300 million strong... and growing

by J. Christoph Amberger

Sometime next week, there will be 300 million people living in the United States of America. The U.S.A. will rank third behind China and India in regards to population.

And while populations in Europe and industrialized Asia are stagnating if not already shrinking, the U.S. just keeps adding people. Between 2004 and 2005, government statisticians confirmed a natural increase (i.e., births minus deaths) of 1.7 million people and another 1 million immigrants.

This makes the United States the odd man out among industrialized nations. No other industrialized country comes even close.

An addition of 2.7 million people means that the United States absorbed the equivalent of the total population of Oman or Mongolia or Jamaica in a single year; or added the equivalent of the total population of the city of Chicago -- each and every year.

-- The effects of that immigration can bee seen anywhere you drive in the Northeast and South as well as the West Coast. I noticed it again as I drove our Boy Scout troop down to Calvert Cliffs for our weekend campout:

Roads that were distinctly rural a decade and a half ago, when this immigrant was making his first exploratory forays, had transformed into broad, smooth strips of asphalt that make the original Autobahn look like a gravel path. And they cut a swath through new residential developments, strip malls and new commercial townships that consisted of bait and liquor stores when the first Bush was in office.
Townships that put billions into developers’ pockets and are now pumping billions into households and tax coffers.

In this month’s Smithsonian magazine, Joel Garreau provides a bit of perspective what this means:

“One fortuitous result (...) is that the median age here is only a little over 35, one of the lowest among the world’s more developed countries. This country also has the most productive population per person of any country on the planet -- no matter how you measure it, and especially compared with Japan and the members of the European Union. This is crucial to everyone who plans to retire, because once you do, you’ll want a bunch of young, hard-working, tax-paying people supporting you, whether directly, through family contributions, or indirectly, through Social Security and pension programs. Unless you’re rich enough to live off your investments, there is no alternative.”

Immigration to the United States is also keeping its neighbors content... or at least in a blissful state of inactivity that comes from someone else solving one’s economic problems. American economist and frequent Forbes contributor Steven Hanke wrote last June:

“Rather than modernize the economy, Mexico’s politicos have embraced a Tito-inspired strategy: when incapable of fostering productive jobs, export the labor force. As a result, over 27 percent of Mexico’s labor force is now working in the U.S. and these workers are sending home $20 billion in remittances. That equals one third of the total wage earnings in the formal sector of the Mexican economy and 10 percent of Mexico’s exports.”

When thinking about the state of the U.S. economy, these are factors that somehow never make it into the general awareness of the mass media: The U.S. economy not only is strong enough to have almost full employment of its population, it also carries over a fourth of the total labor market of its neighbors. Add in the outsourced jobs -- all the Indian telemarketers and Chinese laborers -- that depend on American orders and you get a more accurate picture of America’s role as the engine of global economic growth.