America, 300 Million Strong

and yet we may have all this "space" but urban planners are busy demanding the government create useless mass transit systems and white elephant light rail trollys, AND increase taxes to fund them.

Sure there are people who grew up on welfare who are successful, but it's the exception, not the rule. Our large cities all have large and growing populations of 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation welfare recipients. And they reproduce early and often.

I'm not in favor of any illegal immigration. When a nation is economically successful and maintains a huge handout system, it becomes a magnet for illegal immigrants. Aside from the huge strain on our country, it does nothing to improve the long term situation in the countries they're coming from. Germans are no exception. As I pointed out, the shortage of skilled American workers is an artificial consequence of the creeping socialism which infects our country. Huge taxes are imposed which maintain schools that turn out poorly educated students, and people at the low end of the economic ladder are incentivized to stay on welfare because of all the food, housing, and medical care handouts. Who wants to do the strenuous manual labor that many illegal Mexican immigrants do, when you can stay in your temperature-controlled home, eating junk food and watching TV, all at taxpayer expense? We don't have a shortage of low-level workers, we have an expensive system of disincentivizing them to work, and incentivizing them to have babies who will be raised in a no-work-ethic household. I don't want to have my hard-earned money going to support these idiotic schemes, and then be told that the solution their dismal failure is to import workers from other countries, while the US welfare rolls and public school budgets continue to swell. When we are no longer be taxed to support a non-productive underclass, then let businesses import all the workers they like -- legally. Until then, businesses should feel the same pressure that individuals do, to call a halt to tax-and-spend schemes that yield no reward. If they're allowed to circumvent a lot of that pressure by importing workers on an unlimited basis, they'll continue to bankroll the campaigns of tax-and-spend politicians.

Overpopulation BREEDS tyrannical government. Nobody can afford to think about anything except how to get enough food to get through the day, and the desperate masses are always eager to believe the promises of tyrannical leaders. Look at Russia/Soviet Union: in the early 20th century there were hungry masses of peasants, all with large broods of children to feed, and they supported the Communist takeover with all its empty promises; by the late 20th century, they'd all but stopped reproducing and next thing you know Communism was out. Same pattern is being followed in China: starving masses embrace communism, under pressure from government which can't find any other way to deliver to the promised improvements in standard of living, the masses, go along with a draconian birth control program; in time, the standard of living improves, and the adults who grew up as only children or one of two, and aren't starving, have the wherewithal to start breaking down the communist tyranny. The rise of Germany's Third Reich was preceded by very rapid population growth, and an accompanying drop in standard of living. Good luck finding an example of a tyrannical government coming to power in a country which didn't have a high birth rate with a dropping standard of living.

It's pretty pathetic when Americans propose that the route to survival of our nation and culture lies in engaging in a breeding contest with Arabs, Africans, and other fast-breeding miserable populations.

High population density favors Democrats a lot more than Republicans.

2004 Election Red and Blue States

Rank, State, Population density (per sq. mi)

1 New Jersey 1,134.4
2 Rhode Island 1,003.2
3 Massachusetts 809.8
4 Connecticut 702.9
5 Maryland 541.9
6 New York 501.9
7 Delaware 401.1
8 Florida 296.4
9 Ohio 277.3
10 Pennsylvania 274.0
11 Illinois 223.4
12 California 217.1
13 Hawaii 188.6 72.83
14 Virginia 178.8
15 Michigan 175.0
16 Indiana 169.5
17 North Carolina 165.2
18 Georgia 141.4
19 Tennessee 138.0
20 New Hampshire 137.8
21 South Carolina 133.2
22 Louisiana 102.6
23 Kentucky 101.7
24 Wisconsin 98.8
25 Washington 88.6
26 Alabama 87.6
27 Missouri 81.2
28 Texas 79.6
29 West Virginia 75.1
30 Vermont 65.8
31 Minnesota 61.8
32 Mississippi 60.6
33 Iowa 52.4
34 Arkansas 51.3
35 Oklahoma 50.3
36 Arizona 45.2
37 Colorado 41.5
38 Maine 41.3
39 Oregon 35.6
40 Kansas 32.9
41 Utah 27.2
42 Nebraska 22.3
43 Nevada 18.2
44 Idaho 15.6
45 New Mexico 15.0
46 South Dakota 9.9
47 North Dakota 9.3
48 Montana 6.2
49 Wyoming 5.1
50 Alaska 1.1

Indeed it does. And a lot of those Democrats grew up in Republican/conservative families in sparsely populated areas, and their views changed after they settled into a crowded metropolitan area. I'm not totally anti-city, as they do have certain advantages, but I think there's a huge psychological/social/political cost to allowing crowded living conditions to become the norm. Crowding is inherently antithetical to self-sufficiency, and when people don't see self-sufficiency as a desirable quality, it's a small step to accept dependency on government as normal and healthy.

I'm not suggesting that EVERYBODY should live out in the country on several acres, but the sort of huge population scenarios that many people promote as perfectly fine involve NOBODY living that way, and nobody ever having visited such a home or known anyone who grew up in or lived in such a home. I don't think they're appreciating the mindset shift that would accompany that.

In one of the books about the Wall Street excesses of the 1980s with the downfall of Michael Milken and others who were banned from the securities industry (and in many cases served prison time), there's a little anecdote about one of these guys who moves with his family to another state, to a house in the suburbs. His young son, about 5 or 6, is confused as they approach and enter their new front door: "Where's the doorman?", he asked. This child had not only never lived in a place where people open the front door of the building they live in all by themselves, but he'd never known anyone who did since all his and his parents' friends lived in "doorman buildings", and he had no idea that such a thing was possible. At least with current population levels, he was bound to make this discovery sooner or later, but I'd hate to see our country become the sort of place where most children would never become aware of such lifestyles.