Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. So excited Matthew Iglesia's co founder
Speaker 1: of Vox, joining us on the phone from Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: A new book, One Billion Americans, The Case for Thinking Bigger. Matthew,
Speaker 1: what a thrill. I'm really really excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have followed your writing, your podcasting for
Speaker 1: so long, like back to the money Box days, I
Speaker 1: mean and and beyond, so really than I've been looking
Speaker 1: forward to this. So thanks so much for joining. That's
Speaker 1: that's incredibly kind of you to say. I'm really thrilled
Speaker 1: to be here. Um, So tell us about this book.
Speaker 1: This is a big idea. I love it. It's very big.
Speaker 1: It's very big. So look, uh, the United States major
Speaker 1: world power. We've been probably the most prominent country in
Speaker 1: the world for a hundred years now, the world's largest economy,
Speaker 1: the world's largest domestic market. But China is up and
Speaker 1: coming on us. They're in purchasing power parity terms. Their
Speaker 1: economy is bigger than ours. There's a lot of tensions.
Speaker 1: You know, talk about TikTok, you can talk about PRC censorship,
Speaker 1: of American movies. Um, And you know, what do we
Speaker 1: want to do about this? And I think one obvious
Speaker 1: answer would be to go after the underlying source of
Speaker 1: Chinese strength, which is that they are such a large country.
Speaker 1: We could seek to grow our own population domestically. And
Speaker 1: that's both by being more open to immigrants we are
Speaker 1: privileged to be a country that tens of millions of
Speaker 1: people around the world want to move to, and also
Speaker 1: by doing more to support Americans who want to have children.
Speaker 1: We have, on average about one point seven children per woman,
Speaker 1: but the average woman says she'd like to have about
Speaker 1: two point six children. Men slightly lower preferences. But also,
Speaker 1: people don't necessarily care what we think. Um, and we
Speaker 1: don't do very much financially to let people have the
Speaker 1: family life that they aspire to. We do no child
Speaker 1: allowance unlike most countries. In most jurisdictions, we don't provide
Speaker 1: for preschool. We don't do much to help kids out
Speaker 1: during the summertime. Right now, during COVID in large swabs
Speaker 1: of the country were barely even running public schools. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is focus on those two pillars in strength,
Speaker 1: support families who want to have kids, support immigrants who
Speaker 1: want to come here, grow the population, stay number one forever. Okay,
Speaker 1: that point seven child is my favorite. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say that two point Hey listen, I'm one of seven kids.
Speaker 1: There are nine of us in our family, so we've
Speaker 1: done our part to get towards that one billion number.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is, though, and we talk about this a
Speaker 1: lot um. I mean, Jason, you know, has several kids,
Speaker 1: and I just think it's not easy to have big
Speaker 1: families anymore. You talk about policy changes, I mean, we
Speaker 1: really have to change things dramatically in order to make
Speaker 1: it possible. You know, there's a lot of stuff on
Speaker 1: the policy front that would have to change. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of that is money. Some of it is housing policy,
Speaker 1: right if you live in coastal areas, it's just it's
Speaker 1: really hard to get a big house. We don't build
Speaker 1: an up here. And some of it, though, is the culture. Right,
Speaker 1: as family sizes have shrunk, ex patients have changed, and
Speaker 1: if we go back in the other direction to start
Speaker 1: having two, three kids, maybe four in some cases more commonly,
Speaker 1: you know, then you start to see businesses that more
Speaker 1: cater to kind of family friendly uh models, things like that.
Speaker 1: So you know, we've gotten to a point of thinking
Speaker 1: of children as if they're like pets. Right, It's this
Speaker 1: kind of very expensive consumption luxury that some people want
Speaker 1: to indulge in and other people don't. And I think
Speaker 1: fundamentally that's the wrong way to think about it. Having
Speaker 1: and raising children is an important social function. Not everybody
Speaker 1: has to do it, but the people who do want
Speaker 1: to do it should be really supported by the larger society.
Speaker 1: And so Matthew and we're gonna talk more about this.
