The World Might Be Running Low on Americans

The world has been stricken by scarcity. Our post-pandemic pantry has run bare of gasoline, lumber, microchips, chicken wings, ketchup packets, cat food, used cars and Chickfil-A sauce. Like the Great Toilet Paper Scare of 2020, though, many of these shortages are the consequence of near-term, Covid-related disruptions. Soon enough there will again be a chicken wing in every pot and more than enough condiments to go with it.

But there is one recently announced potential shortage that should give Americans great reason for concern. It is a shortfall that the nation has rarely had to face, and nobody quite knows how things will work when we begin to run out.

I speak, of course, of all of us: The world may be running low on Americans — most crucially, tomorrow’s working-age, childbearing, idea-generating, community-building young Americans. Late last month, the Census Bureau released the first results from its 2020 count, and the numbers confirmed what demographers have been warning of for years: The United States is undergoing “demographic stagnation,” transitioning from a relatively fast-growing country of young people to a slow-growing, older nation.

Many Americans might consider slow growth a blessing. Your city could already be packed to the gills, the roads clogged with traffic and housing prices shooting through the roof. Why do we need more folks? And, anyway, aren’t we supposed to be conserving resources on a planet whose climate is changing? Yet demographic stagnation could bring its own high costs, among them a steady reduction in dynamism, productivity and a slowdown in national and individual prosperity, even a diminishment of global power.

And there is no real reason we have to endure such a transition, not even an environmental one. Even if your own city is packed like tinned fish, the U.S. overall can accommodate millions more people. Most of the counties in the U.S. are losing working-age adults; if these declines persist, local economies will falter, tax bases will dry up, and localgovernments will struggle to maintain services. Growth is not just an option but a necessity — it’s not just that we can afford to have more people, it may be that we can’t afford not to.

But how does a country get more people? There are two ways: Make them, and invite them in. Increasing the first is relatively difficult — birthrates are declining across the world, and while family-friendly policies may be beneficial for many reasons, they seem to do little to get people to have more babies. On the second method, though, the United States enjoys a significant advantage — people around the globe have long been clamoring to live here, notwithstanding our government’s recent hostility to foreigners. This fact presents a relatively simple policy solution to a vexing long-term issue: America needs more people, and the world has people to send us. All we have to do is let more of them in.

For decades, the United States has enjoyed a significant economic advantage over other industrialized nations — our population was growing faster, which suggested a more youthful and more prosperous future. But in the last decade, American fertility has gone down. At the same time, there has been a slowdown in immigration.

The Census Bureau’s latest numbers show that these trends are catching up with us. As of April 1, it reports that there were 331,449,281 residents in the United States, an increase of just 7.4 percent since 2010 — the second-smallest decade-long growth rate ever recorded, only slightly ahead of the 7.3 percent growth during the Depression-struck 1930s.

The bureau projects that sometime next decade — that is, in the 2030s — Americans over 65 will outnumber Americans younger than 18 for the first time in our history. The nation will cross the 400-million population mark sometime in the late 2050s, but by then we’ll be quite long in the tooth — about half of Americans will be over 45, and one fifth will be older than 85.

The idea that more people will lead to greater prosperity may sound counterintuitive — wouldn’t more people just consume more of our scarce resources? Human history generally refutes this simple intuition. Because more people usually make for more workers, more companies, and most fundamentally, more new ideas for pushing humanity forward, economic studies suggest that population growth is often an important catalyst of economic growth.

A declining global population might be beneficial in some ways; fewer people would most likely mean less carbon emission, for example — though less than you might think, since leading climate models already assume slowing population growth over the coming century. And a declining population could be catastrophic in other ways. In a recent paper, Chad Jones, an economist at Stanford, argues that a global population decline could reduce the fundamental innovativeness of humankind. The theory issimple: Without enough people, the font of new ideas dries up, Jones argues; without new ideas, progress could be imperiled.

