dDonald Trump and JD Vance I have a story to sell: Amid a housing struggle in the United States, the real problem is the presence of immigrants.

Americans “cannot ignore the impact that the flood of 21 million illegal aliens has had on rising housing costs.” Trump argued at the Economic Club of New York luncheon in September. Vance has made this argument even more fervently — on X, in recent interviews, and elsewhere. During the vice presidential debate, Vance said that “25 million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the biggest drivers of housing prices in the country,” adding, “That’s why we have massive increases in home prices that have it happened right alongside massive increases in illegal alien populations under the leadership of Kamala Harris.”

Key elements of this story are false. First, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States is probably about 11 million, less than half of Vance’s estimate. Furthermore, when economist Ernie Tedeschi compared places that saw increases in the foreign-born population with places that saw large increases in home prices for native-born Americans, he found not a single correlation. But Trump and Vance get one thing right: Making the American public believe that immigrants are a drain on scarce resources is an effective way to draw out illiberal sentiments that could fuel victory for the GOP ticket.

Alex Trembath and Vijaya Ramachandran: The Malthusians are back

Let’s get a few things out of the way now: Housing it is rare in big, liberal, productive cities like San Francisco and Boston, which have generated high-paying jobs but refused to build enough housing to accommodate all the new workers. And if 25 million people suddenly disappeared from the United States, the pressure on housing prices and rents would ease somewhat, all things being equal.

But all things would not be equal. The kinds of events that crush housing demand — like falling birth rates, a massive recession that destroys the incomes of many workers, a virus that kills a tenth of the population, and, yes, the sudden deportation of tens of millions of undocumented immigrants. — tend to have traumatic, economic and other consequences.

What makes arguments like Trump’s and Vance’s seem plausible is a widespread failure to think from a systems point of view. In reality, immigrants are not just housing consumers; they are also consumers of various other products, driving demand for more jobs for all Americans. And, of course, immigrants are not only consumers but also producers who help build homes and contribute to technological innovation.

However, the fear of fighting for a fixed pool of resources is deep in human thought. In the 1798s An Essay on the Principle of Populationthe English economist Thomas Malthus warned that population growth would impoverish everyone: “Thus the food which formerly supported seven millions must now be divided among seven and a half or eight millions. Consequently, the poor must live much worse, and many of them reduced to severe suffering.”

The tendency to turn against outsiders in the face of critical shortages is not limited to a basket of deplorables. It is in all of us. Most people see others as a threat to their resources, whether it’s immigrants coming for your housing, yuppies raising rents, other students taking slots at all the good schools, or just more people on the road. adding congestion.

A recent one POLL in Massachusetts — who in 2020 supported Joe Biden over Trump two to one— revealed that many people are convinced of Trump/Vance illiberalism. A plurality (47.2 percent) agreed with the statement “Migrants take affordable housing that should go to Americans first.” Trump’s rhetorical skills aren’t what’s turning a significant number of Massachusetts liberals against their own principles. They are witnessing deficit conditions that have been perpetuated for decades by their state’s Democratic policy makers.

The mismatch between jobs and housing creation in the wealthiest blue states caused prices to skyrocket, led some people to give up good jobs because housing was too expensive, and strained entire communities, turning neighbor against neighbor. the neighbor. Liberals have unwittingly sown the conditions for illiberal politics to take root in some of the most progressive jurisdictions in the country.

There i am fundamentally two ways of responding to scarcity. There is Malthusian thinking – a fierce defense of existing resources, a policy that calls for more and more scapegoats and leaves everyone poorer in the long run. Then there is liberalism, which demands a growing pie. He argues that we can do more: more housing, more schools, more good jobs, enough for everyone.

This was not always possible. Shortcoming used to be the depressing fact of human existence. Malthus was looking back at an era in human history where GDP per capita was extremely low and population growth meant a strain on existing resources, eventually leading to population decline. It was a horrible, depressing cycle that pitted family against family, tribe against tribe. Right there it wasn’t enough food to feed everyone or enough energy to heat everyone. Population growth meant new mouths to feed; new mouths to feed meant lower living standards for all.

But the Industrial Revolution changed all that. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, economies like England’s began to break free from the Malthusian trap. A burst of productivity and economic growth outstripped the increase in new people. The new people were not just new mouths to feed; they were positive amount additions to society. Even as the population grew exponentially, GDP per capita continued to rise, lifting people out of poverty. People learned to make more food with fewer resources (steam engines!), built structures that could house more people with less land (density!), and created technologies that could quickly move many people (horse-drawn omnibuses on rails! cable car! cars!). In a world of increasing economic growth, population growth no longer involved self-sacrifice. Welcoming newcomers with open arms no longer required a messianic level of magnanimity. A policy based on tolerating others, even celebration others have become possible.

Read: A Brief Economic History of Time

The political logic of tolerance only works once society gets out of the scarcity trap. Anti-immigration hawks insist on focusing on the short-term increase in housing demand due to immigration. They refuse to zoom out and see the whole picture: American economic growth relies on higher levels of immigration. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, “International migrants were the only source of growth in the US working-age population in 2021 and 2022… A decline in the working-age population can easily lead to economic stagnation or even decline standards for a nation. ” Fewer people mean less innovation, fewer goods and services produced, and higher prices and shortages. However, liberals forgot the central importance of the fight against scarcity, and the logic of Malthusian thinking crept in again.

Iin the richest country in the worldscarcity is now a choice. There are no technological barriers to building enough housing for all. We know how to build houses; I’ve done it before. But I fear that liberals have forgotten that their desire for a more welcoming and inclusive world is based on society’s ability to prove that there are enough to go around. We cannot rely on altruism to redistribute resources to the neediest, to give more to the poor, to pursue egalitarian principles. We live in a fallen world. People need more than abstract ideals; they need to feel safe.

Listen: Who is responsible for the housing crisis?

Tensions have risen during the pandemic as rising house prices have jolted expensive suburbs and sleepy towns alike. Graffiti in Boise, Idaho, they tell newcomers to do “Go Back to Cali” it reflected the frustrated mood of longtime residents as deep-pocketed Californians moved out. But scarcity doesn’t just exacerbate disparities; they create them too. When I report on homelessness, I hear people claim that homeless residents are bused in from out of state, a myth that researchers worked tirelessly to disprove— a comprehensive study found that 90 percent of California’s homeless lost their last home in the Golden State. Most of the remaining 10 percent had been born there or had family or work ties to the state.

Rhetoric like that of Vance and Trump tends to resonate with people who assume they are the ones defending themselves against intruders — that the outsider will always be someone else. But history reminds us of that foreign it was never a fixed concept. During the Great Depression, California passed an anti-immigrant law targeting Oklahomans and other Americans fleeing the Dust Bowl, making it a crime to “knowingly help a poor person enter the state.” How confident are you that no economic or natural disaster will strike your community? No recession? No hurricanes? No fires? If you want to bet on it, go for it. But the best hedge against future catastrophes is investing in liberalism and growth now.

However, it is not enough to expect better from people. Liberalism must provide real, tangible proof that it can combat scarcity. Otherwise, people will do what is natural. They will do what their forefathers did and what Trump and Vance are luring them to do: they will turn against the outsiders. And once they run out of strangers, they will turn on each other.