I don't think many people argue that we should have "perfect population in 1936", they are arguing that pop growth should be more plausible than it is now. You could say that the game in its current state is "railroaded" to create Russian Hokkaido, US bordergore in Alberta, stagnating russian population, exploding french population etc. As those results seem to happen in the majority of the games (all games I played this far). But its not railroaded, its the game mechanics that consistently creates those results. And the game mechanics should be better balanced to create more plausible results. There is no reason to believe this will not get better as the game gets patched, just like there is no reason to believe it will ever be perfect (whatever that would be).
And I agree with Al-Khalidi that the current pop-growth balance is a major problem as it is very immersion breaking. But that is of course subjective.
EDIT: But yes, rebalancing pop-growth should be the subject for a major patch, not a hotfix.