There are more direct ways that slow growth can hurt us. As a country’s population grows heavy with retiring older people and light with working younger people, you get a problem of too many eaters and too few cooks. Programs for seniors like Social Security and Medicare may suffer as they become dependent on ever-fewer working taxpayers for funding. Another problem is the lack of people to do all the work. For instance, experts predict a major shortage of health care workers, especially home care workers, who will be needed to help the aging nation.

In a recent report, Ali Noorani, the chief executive of the National Immigration Forum, an immigration-advocacy group, and a co-author, Danilo Zak, say that increasing legal immigration by slightly more than a third each year would keep America’s ratio of working young people to retired old people stable over the next four decades.

As an immigrant myself, I have to confess I find much of the demographic argument in favor of greater immigration quite a bit too anodyne. Immigrants bring a lot more to the United States than simply working-age bodies for toiling in pursuit of greater economic growth. I also believe that the United States’ founding idea of universal equality will never be fully realized until we recognize that people outside our borders are as worthy of our ideals as those here through an accident of birth.

Leia o fragmento, a seguir, retirado do livro Clara dos Anjos, de Lima Barreto, e responda à questão.

Cassi Jones, sem mais percalços, se viu lançado em pleno Campo de Sant’Ana, no meio da multidão que jorrava das portas da Catedral, cheia da honesta pressa de quem vai trabalhar. A sua sensação era que estava numa cidade estranha. No subúrbio tinha os seus ódios e os seus amores; no subúrbio, tinha os seus companheiros, e a sua fama de violeiro percorria todo ele, e, em qualquer parte, era apontado; no subúrbio, enfim, ele tinha personalidade, era bem Cassi Jones de Azevedo; mas, ali, sobretudo do Campo de Sant’Ana para baixo, o que era ele? Não era nada. Onde acabavam os trilhos da Central, acabava a sua fama e o seu valimento; a sua fanfarronice evaporava-se, e representava-se a si mesmo como esmagado por aqueles “caras” todos, que nem o olhavam. [...]

Na “cidade”, como se diz, ele percebia toda a sua inferioridade de inteligência, de educação; a sua rusticidade, diante daqueles rapazes a conversar sobre cousas de que ele não entendia e a trocar pilhérias; em face da sofreguidão com que liam os placards dos jornais, tratando de assuntos cuja importância ele não avaliava, Cassi vexava-se de não suportar a leitura; comparando o desembaraço com que os fregueses pediam bebidas variadas e esquisitas, lembrava-se que nem mesmo o nome delas sabia pronunciar; olhando aquelas senhoras e moças que lhe pareciam rainhas e princesas, tal e qual o bárbaro que viu, no Senado de Roma, só reis, sentia-se humilde; enfim, todo aquele conjunto de coisas finas, de atitudes apuradas, de hábitos de polidez e urbanidade, de franqueza no gastar, reduziam-lhe a personalidade de medíocre suburbano, de vagabundo doméstico, a quase cousa alguma.

BARRETO, Lima. Clara dos Anjos. Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, 1990. p. 130-131.

The World Might Be Running Low on Americans

The world has been stricken by scarcity. Our post-pandemic pantry has run bare of gasoline, lumber, microchips, chicken wings, ketchup packets, cat food, used cars and Chickfil-A sauce. Like the Great Toilet Paper Scare of 2020, though, many of these shortages are the consequence of near-term, Covid-related disruptions. Soon enough there will again be a chicken wing in every pot and more than enough condiments to go with it.

But there is one recently announced potential shortage that should give Americans great reason for concern. It is a shortfall that the nation has rarely had to face, and nobody quite knows how things will work when we begin to run out.

I speak, of course, of all of us: The world may be running low on Americans — most crucially, tomorrow’s working-age, childbearing, idea-generating, community-building young Americans. Late last month, the Census Bureau released the first results from its 2020 count, and the numbers confirmed what demographers have been warning of for years: The United States is undergoing “demographic stagnation,” transitioning from a relatively fast-growing country of young people to a slow-growing, older nation.

Many Americans might consider slow growth a blessing. Your city could already be packed to the gills, the roads clogged with traffic and housing prices shooting through the roof. Why do we need more folks? And, anyway, aren’t we supposed to be conserving resources on a planet whose climate is changing? Yet demographic stagnation could bring its own high costs, among them a steady reduction in dynamism, productivity and a slowdown in national and individual prosperity, even a diminishment of global power.

