[jethro_tell]

Infact, if all your economic projections are based on continued growth, both in production and consumption, were going to need more people in this country. The process and the legality aside, the only ways to increase GDP growth is to create more efficient workers or increase the number of workers. The other option is a deep, self inflicted, down turn like Japan had for 20 years.

There's room for lots of people and there's going to b a need for more people in this country as the boomers finally retire in their 80s.

[thisiscorrect]

The (completely reasonable) alternative is to avoid a system that only works when there's permanent exponential growth in a finite world.

On top of that, growing GDP is different from improving average quality of life. If GDP goes up 10% by growing the population 20% through mass immigration, it's plausible quality of life will go down in aggregate. Why is GDP growth the right metric?

[jethro_tell]

I'm with you. Unfortunately, unless we change they system around so it doesn't have to grow forever, the weakest are the ones that get screwed as the economy shrinks.

You can't have it both ways, unfettered capitalism with continued growth and negative population growth.

GDP is not the right metric to show increase of quality of life, but it is a quick metric to show economic expansion and contraction.

There's a much broader conversation about how we want out system to work.