Speaker 1: Only got about a minute left in this segment that
Speaker 1: we're gonna do some news and come back. But I
Speaker 1: guess the thing that I would say just to t
Speaker 1: this up and give you a minute then we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it some more, is it's not going great right now. Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not a country, uh that they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: come on in, like things are going awesome, like be
Speaker 1: a part of this, or like have more kids to
Speaker 1: be a part of it. Not to be too cynical here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's true, you know, but it's paradoxical. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, this is a country that a lot
Speaker 1: of people still want to move to, right we are
Speaker 1: investing incredible efforts. Trump is at least trying to keep
Speaker 1: people out. But we're having real problems, real political dysfunction
Speaker 1: that is undermining the strengths of America. And I think
Speaker 1: part of the way to get out of that atmosphere
Speaker 1: of dysfunction is to think about things that unite US
Speaker 1: as a country, right, values that we have in common
Speaker 1: that some of arrivals internationally don't have. And you know,
Speaker 1: what is a project that we can embark upon. What
Speaker 1: we still disagree about, things we could talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: what's the right way to design financial supports and families.
Speaker 1: But if we can say as we did during the
Speaker 1: Cold War, as we did during World War Two, then look,
Speaker 1: there's something we all stand for, right that points away
Speaker 1: sort of more functional punting. So, Matthew, we're gonna move on.
Speaker 1: But I gotta ask you, so, what is the case
Speaker 1: for bigger population here in the US. Is it just
Speaker 1: a bigger consumer base? Consumption base? What's what's the thinking
Speaker 1: that shape that's a game changer for the United States?
Speaker 1: You know, scale matters in international politics, It matters a lot,
Speaker 1: Right you look at a country like New Zealand, are
Speaker 1: friends of North Canada. There's are nice countries, they've got
Speaker 1: high living standards. They don't really count for anything on
Speaker 1: the world stage the way the United States does. America's leaders,
Speaker 1: you know, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln through to
Speaker 1: the present day, have traditionally thought that, you know, America
Speaker 1: should be a beacon of freedom in the world and
Speaker 1: a pastion of liberal values throughout the world. And that
Speaker 1: means we need to grow, as we have through the centuries,
Speaker 1: keep pace with the other countries out there, and economic terms, though,
Speaker 1: I think that growing our domestic market is also useful.
Speaker 1: We benefit from being the place right. Entrepreneurs from all
Speaker 1: over the world they know if you want to found
Speaker 1: like a great company, that this is a place to
Speaker 1: come right. And so we want to let people come
Speaker 1: and keep doing that. But we also we want to grow,
Speaker 1: want to maintain that status that you know, New York
Speaker 1: is not just a big city, it's the financial center
Speaker 1: of the world. San Francisco is the technology hub of
Speaker 1: the world. And that's because these big cities anchor a
Speaker 1: big country. Matthew, it's Canada calling and they want to
Speaker 1: talk to you. They've got a bone to pick, all right,
Speaker 1: So Matthew, we're going to use the five or six
Speaker 1: minutes we have left to just ask you what the
Speaker 1: heck is going on in national politics right now? You're
Speaker 1: seeing all the headlines we're seeing, you're trying to break
Speaker 1: it down. You've got a great podcast, Um, how do
Speaker 1: you make sense of it? How do you get your
Speaker 1: head around it and separate the signal from the noise here?
Speaker 1: You know, look, right now we're having a very tough
Speaker 1: debate about the Supreme Court. But the fact is Republican
Speaker 1: senators they have the votes to seat a conservative replacement
Speaker 1: for Justice Ginsburg, they had the votes to block a
Speaker 1: replacement for Justice Scalia. The frustration Democrats are dealing with
Speaker 1: is that the Senate is skewed. You know, Nate Silver,
Speaker 1: the smart poet lunks They say there's about a seven
Speaker 1: point Republican bias in the Senate and it lets them
Speaker 1: get away with stuff that grantly, Democrats couldn't pull off. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: there's actually a pretty good chance that Democrats will win
Speaker 1: a majority this November because Donald Trump is quite unpopular.
Speaker 1: So the interesting thing is, you know, if Democrats do
Speaker 1: manage to win, are they going to do anything not
Speaker 1: just about the Supreme Court, but about the inequities that
Speaker 1: are sort of deeply embedded in our political institutions. Well, well,
Speaker 1: any politician to anything about what's deeply embedded in our institutions, right, Matthew.
