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For those interested in why we can't just encourage native-born Americans to have more babies, two facts to recognize. First, US fertility is 1.66. No pro-natal program anywhere in the world has raised fertility from under 1.7 to 2.1 or higher (the level needed just for replacement. To get population growth it would have to go to 2.4 or higher). As long as women need to work full-time to contribute to family incomes, most don't want any more than 2 kids. Given that others have zero or one, the average remains below 2.0. No level of support has changed this. NO COUNTRY IN EUROPE has fertility above 1.9, despite a plethora of programs. Hungary's program has only raised fertility from 1.25 in 2010 to 1.55 in in 2019; still much lower than in the US! Second, even if we could raise fertility, that would not start boosting the labor force for almost 20 years (kids have to be raised and educated before they can work). Immigrants start working from day 1. They provide immediate benefits to the labor force, social security revenues, rents, etc.

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I feel as though a mass number of people liberal or conservative would agree that Immigration is a good thing! it gets to become a problem when too many people are coming in, because a lot of the stats that you gave were about the people who were returned not how many crossed the border, Biden might return 600,000 illegals, but how many are allowed to stay due to an unsecure border? it may be true that Obama returned more than Trump, but how many people tried to cross when Trump was president. probably less than when Obama was. The more people that try to cross the easier it is to send more people back.

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dont see why we cant have economic policys that enable millenials that already live in america to have kids. this article is globalist gas lighting at its finest.

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I have a couple simple questions to ask Mr. Goldstone. And maybe he can explain the matter further.

What is America anyway? What/who are Americans?

The reason I ask the first question is because there seems to be an assumption (please correct me if I'm wrong) that "America" is merely the institutions that happen to be in this land that we call America. And with that assumption, I can totally see why the argument can be made that we ultimately need more people to ensure that America (the institutions, that is) remains the same (more or less, particularly in regards to this thing we call "freedom" [another institution, I think?]). The problem that I see, and that many people in the "populist" realm see is that America is more than just its institutions. Those institutions didn't just come out of thin air. They were built by people (of a certain tradition... which comes from a certain group) and THAT matters. What happens when those people who come from said tradition are effectively taken out of the equation (in this case, out of the foundation upon which America was built)? Will America continue to be the America that we know? Or does America (the institutions) become something else? It's just a simple observation, but it is quite noticeable how much America has changed over the last 50 years. And not for the better. The people are suffering at an all-time high (drug use is at an all-time high, prescription and non-prescription alike... mostly to treat depression). And we're going to try to argue that more of the same is somehow 'good' for America? Well, maybe for the institutions that America has in the land, but I would argue that not for the people. You like to throw out a lot of numbers and such, but I'd recommend getting out of your posh area and go to the run-down areas of the country (in fact, there are probably some in your own town) and try to tell me that, "well, the data shows that more of the same is good."

As for my second question, "what/who are Americans?", that question is particularly important because, ultimately, if everyone can be an "American", doesn't it then make "being American" ultimately pointless? If everyone can become X, then X doesn't have much meaning. So, you discuss about how more immigration is good for "Americans", but those immigrants in turn become the "Americans" that you claim more immigration is good for. Do you understand what I'm pointing out here? It's a vicious cycle and you've made the state of being "American" pointless. All it comes to mean is someone who just so happens to live on this particularly piece of land. That's literally all.

To sum it all up, people are more than economic units. They are more than mere data points on a graph. They are people with values, with faith, with drive, with dignity. These things matter. I don't appreciate (and I'm sure many others don't either) being treated as just another data point, just another economic unit. This is why populism is so appealing because it treats people as people rather than this mere statistical anomaly. We are more than that, and we're tired of being treated as such.

Thank you to the Unpopulist for publishing these articles as it allows me to see the problems that are truly at the heart of current issues today. I love liberty. And I love the people who seek it. But I fail to see how we have more liberty today than we did 50 years ago. To paraphrase someone I admire, slavery was never really abolished, it just took on a different form.

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