America and Overpopulation Myths

Ever driven across rural America and seen how much empty space is out there? Often, you'll cover hundreds of miles of land virtually devoid of people.

Contrary to the claims of many leftwingers, environmentalists, and other other doomsday population bomb types, the United States is not overpopulated. Far from it. Our 300 million people live in a geographic area about the same size as China, home to more than 1.3 billion. Many other areas of the world, including most of Europe, India, Southeast Asia, and West Africa also carry far greater population densities. Furthermore, we produce more food than we can possibly eat, and our per capita economic output leads the world (apart from Luxembourg, whose tax-haven status greatly inflates GDP).

But that doesn't stop certain leftist rants such as the one this San Francisco Gate columnist pulled on an Arkansas family that recently celebrated the birth of its sixteenth child.

Now of course sixteen kids is a lot, and certainly most people desire far fewer. But these particular parents wished for more, and that's that. End of story. There is certainly no need to publicly ridicule them for overpopulating the world (or to ridicule them for any reason, period).

The column's author may be correct in stating that one billion children around the world live in poverty, but this is entirely unrelated to the size of America's population (or, for the most part, population size anywhere). Rather, these poor children overwhelmingly live in unfree nations ruled by thugs and dictators who vastly limit their people's economic potential. South Korea, for example, has over double the population of North Korea, but the dictator-ruled North mires in dire poverty while the democratic South abounds in wealth.

Overpopulation clearly is not the drastic problem that many claim, and most certainly not in America. Our nation has plenty of room to grow, and if we choose to do so, then by all means we should.