Speaker 1: I mean these problems that have come out because of
Speaker 1: the virus or what happened with George Floyd and others. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: you know they're not new, No, they're not new. And
Speaker 1: you know, of course, you know, nobody likes to see
Speaker 1: when when protests turn into riots things like that. At
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, you want to tell people, look,
Speaker 1: work on persuasion, go vote, you know, pursue your remedies
Speaker 1: through through the legal process. And if you have a
Speaker 1: political system that's completely unresponsive to that, right, if people
Speaker 1: who live in cities don't have representation in Congress, if
Speaker 1: members of Congress just don't do anything no matter what
Speaker 1: the public's level of concern is, you know, that's how
Speaker 1: you get into a situation of social disorder. And I
Speaker 1: don't defend everything that's happened on every side there, but
Speaker 1: you you need to show people that progress is being
Speaker 1: made on big national problems, and so far, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really not happening. So Matthew, I know We're meant
Speaker 1: to talk about your new book, and we're celebrating it
Speaker 1: as we should, but you know, I do think about
Speaker 1: in many ways, how President your book The Rent Is
Speaker 1: Too damn High was in terms of what we have
Speaker 1: seen in this pandemic, and how so much, as Carol
Speaker 1: alluded to, has been laid bare in terms of the inequalities,
Speaker 1: and so much of that it feels like is manifest
Speaker 1: did in people's inability to just pay their bills. And
Speaker 1: we are debating that now seemingly around this question of
Speaker 1: will there be more fiscal stimulus. We're going to hear
Speaker 1: from Secretary Manuchin and FED Chair J Powell tomorrow about
Speaker 1: this on Capitol Hill? Are there any reasonable and by
Speaker 1: reason why, I mean things that maybe policymakers can agree
Speaker 1: on remedies on that front at this point, given how
Speaker 1: clear it is that we have an issue here, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really tough. Republicans have been very intransigent about aid
Speaker 1: to state and local governments. The reason news that came
Speaker 1: in about tax revenue was actually pretty good, so it
Speaker 1: suggests maybe the need for aid is not quite as
Speaker 1: big as Democrats have thought it was. So if Republicans
Speaker 1: would say yes to a smaller number. There Democrats would
Speaker 1: get what they want. Then money could go out to people,
Speaker 1: which you know Democrats have been fighting for. But also
Speaker 1: it seems like it would help Republicans at the election
Speaker 1: to get something done here. So you know, I never
Speaker 1: want to you never want to count on Congress doing anything,
Speaker 1: but the stars do seem to be aligned in the
Speaker 1: sense that you know, both parties will be better off
Speaker 1: if they can get something done. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know, the fighting about Justice Ginsburg. See, he's going
Speaker 1: to make Democrats really reluctant to do a deal now,
Speaker 1: more so than they were a week ago. So, Matthew,
Speaker 1: if there's one policy you could just do right now
Speaker 1: that you think would have a really positive impact on
Speaker 1: the US, what would it be? You know, I think
Speaker 1: we should do what Canada, who I was knocking before,
Speaker 1: did under under Justine start giving money to parents of
Speaker 1: young children. I think it's a great response to the
Speaker 1: emergency of the pandemic. Is a really tough time for parents,
Speaker 1: but it's good policy for the long term. There's no
Speaker 1: reason we should have such a high child property rate.
Speaker 1: We can do this like we saw in then emly
Speaker 1: around the simulus, the government cutting checks to people. It's
Speaker 1: a very successful policy, you know, and people know what
Speaker 1: they need, and we could cut through a lot of
Speaker 1: the problems with bureaucracy and fighting about the government by
Speaker 1: just putting money in the hands of people who we
Speaker 1: know need a little extra and that's parents raising young children,
Speaker 1: all right, really really interesting. Uh, So glad you got
Speaker 1: to spend some time with us, and so glad we
Speaker 1: got to spend some time with you. Matthew Aglecias, co
Speaker 1: founder of Fox You Jones us on the phone from
Speaker 1: d C. His new book, One Billion Americans, The Case
Speaker 1: for Thinking Bigger. Check him out on Twitter at Maddie
Speaker 1: Glaciers and check out the new book