This is from Robert Reich, Clinton’s Labor Secretary, who tilts a tad to the left. While I agree there should be immigration reform (actually, enforcement reform — here illegally, get sent back), this seems like a backdoor way to get citizens to side with them. Having said that, he does, unfortunately, have a point.
Forty years ago there were five workers for every retiree. Now there are three. Within a couple of decades, there will be only two workers per retiree. There’s no way just two workers will be able or willing to pay enough payroll taxes to keep [Social Security and Medicare] benefits flowing to every retiree.
This is where immigration comes in. Most immigrants are young because the impoverished countries they come from are demographically the opposite of rich countries. Rather than aging populations, their populations are bursting with young people.
Yes, I know: There aren’t enough jobs right now even for Americans who want and need them. But once the American economy recovers, there will be. Take a long-term view and most new immigrants to the U.S. will be working for many decades.
Get it? One logical way to deal with the crisis of funding Social Security and Medicare is to have more workers per retiree, and the simplest way to do that is to allow more immigrants into the United States.
Immigration reform and entitlement reform have a lot to do with one another.
And then there’s the ‘anchor baby’ issue.
I would loosen the POLICE protectionism..
AS LONG as an idiot ISNT bothering/hurting another person..LET THEM PLAY/KILL themselves.
That alone should open some jobs.
BUT, ALSO..make working on farms WORTH IT..
Another point is to LOWER the min age for working.. GET YOUR KIDS BUSY..GET THEM WORKING..GET THEM OUT OF THE HOUSE..
ALSO..
when you turn 60, NO MORE wage taxes..you pay into Social sec, and the rest, but NO WAGE TAX if you are making LESS THAN $20 per hour.
#33… SS benefits are already means tested, but on the front end, which is much fairer.
Only your first $110k (or there about) of income is subject to FICA. I forgot the exact amount since I no longer earn anywhere near it. This is the opposite of how most countries tax for their SS funding. Overseas, the more you earn, a larger percentage is taxed, and there are few if any ceilings.
In the US, there is a maximum amount of benefits you get for your maximum contribution. In other words, if you make lots of money, you benefits are going to be a lot smaller when compared to your income. But they will be the same as someone who earned the maximum taxable amount.
Also, if you take early benefits, they are means tested (based on earned income). Basically, your benefits are reduced by a dollar for every 2 dollars you earn. Ask any senior citizen about the crazy tax returns and penalties they have to deal with if they are still working while receiving benefits.
Removing the ceiling on taxable income won’t solve the problem because the pool of taxpayers who exceed the limit is small when measured against the pool under the limit. It will punish success with very little benefit.
The solution to the Social Security problem is really quite simple. Create a computer model of the US economy to show that the unprecedented increase of Retirees is caused an anthropogenic shortfall of low wage earners leading to the destruction of your manufacturing economy. You’ll have to fight off all the naysayers who might point a finger at greed, monetary problems, women in the workplace, or the sun… but in the end, trading “Alien Credits” will save the day.
Joel Kotkin says we are likely to be much brighter future for America.
Mr. Kotkin’s “The Next Hundred Million,” “America’s population is expected to expand dramatically in coming decades.” He points to a slowly rising birth rate and to the continuing in-migration of young workers from poorer countries. Most of America’s population growth between 2000 and 2050, he notes, “will be in its racial minorities, particularly Asians and Hispanics, as well as in a growing mixed-race population.” No other developed country, he says, “will enjoy such ethnic diversity.”
Kotkin says population growth means economic growth to create wealth, raise the standard of living and meet the burdens of future commitments. Thus a country with a youthful demographic, in relative terms, enjoys a big advantage over its global counterparts. He says in the next four decades we will see “most of the developed countries in both Europe and Asia will become veritable old-age homes” because of stagnant population growth. And the economies of these countries, already devoted to a vast welfare-state apparatus, will face crushing pension obligations—but without the young workers to defray the cost.
So, cheer up.
Mr. Kotkin’s “The Next Hundred Million,” “America’s population is expected to expand dramatically in coming decades.”
Wonderful…. We will be moving towards the fate of the U.S. population in the movie Soylent Green even faster than predicted.
I can’t wait.
I there is a sovereign debt revulsion it won’t be because of the overall debt level. The US specifically has too much money financed on the short term. You might pay a bit more on the coupons, but the advantage of longer term financing is obvious. No sane homeowner in America is going to plan on switching out their mortgage every three years, why should governments?
As big borrowers are forced towards shorter term loans their chances of facing a lender revolt grows. Plus any type of loan has fees to banks. More debt restructuring = more gravy for wall st.
We need to push out more debt in longer range instruments. It would make common interest rates higher, but does anyone think fed borrowing is going to be easier in 5 years?
So then how do you pay for their Social Security benefits?
30 million paying $5000 per year still only yields $150 billion per year, which is not enough to cover the SS deficit, even assuming that no one elses payments are reduced because of the competition for jobs.
Better solution is to index that amount of the first paycheck to inflation, not the growth in wages as they do now. People are collecting so much more than what they pay in.
You know, it seems to me that we can’t meet our current obligations. That’s sad. Maybe we ought to start up a brand new huge program that would, like, need 16,000 new IRS agents just to enforce it! And that will provide work for thousands of attorneys for next few decades. Oh, if only there were some segment to our economy that we could nationalize to achieve these goals…
As a few of you may know..
In the next 50 years…
Without population controls..
Without IDIOT resignation..
With Advanced medical…
The population will Flux UPWARDS, in the next 50 years by 25-30%.
So lets take 5 billion..we will hit 7billion.
Find work?
Find FOOD?
Find water?
Biggest DOLLAR business selling WATER..
