Jason Furman: prediction

Transcript context

…As you know, Bryan Caplan has a book out about open borders. Coming from the left, Matt Yglesias has a forthcoming book arguing we should target an America of one billion people. Do you think right now we’re just thinking too small about numbers in this country? Three hundred twenty million — it’s not very much. China and India — they’re geopolitical rivals. Shouldn’t we have a plan to get to an America of, say, 700 million people? And they can’t all go to Manhattan, not even Staten Island. First, within any conceivable range that I can imagine for public policy, I’d rather have more immigration than less immigration. When you’ve decided on the amount you have, I then do believe in enforcement. I think it is perfectly reasonable for the United States to decide who can be here. Certainly reasonable for the United States to decide who can vote in the United States. I’d like those rules to be much more permissive and then to enforce the much more permissive place that we set those rules. Can I imagine 700 million, a billion? I certainly think economically, we could support that number of people in the land that we have in this country. If that happened, you’d end up with an awful lot of people moving to Idaho without having to tell them to move to Idaho because prices in New York and San Francisco would go up even more than they have already. I do think Bryan Caplan’s book, which I loved, didn’t take completely seriously some of the transition issues and some of the transition costs. The speed with which these changes happen politically, culturally, economically — I think that is relevant. What about having the US government change policy to induce or encourage a higher rate of savings? Is there anything we should do? Or is the savings rate just fine?…

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