300 000 000!

The New York Times has an article in today's edition about the population of the United States reaching the milestone of 300 million at 4:46am PDT on October 17, 2006. Their article is about the Census Department's refulsal to put an official declaration on any particular baby born that day as "Number 300, 000,000." This is in contrast to what happened the last time the population hit a 100 million landmark. On November 20, 1967, Robert Woo was declared to be the 200 millionth American. Apparently the 400th million American will make their appearance in 2043, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Meanwhile, the US population clock keeps ticking: Every 8 seconds somebody is born. Every 13 seconds somebody dies. Every 31 seconds there's another immigrant - legal or illegal. It adds up to a net gain of one person every 11 seconds, or about 8,000 every day. It took 39 years to add the most recent 100 million; the next 100 million will take a couple of years less than that.

There a numerous interesting implications to the population increase that the US (unlike its other "First World" contemporaries) is experiencing. One of the most controversial changes is demographic. By 2050 (after the next 125 million) the US population will be less than 50% "non-Hispanic white." This demographic inevitability has produced a near-panic in some quarters and fuels most of the nativist rhetoric which has been bandied about during the immigration reform debate. Probably the most pressing question is the one of how urban areas such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Diego will manage the growth and need for resources.