Find out Oxy use of 7 billion people.
NEXT BIG dollar business..
WHo wants to know what to invest in in the next 50 years??
WATER desalination and OXY generation and distribution systems.
#37 Steve
Please. These majority of the rules have NOTHING to do with the immigrant being a threat. Our own citizens commit more crimes than the immigrant population legal or otherwise. The process of one becoming legal is expensive (to the point where our immigrant ancestors could not have afforded it), burdensome and filled with quotas that only are there because of ethnic prejudice (as it always has been since the first quota in 1850).
The “native” americans were immigrants as well. Your argument is invalid. Again Isolationist rhetoric.
The US would be like the Northwest Territories in Canada if it had not been for all those immigrants.
You wish to keep holding onto isolationism for the sake of being accepted by your peers. Whom again are pandering to unreasonable fear. They have been doing that since the first wave of immigration. It was unfounded then and unfounded now.
#20 ECA
The solution? You are not gonna like this at all….
Immigration.
Yep! You have to leave your nation of origin and go somewhere else. Ironic isn’t it?
That is exactly why people come here. It is why humans have migrated all their lives.
Reality is a bitch. Good morning and welcome back to the real world. The world our ancestors knew all too well.
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#51 – I’m betting as soon as desalination hits the big time, ecologists will claim it changes the temperature or density of sea water and is hurting the coral and disorienting the whales, etc. sigh
I’m gonna go have another bowl of shark fin soup.
# 3 User47:
“[…] First we would need to ensure they would actually pay taxes, something most immigrants legal-or-not aren’t used to doing. Secondly, chances are that unless they are educated they will be on sone sort of state aid program. Housing, food stamps, Medicaid, you get the picture. […]”
That is definitely NOT the impression I get. These folks didn’t come here to do nothing, they came for JOBS. Almost all of them are sending money back home (I dread finding myself in line behind someone wiring money out of the country — it takes several minutes just to fill out the paperwork — and it happens more and more often). I see them leaving for their jobs at 4:30, 5:00 A.M., the newest ones _walking_ to work, or waiting in the pre-dawn chill for their boss’s pickup, then graduating to bicycles (there are bike racks all over the apartment complex where I live) before finally saving enough to buy a motor vehicle. They’re not doing unofficial day-jobs, congregating at a corner — that doesn’t pay enough, it’s not regular enough. They have real jobs, with FICA and withholding. These guys are _definitely_ paying taxes.
Cursor..
you aint going to like what I say.
You are wrong.
1. make jobs so a single income family CAN survive.
2. WE how out number the other Animals on this planet. WE suck up OXY and give back NOTHING to this planet.. WE even POISON our corpse and they give NOTHING back to the soil(in the USA and EUROPE)
3. we have gone PAST the point where population control will HELP. There are to many idiots out there that WONT/CANT LISTEN.
4. the IDEA that CHURCH/RELIGION/BELIEF says to POPULATE the world until NO OTHER is around, ISNT GOING TO WORK.
5. Nationalize the CORPS, regulate wages.. CUT the OVER PROFITEERING..(check out Australia min wage its about $17 per hour, and prices on goods isnt that bad.)
6. KILL THE STOCK MARKET, except for the FARMERS(where it was supposed to be).
7. WAR. Plain old Killing off of the EXTRA people. we only need to get rid of 1/2 of CHINA.
8. Work?? and MORE people?? is against the MOTO of how a company can make money.. HOW can a company make money IF they have to EMPLOY MORE PEOPLE?? They get upset when you suggest FIRE 1 top wage earner and hire 20 min wage employees..
9. TOP money makers int he USA.. Advertising and Personal services. Look around and find those BIG companies that ARNT on the stock exchange.
So we keep growing the population to keep funding SS for those that retire? Sounds like an endless Ponzi scheme. When does it stop? There is a point where we no longer have the resources to continue growing the population to support the system. What should the population of the US be? 800 million? 1 billion?
While the simple numbers game looks good on paper, you have reality to deal with. For every new person added to this country it takes 12 acres of undeveloped land to be developed. Water in the near future will be a premium commodity in some parts of the US.
Population growth affects every aspect of our society. Energy costs, food costs, government costs, social service costs, medical costs, infrastructure costs all increase with population. More demand in most circumstances means prices will go up.
Want to fix SS? Increasing immigration is not the answer.
How about instead the government select a date say Jan 2014. On that date if you are collecting SS, are age 55 or older you will continue to get SS. Nothing will change for you. All other people in the work force at that time get a single payment (based on employment and wages)that is put into an interest paying savings account. Withholding’s continue, but go directly into the account. No one can touch those retirement accounts. Not congress or the account owner until age 60. The account is not taxed at all even when retirement begins. All new people entering the workforce also get a retirement account. Their balance starts at zero. This way government repays the money they have borrowed from SS, new workers are covered and the system supports itself. No unsustainable population growth.
The only way increased immigration will help is to let the immigrants pay into the system and then screw them out of the benefits later. Like they are trying to do to us boomers.
Reich and his liberal buddies are looking to increase the pool of voters (legal or not) that will elect democrats instead of conservatives. Simple as that.
Remember the main goal is to get reelected at all cost. Mostly it will cost those of us that work for our living.
Lets see 1 thing happen before ANYTHING ELSE..
Quick pointing to other nations about corruption, and CLEAN HOUSE FIRST.
Then lets see how much money we can save.
It fits our needs perfectly the advantage of immigration reform on the country: Greater supply of unskilled workers, a younger workforce, and skilled workers in needed sectors. But there is also a disadvantage of immigration reform like Greater poverty, more educational cost, lower unskilled wage levels, and increased danger of terrorism.