Could the United States have >500 million people today?

China started a considerably higher total, had the government actively encouraging people to have more kids (and in a position for "encouraging" to mean something) half a century ago, and has considerably lower living standards.

Not remotely equivalent.

See above.

China stopped pressuring families to have more kids about forty years ago.

Anyways, you're assuming that this alternate US has today's standard of living. With a far enough point of divergence, the US could be the authoritarian dictatorship with a 500-million+ population.

No, it's intended as a general note on the idea of adding Canada and/or Mexico to the US as part of pumping up the population. And people always treat it as if the only thing that stopped the US from doing that was something that could be fixed easier than snapping your fingers.
And this relates to what I was saying ... how?
 
I think it's possible, but not without very different circumstances. Annexing Canada and Mexico are the easy ways out, with those two nations you can easily bump the numbers up. You could have more immigration from all around the world and not just European nations, pro-natalist, agrarian culture take hold, etc.
 
If you find some way for the United States to control all of North America, from the Arctic Islands to the Panamanian border, and control the Caribbean outside the Lesser Antilles you could, as the OTL total population of North America is around 535-540 million.

That all said, one thing to remember is just how massively and quickly the United States actually grew as it is in terms of population, you're essentially not gonna increase it much more than it did IOTL, so the U.S. taking Canada and Mexico (463.7 million OTL pop.) are alone not going to do it.
 
China stopped pressuring families to have more kids about forty years ago.

And it doing so at all had a not insignificant impact on population being at the level it is today.

Anyways, you're assuming that this alternate US has today's standard of living. With a far enough point of divergence, the US could be the authoritarian dictatorship with a 500-million+ population.

Assuming the US becoming an authoritarian dictatorship is possible, you just removed immigration as a source of population growth. And added emigration as a source of population loss.

Since people came here to get away from places that would try that.

And this relates to what I was saying ... how?

What part of "t's intended as a general note on the idea of adding Canada and/or Mexico to the US as part of pumping up the population." did you miss?
 
And it doing so at all had a not insignificant impact on population being at the level it is today.

Assuming the US becoming an authoritarian dictatorship is possible, you just removed immigration as a source of population growth. And added emigration as a source of population loss.

Since people came here to get away from places that would try that.

And none of this is relevant to the idea that the area of Canada and the USA is physically capable of sustaining 500 million people or more.

I don't know what type of scenario would be necessary for this. Maybe, in the infinite number of worlds that might exist, there's one where a nuclear war across Eurasia and Africa and South America prompts people to immigrate to the US+Canada, which then becomes an authoritarian dictatorship, but nobody dares leave because everywhere else is unsustainable to human life. And then US+Canada has 500 million or more people. Maybe that's the only suggestion where this is plausible. But it is possible.

What part of "t's intended as a general note on the idea of adding Canada and/or Mexico to the US as part of pumping up the population." did you miss?


I missed the Mexico here:

Import from where?

And adding Canada . . . where are in Canada are there significant quantities (compared to the amount available in the Contiguous 48 of OTL) of arable land?

First, I'm not talking about combining the USA and Mexico. I never did: that would make the challenge too easy. Seconds, I never talked about the American Revolution or the War of 1812, so it's not relevant. It has nothing to do with my post. That's why I don't know why it's addressed at me.
 
And none of this is relevant to the idea that the area of Canada and the USA is physically capable of sustaining 500 million people or more.

Being physically capable of doing X is not enough for X to occur, or someone would have split William of Normandy's head with an axe at Hastings.

More on topic, all of that is extremely relevant to whether or not they will have half a billion people to support.

I don't know what type of scenario would be necessary for this. Maybe, in the infinite number of worlds that might exist, there's one where a nuclear war across Eurasia and Africa and South America prompts people to immigrate to the US+Canada, which then becomes an authoritarian dictatorship, but nobody dares leave because everywhere else is unsustainable to human life. And then US+Canada has 500 million or more people. Maybe that's the only suggestion where this is plausible. But it is possible.

