Vox Co-Founder on New Book

forward to this. So thanks so much for joining. That's that's incredibly kind of you to say. I'm really thrilled to be here. Um, So tell us about this book. This is a big idea. I love it. It's very big. It's very big. So look, uh, the United States major world power. We've been probably the most prominent country in the world for a hundred years now, the world's largest economy, the world's largest domestic market. But China is up and coming on us. They're in purchasing power parity terms. Their

economy is bigger than ours. There's a lot of tensions. You know, talk about TikTok, you can talk about PRC censorship, of American movies. Um, And you know, what do we want to do about this? And I think one obvious answer would be to go after the underlying source of Chinese strength, which is that they are such a large country.

We could seek to grow our own population domestically. And that's both by being more open to immigrants we are privileged to be a country that tens of millions of people around the world want to move to, and also by doing more to support Americans who want to have children. We have, on average about one point seven children per woman, but the average woman says she'd like to have about two point six children. Men slightly lower preferences. But also,

people don't necessarily care what we think. Um, and we don't do very much financially to let people have the family life that they aspire to. We do no child allowance unlike most countries. In most jurisdictions, we don't provide for preschool. We don't do much to help kids out during the summertime. Right now, during COVID in large swabs

of the country were barely even running public schools. So the idea here is focus on those two pillars in strength, support families who want to have kids, support immigrants who want to come here, grow the population, stay number one forever. Okay, that point seven child is my favorite. I'm just gonna say that two point Hey listen, I'm one of seven kids. There are nine of us in our family, so we've done our part to get towards that one billion number.

What's interesting is, though, and we talk about this a lot um. I mean, Jason, you know, has several kids, and I just think it's not easy to have big families anymore. You talk about policy changes, I mean, we really have to change things dramatically in order to make it possible. You know, there's a lot of stuff on the policy front that would have to change. I mean, some of that is money. Some of it is housing policy, right if you live in coastal areas, it's just it's

really hard to get a big house. We don't build an up here. And some of it, though, is the culture. Right, as family sizes have shrunk, ex patients have changed, and if we go back in the other direction to start having two, three kids, maybe four in some cases more commonly, you know, then you start to see businesses that more cater to kind of family friendly uh models, things like that. So you know, we've gotten to a point of thinking

of children as if they're like pets. Right, It's this kind of very expensive consumption luxury that some people want to indulge in and other people don't. And I think fundamentally that's the wrong way to think about it. Having and raising children is an important social function. Not everybody has to do it, but the people who do want to do it should be really supported by the larger society. And so Matthew and we're gonna talk more about this. Only got about a minute left in this segment that

we're gonna do some news and come back. But I guess the thing that I would say just to t this up and give you a minute then we'll talk about it some more, is it's not going great right now. Like, I mean, this is not a country, uh that they're like, hey, come on in, like things are going awesome, like be a part of this, or like have more kids to be a part of it. Not to be too cynical here, Yeah,

I mean it's true, you know, but it's paradoxical. On the one hand, this is a country that a lot of people still want to move to, right we are investing incredible efforts. Trump is at least trying to keep people out. But we're having real problems, real political dysfunction that is undermining the strengths of America. And I think part of the way to get out of that atmosphere of dysfunction is to think about things that unite US as a country, right, values that we have in common

that some of arrivals internationally don't have. And you know, what is a project that we can embark upon. What we still disagree about, things we could talk about, you know, what's the right way to design financial supports and families. But if we can say as we did during the Cold War, as we did during World War Two, then look, there's something we all stand for, right that points away sort of more functional punting. So, Matthew, we're gonna move on. But I gotta ask you, so, what is the case

for bigger population here in the US. Is it just a bigger consumer base? Consumption base? What's what's the thinking that shape that's a game changer for the United States? You know, scale matters in international politics, It matters a lot, Right you look at a country like New Zealand, are friends of North Canada. There's are nice countries, they've got high living standards. They don't really count for anything on

the world stage the way the United States does. America's leaders, you know, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln through to the present day, have traditionally thought that, you know, America should be a beacon of freedom in the world and a pastion of liberal values throughout the world. And that means we need to grow, as we have through the centuries, keep pace with the other countries out there, and economic terms, though, I think that growing our domestic market is also useful.