And there is no real reason we have to endure such a transition, not even an environmental one. Even if your own city is packed like tinned fish, the U.S. overall can accommodate millions more people. Most of the counties in the U.S. are losing working-age adults; if these declines persist, local economies will falter, tax bases will dry up, and localgovernments will struggle to maintain services. Growth is not just an option but a necessity — it’s not just that we can afford to have more people, it may be that we can’t afford not to.

But how does a country get more people? There are two ways: Make them, and invite them in. Increasing the first is relatively difficult — birthrates are declining across the world, and while family-friendly policies may be beneficial for many reasons, they seem to do little to get people to have more babies. On the second method, though, the United States enjoys a significant advantage — people around the globe have long been clamoring to live here, notwithstanding our government’s recent hostility to foreigners. This fact presents a relatively simple policy solution to a vexing long-term issue: America needs more people, and the world has people to send us. All we have to do is let more of them in.

For decades, the United States has enjoyed a significant economic advantage over other industrialized nations — our population was growing faster, which suggested a more youthful and more prosperous future. But in the last decade, American fertility has gone down. At the same time, there has been a slowdown in immigration.

The Census Bureau’s latest numbers show that these trends are catching up with us. As of April 1, it reports that there were 331,449,281 residents in the United States, an increase of just 7.4 percent since 2010 — the second-smallest decade-long growth rate ever recorded, only slightly ahead of the 7.3 percent growth during the Depression-struck 1930s.

The bureau projects that sometime next decade — that is, in the 2030s — Americans over 65 will outnumber Americans younger than 18 for the first time in our history. The nation will cross the 400-million population mark sometime in the late 2050s, but by then we’ll be quite long in the tooth — about half of Americans will be over 45, and one fifth will be older than 85.

The idea that more people will lead to greater prosperity may sound counterintuitive — wouldn’t more people just consume more of our scarce resources? Human history generally refutes this simple intuition. Because more people usually make for more workers, more companies, and most fundamentally, more new ideas for pushing humanity forward, economic studies suggest that population growth is often an important catalyst of economic growth.

A declining global population might be beneficial in some ways; fewer people would most likely mean less carbon emission, for example — though less than you might think, since leading climate models already assume slowing population growth over the coming century. And a declining population could be catastrophic in other ways. In a recent paper, Chad Jones, an economist at Stanford, argues that a global population decline could reduce the fundamental innovativeness of humankind. The theory issimple: Without enough people, the font of new ideas dries up, Jones argues; without new ideas, progress could be imperiled.

There are more direct ways that slow growth can hurt us. As a country’s population grows heavy with retiring older people and light with working younger people, you get a problem of too many eaters and too few cooks. Programs for seniors like Social Security and Medicare may suffer as they become dependent on ever-fewer working taxpayers for funding. Another problem is the lack of people to do all the work. For instance, experts predict a major shortage of health care workers, especially home care workers, who will be needed to help the aging nation.

In a recent report, Ali Noorani, the chief executive of the National Immigration Forum, an immigration-advocacy group, and a co-author, Danilo Zak, say that increasing legal immigration by slightly more than a third each year would keep America’s ratio of working young people to retired old people stable over the next four decades.

As an immigrant myself, I have to confess I find much of the demographic argument in favor of greater immigration quite a bit too anodyne. Immigrants bring a lot more to the United States than simply working-age bodies for toiling in pursuit of greater economic growth. I also believe that the United States’ founding idea of universal equality will never be fully realized until we recognize that people outside our borders are as worthy of our ideals as those here through an accident of birth.

CAGED BIRD

Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

Adaptado de ANGELOU, M. “Caged Bird” In: The Poetry Foundation (website). Disponível em www.poetryfoundation.org

Nota sobre a autora: Maya Angelou (1924-2014) foi uma poeta norte-americana que explorou em suas obras temas como a segregação racial, a desigualdade de gêneros e a opressão social entre outros.

