There’s a bit of a blogospheric brouhaha over this Jim Manzi essay in National Affairs, which said that European-style social democracy slows economic growth. Manzi wrote that the United States’ share of world production hasn’t changed since 1980, while Europe’s has decreased, and blames the difference on Europe’s social democratic agenda. TNR’s Jon Chait wrote a persuasive rebuttal, pointing out that GDP per capita growth is the better yardstick, and it grew almost as much in Europe as in the United States in the last 30 years. The difference was population growth. Europe’s population grew 7%, while America’s grew 25%.
I was reminded of this debate when
reading James Fallows’ wonderful new Atlantic cover story (subscribe!).
Fallows takes stock of the jeremaids about American decline. One worry
is that the United States won’t be the largest economy in the world in
a few decades because China is growing so quickly. But as Fallows
elegantly explains, there’s a difference between falling behind China
in the GDP list and really, truly “falling behind.”
Someday [China’s] economy will be larger than ours. Fine! A generation ago,
its people produced, on average, about one-sixteenth as much as
Americans did; now they produce about one‑sixth. That change is a huge
achievement for China–and a plus rather than a minus for everyone
else, because a business-minded China is more benign than a miserable
or rebellious one. When the Chinese produce one-quarter as much as
Americans per capita, as will happen barring catastrophe, their economy
will become the world’s largest. This will be good for them but will
not mean “falling behind” for us.
And yet the difference between keeping up and falling behind really is
a matter of people. Not just more people, but more of the right kind of
people. Part of maintaining America’s edge is attracting foreigners to
study and work and build companies in the United States.
“We scream about our problems, but as long as we have the
immigrants, and the universities, we’ll be fine,” James McGregor, an
American businessman and author who has lived in China for years, told
me. “I just wish we could put LoJacks on the foreign students to be
sure they stay.” While, indeed, the United States benefits most when
the best foreign students pursue their careers here, we come out ahead
even if they depart, since they take American contacts and styles of
thought with them. Shirley Tilghman, a research biologist who is now
the president of Princeton, made a similar point more circumspectly.
“U.S. higher education has essentially been our innovation engine,” she
told me. “I still do not see the overall model for higher education
anywhere else that is better than the model we have in the United
States, even with all its challenges at the moment.” Laura Tyson, an
economist who has been dean of the business schools at UC Berkeley and
the University of London, said, “It can’t be a coincidence that so many
innovative companies are located where they are”–in California,
Boston, and other university centers. “There is not another country’s
system that does as well–although others are trying aggressively to
catch up.”
Think about that first quote for a second: “As long as we have the
immigrants … we’ll be fine.” Politically, that might be a strange
thing to say. Elections are won and lost on the ability of candidates
to convince the public that they have undying faith in the inherent
talent of the American people. But national greatness is won and lost
on the ability of America to attract the world’s talent. One of the
well-documented tragedies of 9/11 is that it scared the Bush
administration into designing a Visa program that makes it absolute
hell for immigrants to stay and work in America. To bring this post
full circle, there are a lot of important debates to have about
designing an economic system that stokes entrepreneurialism and builds
adequate safety nets, but let’s begin where both sides agree. Manzi
wrote of “reconceptualizing immigration as recruiting.” That’s an idea
I can get behind.