We benefit from being the place right. Entrepreneurs from all over the world they know if you want to found like a great company, that this is a place to come right. And so we want to let people come and keep doing that. But we also we want to grow, want to maintain that status that you know, New York is not just a big city, it's the financial center of the world. San Francisco is the technology hub of the world. And that's because these big cities anchor a

big country. Matthew, it's Canada calling and they want to talk to you. They've got a bone to pick, all right, So Matthew, we're going to use the five or six minutes we have left to just ask you what the heck is going on in national politics right now? You're seeing all the headlines we're seeing, you're trying to break it down. You've got a great podcast, Um, how do you make sense of it? How do you get your head around it and separate the signal from the noise here?

You know, look, right now we're having a very tough debate about the Supreme Court. But the fact is Republican senators they have the votes to seat a conservative replacement for Justice Ginsburg, they had the votes to block a replacement for Justice Scalia. The frustration Democrats are dealing with is that the Senate is skewed. You know, Nate Silver, the smart poet lunks They say there's about a seven point Republican bias in the Senate and it lets them

get away with stuff that grantly, Democrats couldn't pull off. Nevertheless, there's actually a pretty good chance that Democrats will win a majority this November because Donald Trump is quite unpopular. So the interesting thing is, you know, if Democrats do manage to win, are they going to do anything not just about the Supreme Court, but about the inequities that

are sort of deeply embedded in our political institutions. Well, well, any politician to anything about what's deeply embedded in our institutions, right, Matthew. I mean these problems that have come out because of the virus or what happened with George Floyd and others. Unfortunately, you know they're not new, No, they're not new. And you know, of course, you know, nobody likes to see

when when protests turn into riots things like that. At the same time, you know, you want to tell people, look, work on persuasion, go vote, you know, pursue your remedies through through the legal process. And if you have a political system that's completely unresponsive to that, right, if people who live in cities don't have representation in Congress, if members of Congress just don't do anything no matter what the public's level of concern is, you know, that's how

you get into a situation of social disorder. And I don't defend everything that's happened on every side there, but you you need to show people that progress is being made on big national problems, and so far, I mean,

it's really not happening. So Matthew, I know We're meant to talk about your new book, and we're celebrating it as we should, but you know, I do think about in many ways, how President your book The Rent Is Too damn High was in terms of what we have seen in this pandemic, and how so much, as Carol alluded to, has been laid bare in terms of the inequalities, and so much of that it feels like is manifest

did in people's inability to just pay their bills. And we are debating that now seemingly around this question of will there be more fiscal stimulus. We're going to hear from Secretary Manuchin and FED Chair J Powell tomorrow about this on Capitol Hill? Are there any reasonable and by reason why, I mean things that maybe policymakers can agree on remedies on that front at this point, given how clear it is that we have an issue here, you know,

it's really tough. Republicans have been very intransigent about aid to state and local governments. The reason news that came in about tax revenue was actually pretty good, so it suggests maybe the need for aid is not quite as big as Democrats have thought it was. So if Republicans would say yes to a smaller number. There Democrats would get what they want. Then money could go out to people,

which you know Democrats have been fighting for. But also it seems like it would help Republicans at the election to get something done here. So you know, I never want to you never want to count on Congress doing anything, but the stars do seem to be aligned in the sense that you know, both parties will be better off if they can get something done. On the other hand, you know, the fighting about Justice Ginsburg. See, he's going to make Democrats really reluctant to do a deal now,

more so than they were a week ago. So, Matthew, if there's one policy you could just do right now that you think would have a really positive impact on the US, what would it be? You know, I think we should do what Canada, who I was knocking before, did under under Justine start giving money to parents of young children. I think it's a great response to the emergency of the pandemic. Is a really tough time for parents,

but it's good policy for the long term. There's no reason we should have such a high child property rate. We can do this like we saw in then emly around the simulus, the government cutting checks to people. It's a very successful policy, you know, and people know what they need, and we could cut through a lot of the problems with bureaucracy and fighting about the government by just putting money in the hands of people who we know need a little extra and that's parents raising young children,

all right, really really interesting. Uh, So glad you got to spend some time with us, and so glad we got to spend some time with you. Matthew Aglecias, co founder of Fox You Jones us on the phone from d C. His new book, One Billion Americans, The Case for Thinking Bigger. Check him out on Twitter at Maddie Glaciers and check out the new book