Leia o fragmento, a seguir, retirado do livro Clara dos Anjos, de Lima Barreto, e responda à questão.

Cassi Jones, sem mais percalços, se viu lançado em pleno Campo de Sant’Ana, no meio da multidão que jorrava das portas da Catedral, cheia da honesta pressa de quem vai trabalhar. A sua sensação era que estava numa cidade estranha. No subúrbio tinha os seus ódios e os seus amores; no subúrbio, tinha os seus companheiros, e a sua fama de violeiro percorria todo ele, e, em qualquer parte, era apontado; no subúrbio, enfim, ele tinha personalidade, era bem Cassi Jones de Azevedo; mas, ali, sobretudo do Campo de Sant’Ana para baixo, o que era ele? Não era nada. Onde acabavam os trilhos da Central, acabava a sua fama e o seu valimento; a sua fanfarronice evaporava-se, e representava-se a si mesmo como esmagado por aqueles “caras” todos, que nem o olhavam. [...]

Na “cidade”, como se diz, ele percebia toda a sua inferioridade de inteligência, de educação; a sua rusticidade, diante daqueles rapazes a conversar sobre cousas de que ele não entendia e a trocar pilhérias; em face da sofreguidão com que liam os placards dos jornais, tratando de assuntos cuja importância ele não avaliava, Cassi vexava-se de não suportar a leitura; comparando o desembaraço com que os fregueses pediam bebidas variadas e esquisitas, lembrava-se que nem mesmo o nome delas sabia pronunciar; olhando aquelas senhoras e moças que lhe pareciam rainhas e princesas, tal e qual o bárbaro que viu, no Senado de Roma, só reis, sentia-se humilde; enfim, todo aquele conjunto de coisas finas, de atitudes apuradas, de hábitos de polidez e urbanidade, de franqueza no gastar, reduziam-lhe a personalidade de medíocre suburbano, de vagabundo doméstico, a quase cousa alguma.

BARRETO, Lima. Clara dos Anjos. Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, 1990. p. 130-131.

Leia o fragmento, a seguir, retirado do livro Clara dos Anjos, de Lima Barreto, e responda à questão.

Cassi Jones, sem mais percalços, se viu lançado em pleno Campo de Sant’Ana, no meio da multidão que jorrava das portas da Catedral, cheia da honesta pressa de quem vai trabalhar. A sua sensação era que estava numa cidade estranha. No subúrbio tinha os seus ódios e os seus amores; no subúrbio, tinha os seus companheiros, e a sua fama de violeiro percorria todo ele, e, em qualquer parte, era apontado; no subúrbio, enfim, ele tinha personalidade, era bem Cassi Jones de Azevedo; mas, ali, sobretudo do Campo de Sant’Ana para baixo, o que era ele? Não era nada. Onde acabavam os trilhos da Central, acabava a sua fama e o seu valimento; a sua fanfarronice evaporava-se, e representava-se a si mesmo como esmagado por aqueles “caras” todos, que nem o olhavam. [...]

Na “cidade”, como se diz, ele percebia toda a sua inferioridade de inteligência, de educação; a sua rusticidade, diante daqueles rapazes a conversar sobre cousas de que ele não entendia e a trocar pilhérias; em face da sofreguidão com que liam os placards dos jornais, tratando de assuntos cuja importância ele não avaliava, Cassi vexava-se de não suportar a leitura; comparando o desembaraço com que os fregueses pediam bebidas variadas e esquisitas, lembrava-se que nem mesmo o nome delas sabia pronunciar; olhando aquelas senhoras e moças que lhe pareciam rainhas e princesas, tal e qual o bárbaro que viu, no Senado de Roma, só reis, sentia-se humilde; enfim, todo aquele conjunto de coisas finas, de atitudes apuradas, de hábitos de polidez e urbanidade, de franqueza no gastar, reduziam-lhe a personalidade de medíocre suburbano, de vagabundo doméstico, a quase cousa alguma.

BARRETO, Lima. Clara dos Anjos. Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, 1990. p. 130-131.