I have trouble imagining a nuclear war across Eurasia and Africa and South America scenario where the Greater United States is unscathed and randomly turns into a dictatorship.
I missed the Mexico here:

Because there wasn't a Mexico there, that one was directed at you.
US+Canada+Mexico + some faster growth in there somewhere might make it, but that seems like trying to get a larger German population by allowing you to count Austria and/or the Netherlands. If we stretch the definition of "the US" far enough, we don't need to do anything except figure out how the US grows bigger.
is my observation on how you might make this work by expanding the definition of "the United States" far enough.

First, I'm not talking about combining the USA and Mexico. I never did: that would make the challenge too easy. Seconds, I never talked about the American Revolution or the War of 1812, so it's not relevant. It has nothing to do with my post. That's why I don't know why it's addressed at me.

What part of "It's a general note" implies that it's addressed at you specifically?
 
With a far back enough POD, could the US of reached 500 million people by today, or even possibly 1 billion like China and India have today? Also, nothing extra can be annexed besides Canada and Mexico.

Have you considered the possibility of population growth had the Native Americans not been decimated by small pox and other diseases brought by Europeans? (not to mention those who were killed by other methods).
 
Being physically capable of doing X is not enough for X to occur, or someone would have split William of Normandy's head with an axe at Hastings.

More on topic, all of that is extremely relevant to whether or not they will have half a billion people to support.

I have trouble imagining a nuclear war across Eurasia and Africa and South America scenario where the Greater United States is unscathed and randomly turns into a dictatorship.

Because there wasn't a Mexico there, that one was directed at you. is my observation on how you might make this work by expanding the definition of "the United States" far enough.

What part of "It's a general note" implies that it's addressed at you specifically?

Alright, how about this: Can William's head get lopped off at Hastings? Yes. Will this necessarily happen? No.

Can the territory of the US+Canada support 500 billion people thanks to the arable land it has? Yes. Will this necessarily happen? No.

I've been arguing the latter this whole time. How does this USA get to this stage? I don't know, and I don't think there's anything that necessarily leads to such a situation. In fact, I don't think history necessarily leads to anything, because things change. But for a question of whether the land can support the people? I don't see why not, given how China manages to support more people on less land. As for my nuclear war scenario, I'm not saying it's necessary either. But, as I've been repeating over and over, it's not relevant.
 
What about an alternative Mormonism that doesn't include polygamy, doesn't get booted out to Utah, and instead spreads like wildfire on the East Coast, giving a big chunk of the population a religious imperative to procreate like rabbits?
 
What about an alternative Mormonism that doesn't include polygamy, doesn't get booted out to Utah, and instead spreads like wildfire on the East Coast, giving a big chunk of the population a religious imperative to procreate like rabbits?

How is that going to even work?
 
Well, you could get closer if you avoid the American Civil War. With between 600,000 and 700,000 additional people, especially the younger ones living to adulthood and having children, you could get closer to 500 million. I couldn't tell you how much.

Oh I can! Even assuming that the lost population is homogeneous with the main body politic (it wasn't being mostly young men), a simple extrapolation of 1860-2010 shows that that population would give rise to 5-7 million today. The real number being lower due to immigration between the two dates padding out the 2010 number.

WW1 was a big deal, the American Civil War was barely a percentage point.
 
Oh I can! Even assuming that the lost population is homogeneous with the main body politic (it wasn't being mostly young men), a simple extrapolation of 1860-2010 shows that that population would give rise to 5-7 million today. The real number being lower due to immigration between the two dates padding out the 2010 number.

WW1 was a big deal, the American Civil War was barely a percentage point.

WWI was even less of the US population than the ACW - both in absolute terms and a percentage.
 
butterfly the spanish flu away, that should give a boost.

(500-675k, half of which the age 20-40)
 
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WWI was even less of the US population than the ACW - both in absolute terms and a percentage.

