Some Ann Arborites will tell you the city’s changed a lot, and that it’s a bad thing. Some longtime Detroiters long for the days when there were more people around to create a real neighborhood. And someone from my hometown, Monroe, might wax about how bad it is for a city to stagnate.

In other words, it’s bad when a city grows, it’s bad when a city declines, and it’s bad when a city stands still. Among the three paths, there’s no golden mean that will please everyone. Maybe the lesson is that curmudgeons will find a reason to dislike anything. People can find bad things about anything. But the three paths are not equal. It’s better to grow.

Why? People are the ultimate resource. In a free market economy, they find ways to use the resources of the world to serve others’ wants and needs, meaning that both consumers and producers come out ahead. A larger population means a city has more brains to tap, more opportunities to benefit from interacting with others, more families building for their retirements and their kids’ college funds, and a bigger market for everyone.

We’re all trying to get ahead, and people do that by serving others. Free markets turn human desire to improve our station into ways to help others. “It’s not by the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest,” wrote Adam Smith, the original economist.

Lying, cheating and manipulating others leads some people to gain at the expense of others. But competitive markets drive people away from crooks and toward honest dealers. That’s one reason we have police and courts: to deal with fraud and theft.

To understand that people are productive rather than destructive, notice that the productive process of free markets has caused poverty around the world to decline and wealth at home to increase. Did you know that the median net worth of American households is now over $190,000, up $84,000 in just 13 years?

A larger population is not all sunshine and daisies, and you don’t have to be a misanthrope to believe that. When there are more people, there’s more demand for scarce resources. Yet cities and states adjust. Population growth adds to supply as well as demand. Well-functioning public finance systems respond to population growth by expanding their infrastructure and services, financed in part by new people paying taxes and their water bills.

Poorly functioning places are going to have problems regardless of whether they grow. And since people don’t like to live in places with dysfunctional governments, mismanaged governments tend not to have to deal with population growth.

Some may still be concerned that the newcomers will change the community for the worse in various ways, such as by upsetting local culture and customs. We had a good thing going, the thinking goes, until all the new people spoiled the party.

But those who worry about an influx of new residents should notice it’s not just growth that changes the community; so do stagnation and decline. It’s impossible to preserve a live city in amber. There’s no reason to despair, however. Local standards and mores prevail when they are viewed as a positive, and that’s true regardless of the direction a community may take.

It’s clear that population growth in a market economy brings economic benefits. But there is an even better reason for people to want their communities to grow: It feels better. There is positivity that comes with a growing population. There is more optimism in knowing that you’re living in The Place to Be rather than a place that is past its prime.

Perhaps both economic growth and the good feelings around it stem from the same thing — more opportunity. That both feels good and is good for the financial health of people who live there.

So yes, it’s a good thing when cities and states grow, though I’m sure not everyone is convinced. But there ought to be one point of common ground, even for people skeptical of growth. I hope everyone can grant others basic human dignity. Newcomers deserve that much, even from people concerned about their effects on local culture. And it goes both ways; old-timers deserve that much from newcomers, as well.

Michigan has not had to struggle with accommodating growth of late. Some places in the state are growing, some are declining and others have stagnated. Michigan’s overall population has been stuck at 10 million since 2000. While the rest of the country is up by 21%, Michigan has missed out on a generation of growth.

Maybe that’s changing. The state population increased a little bit, going from 10.04 million in 2021 to 10.13 million in 2025, a 0.9% increase. That’s not close to the 2.9% national average, but it’s something.

That something is encouraging because there are benefits to economic growth. And there are policies Michigan lawmakers can pursue to improve the state’s prospects.

Michigan has a lot to offer, and the state would be better off with more people.

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