I love this idea, and would be comfortable pushing the number even higher. The cool part about the US is it's relatively unpopulated as compared to European countries.
We could probably fit another 200 million or so people in the eastern half of the country, just by bringing it to the level of density of, say, the UK. If we were willing to live as densely as the Dutch, perhaps we could add 300 million in the eastern half.
In his wildly enthusiastic 1860 book The Central Gold Region, William Gilpin claimed that the Mississipi Basin could support at population of 1.2 billion people, and was destined to become the “world’s amphitheatre”, with all of the world’s trade running through it in a grand “Asiatic and European Railway”.
https://www.up.com/customers/track-record/tr120120-freight-r...
of, say, any small island. These dynamics are unnatural modes of compensation for other inconveniences.
> as densely as the Dutch
or, say, people who live under the level of the sea itself.
> people who live under the level of the sea itself
Your responses read as facetious. I chose two relatively large & wealthy European countries for comparison. But the US ranks 186/249 for population density; there is a lot of room for increased density if it is desired.
If you don't like those, here are some alternate compares you can sub into my post if it helps you engage with the concept:
- Belgium
- India
- China
- Vietnam
- Germany
- Italy
- South Korea
- Nigeria
- Spain
If the US were as dense as the EU, there would be ~1 billion Americans now.