Apparently monetary theory is not sexy – or at least when I write about something else than monetary issues then I get more comments and activity on my blog than when I focus on what I really care about (monetary policy as you know…)

Recently I wrote a piece on why I think the best immigration policy is “Open Borders” and that got a bit of attention and interestingly enough some of my readers who normally tend to agree with me – disagreed with me.

I do not exactly seek controversy (some would say I do), but I simply have to write another post on immigration. Bloomberg chief economist Mike McDonough yesterday shared some very interesting graphs on Twitter on the demographic outlook for Japan, China and the US.

The graphs are extremely telling – while Japan and China are facing sharply declining work age populations in the coming decades the US is likely to more or less maintain its present demographic structure.

Joe Weisenthal at the Businessinsider explains how this is possible:

The best looking, really, is the US, which has a nice evenly distributed population. The shape of the pyramid isn’t changing much, in part because our immigration policy keeps the population from getting too old.



Joe is of course right – the US is still attracting people from all around the world to come to the US to work and live and my bet (and hope) is that that will continue to be the case in the future. Immigration is part of the American success story and will continue to be so for decades to come.

PS I am in London today speaking at the CAMP Alphaville. I am on a panel on “Central banks and their jedi mind tricks” (they stole that title from Matt O’Brien) with Lorcan Roche Kelly, Josh Ryan-Collins and Paul Woolley. The Session starts at 12.30pm London time (so I better get moving…)

HT Niels Westy