Fun fact: WW1 also happened to countries outside the US.

To be clearer, the loss to war deaths France or Russia or others suffered in WW1 were significant demographic hits, whilst the American Civil War was not a significant hit to the country it occurred in.
 
Fun fact: WW1 also happened to countries outside the US.

Which is utterly irrelevant as far as the issue of what was "a big deal" to the US - aka the country being discussed - is concerned.

To be clearer, the loss to war deaths France or Russia or others suffered in WW1 were significant demographic hits, whilst the American Civil War was not a significant hit to the country it occurred in.
Oh definitely. Scotland's losses were hideous - 26% is sticking in my head for some reason.

But WWI was even less significant as a demographic hit to the US, thus my comment.

All of America's wars put together are even as much as France in the Napoleonic Wars, I think.
 
Which is utterly irrelevant as far as the issue of what was "a big deal" to the US - aka the country being discussed - is concerned.

Oh definitely. Scotland's losses were hideous - 26% is sticking in my head for some reason.

But WWI was even less significant as a demographic hit to the US, thus my comment.

All of America's wars put together are even as much as France in the Napoleonic Wars, I think.

My original point which I wrote poorly but was which you've managed to still skip when I explained it was that what those countries/the world as a whole in WW1 & 2 suffered was something that would impact demographics, what America suffered in the ACW (or in any war ever) was not.
 

Gwax23

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You dont really need to add land. The US put a lot of restrictions of immigration starting in the 1920s and even earlier. Remove all barriers to Immigration let the flood gates remain open and you already have a significant boost. Avoid wars like the civil war, and maybe annex canada only helps.
 
My original point which I wrote poorly but was which you've managed to still skip when I explained it was that what those countries/the world as a whole in WW1 & 2 suffered was something that would impact demographics, what America suffered in the ACW (or in any war ever) was not.

Quote:
But WWI was even less significant as a demographic hit to the US, thus my comment.

All of America's wars put together are even as much as France in the Napoleonic Wars, I think.
If you're just trying to say that "WWI was a big deal to other places", I'm not sure what that has to do with the ~2% losses of the ACW vs. the (for the US) insignificant losses of WWI in terms of US demographics.
 
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If you're just trying to say that "WWI was a big deal to other places", I'm not sure what that has to do with the ~2% losses of the ACW vs. the (for the US) insignificant losses of WWI in terms of US demographics.

But the heavy losses in Europe during the WWI helped trimming down the emigration to America.
Picturing a much shorter WWI, much less bloodier but just as damaging... is it possible to butterfly away the restrictions to immigration in 1921/24? Was there anyone who opposed them and had a chance to success?

Historically emigration to the US from Europe peaked in the first decade of the XX century. With this alternate WWI, leaving civilian population largely intact but economy in much worse shape, and without restrictions to immigration, could it be possible that the late 10s and the 20s saw an even larger immigrant influx?
 
It's not that hard to do. It just requires one simple political change - a consensus in favor of an open immigration policy for all, with little to no restrictions. (In OTL, despite all the mythology surrounding Ellis Island and so forth, for most of history the U.S. population has been opposed to mass immigration and favored its restriction.)

Consider: Immigration was very tightly controlled from 1924-1965, during which time it was difficult for anyone not of Northern European origin to gain legal entry (and by that time, Northern Europeans were no longer coming in large numbers). And of course, Asian immigration was restricted in the late 1800s, so not many of them came during the 1890-1924 period, either. Finally, even with the elimination of national quotas in 1965, it's still not simple to gain a green card here. About a million people legally gain residency each year, and still a majority of those who apply are denied. The number of people who want to move to the U.S. is incredible.

Without immigration restrictions, there'd have been tens of millions more immigrants over the last 150 years, and then they'd have children, and grandchildren and so forth to add to the numbers. Reaching 500 million by the 21st century would have been very possible.
 
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