, not just one or two data points, consider Nate Silver's: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-making-...

> Perhaps the biggest change is that any chance of a Turkey joining the EU is dead. That seemed like a real possibility 5-8 years ago.

Erdogan's authoritarianism is a bit of a confounding factor here.

Do you think very high population density is more or less healthy for the individual? What about the effect on the environment?

What happens once the US has 1.4 billion people and global birth rates have stabilized so there is no one else to bring in?

Maintaining economic growth may be important but it is only one consideration. Bringing in the best foreign workers is a somewhat easy and temporary fix, which dissuades the US from investing in its own citizens.

How many citizens who are down and out would actually be able to contribute a whole lot more? Is the onus solely on them to compete with already educated foreigners?

It would be more less selfish and more sustainable to concentrate on nurturing a national culture of intellect, learning, creativity, entrepreneurship and cohesion within the US rather than supplementing our deficiencies with the best of other countries.

Usually negligible because we have data only for developing countries. There's still no case of a developed nation with 1b+ population.

1. China is of comparable size to the US and has a population of nearly 1.4 billion people [ OK ]

2. Wee need the best here if we plan on staying a global superpower [ Huh? What does this have to do with territory size and population? ]

3. It's like watching a slow moving train wreck and there is nothing we can do to stop it. :/ [ How does this follow from any of the above ? ]

To make an actual point, China is vastly over-populated, to the point that it had to take draconian popuation-control measures. The result of those measures is now that each generation must care for itself and the previous generations, each of which are roughly twice as populous.

China is a slow-moving train wreck that can't be stopped...

1. People contribute to the economy. More people means the economy grows faster.

2. Lots of people would come to USA if it was easier for them to do so.

Of course if you are China or other USA competitor, you want low USA immigration, so that people stay in your country, and grow your economy instead.

2. Hopefully (1) does

Our food production, public health services, infrastructure, and environment would be completely overwhelmed and the government would be helpless to stop it.

"Within reason" is unreasonable to me. You're just saying "increase immigration it'll be good". What if it isn't? Your argument largely centers around more immigrants == better economy, but that's assuming we actually will have jobs for them, and that they don't get stuck in cultural ghettos and then turn to crime or radicalization. A society that is not culturally homogenous is not a very strong one.

Instead of taking in all these people, we should make where they live not a miserable place to live. I enjoy the population density we have in the United States. I have 0 interest in accelerating our population levels.

Or maybe I should. Since I own property I'll just get rich off of it. Hmmm.

There is nothing wrong with immigration or immigrants per se, but we really need to be careful with the rhetoric and think through our immigration policy and how it affects us at home, and how it affects those around the world.

10 years of 10x immigration would be 100,000,000 people, so about 11 cities the size of New York of 100% new immigrants. Such masses could not possibly assimilate to any significant degree; they'd obviously form huge enclaves.

Presumably you'd want to live amongst them, and you would not preferentially move to a neighborhood of people with your culture and upbringing and language. Fair enough.

My question is, instead of bringing them to America, why don't you just go to them? You could move to Brazil. Or India. These places are incredibly diverse. You could do it this year and you'd have your desired result immediately.

You're obviously not attached to anything about American people or culture, so what keeps you here?

When I went to college it was 30% asian, and they didn't bite either. There were brown kids and black kids, and many foreigners.

I don't think what makes America special is country of origin or the appearance of the people who live here. A lot of anti-immigration sentiment has undertones (or overtones) of xenophobia. This is understandable--foreigners are weird and unknown, and some parts of America are 95%+ white with few/no immigrants, or only European immigrants.

> 10 years of 10x immigration would be 100,000,000 people, so about 11 cities the size of New York of 100% new immigrants. Such masses could not possibly assimilate to any significant degree; they'd obviously form huge enclaves.

Ok, maybe 10x is too much, maybe the number should be more like 5x. This would require some sane policy from state and local governments. In the Bay Area, where I live, this would mean substantially increasing housing stock and density. It may mean other things for other localities. Maybe there are limits based on income level. But the target should be, if someone wants to come here and make a better life for themselves, they should be able to.

If someone is willing to leave their country and move to America, we can make it work and it can be a win-win for both sides.

There has to be equilibrium or it's a policy that will drive down worker wages, increase the wealth of the 1%, and leave the United States crowded and poor.

>They don't bite.

I grew up in a class of around 50% children of immigrants. I'm aware that they don't bite.

But, it's nice of you to instantly assume that I'm a xenophobic person just because I question your policy ideas on immigration. Of course the person who wants 20x immigration would assume the same thing about you, and then you're in the left-wing purity spiral. So let's just leave off the insinuations of personal flaws, okay?

>the target should be, if someone wants to come here and make a better life for themselves, they should be able to.

Please, please watch this 6 minute TED-style talk on immigration numbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE

Your basic goal of helping the world is good. But your convictions have completely disconnected you from the strictures of reality.

Your goal isn't coherent. If your target is 5x immigration, then you're not even close to your stated goal of accepting everyone who wants to come. 5x immigration would be about 5 million per year. Africa alone adds 30 million people per year via births over deaths. If 1/3 of those want to enter, then you haven't even absorbed most of the population growth of one continent, much less helped existing Africans, or anyone from anywhere else.

The entire Western world (USA, Canada, Australia, Europe) is about 15% of the world population. It is simply impossible that 15% of the people can save 85% of the people by absorbing them. Even if only, say, a third want to come, it's simply mean dissolving Western countries and leaving the third world without any help or guidance at all.

If your goal is to help people in other countries - which is a good goal - you need to start approaching it with solutions that can actually work. We have to help them grow where they're planted.

>If someone is willing to leave their country and move to America, we can make it work and it can be a win-win for both sides.

This is such a fairy tale. Not every person in the world shares your values. What if that person hates democracy and want to usher in a global theocracy?

India and China really need to get a handle on their burgeoning population.