Nate Silver: belief

Transcript context

…Germany’s not doing it, UK’s not doing it, Ireland is not doing it. Netherlands is now doing it, but it just seems to be a very slow process, given how I think about democratic accountability on most other issues. They used to be more restrained of it on the left in the US, where Bernie Sanders, for example, would have issues like immigration, where he’s a little bit more cautious. If you have a generous welfare state and admitting somebody new to it is potentially going to cost everybody. I think all this might reverse within a few years, where the world realizes we have a shortage of young people in general, a fertility crisis, if you want to call it that, and an aging population, and will want to have people who are willing to work hard and are skilled in particular, so maybe they’re skating to where the puck is going. The US also has, I think, particularly efficient political outcomes in some ways. People take for granted the fact that you have these coalitions that are 50–50 approximately very consistently. Trump remade the GOP in a lot of ways, but still, every election is roughly 50–50 with a different coalition than you had before. Maybe our electoral technology [laughs] is better. Right now, America is quite pro-immigrant compared to most of the world. Sure.…

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