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.
He does have great point here and if you’ve heard him speak (like I have), the guy is brilliant and articulate.
Don’t expect him to be popular with the right because he probes on issues that the right likes to keep under the rug.
>> “who tilts a tad to the left”
First candidate for understatement of the year? 😉
I don’t buy that one bit. 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. I contend that any possible added value they would add to SSI & Medicare would be offset with additions to the already strained state run welfare state. Bogus argument, IMHO. Sorry for any typos, on iPhone
Nope. It will be the same, except with more people in it. Sure, at the beginning there will be an increase of money, but that will change in a few years. In the mean time, congress would have spent the “extra” money.
It only works if the immigrants pay taxes and contribute to social security. Illegal immigrants do neither.
Why not encourage (via tv ads) everyone to breed like rabbits?
Because the problem is that SS can’t work with the retirement age limits currently in place.
Increasing the number of people paying in doesn’t help, and only creates more problems when those new people also retire en masse, creating a large spike in SS payouts to those people in 30 years.
Increasing the retirement age is also unworkable. As we age, we are less valuable because our knowledge becomes increasingly out-of-date, our strength becomes weaker, and our flexibility to work with other people becomes more rigid.
My view is to try to enjoy today as much as possible. Take vacations. Enjoy the company of friends, family, and strangers. Expect to have to work almost every day of your adult life.
Everything user47 is completely valid, addition to all that, Europe has already tried this by imported million of workers from the middle east. Now they have substantial conflict of culture with radicalized Muslims demanding sharia law and killing newspaper cartoonists over any little perceived insult.
Also any workers who immigrate and pay into social security will themselves receive benefits later down the road. So we’re going to need tens of millions of newer workers a generation from now in order to payoff the millions of workers we’re about import in order to pay the workers retiring right now. This is why social security is rightfully compared to a pyramid scheme. You have to take from the new workers in order to pay the old ones and you need an infinitely expanding pool of new workers to prop up the system. Bernie Madoff had a system just like this and we locked him up for it.
Let them (legal immigrants) pay a double tax rate too.
Or, you could kill them before they reach retirement age. A French friend suggests that you only tax people when they reach 50 years of age – that ought to do it.
Agism is a significant problem. All of you who may say push retirement age to 70+, who is going to keep them on the payroll? They’re generally use more sick leave, are the highest paid, and can’t perform like they are thirty anymore. We often smile at the 80 year old guy curmudgeon that refuses to retire. How many of them can an organization afford? I’m over fifty, and will admit I have more health problems, and don’t think as sharp as I did twenty years ago. It’s the human condition.
Mr Reich may lean left but he talks about economics first and politics second, unlike most of the Democrats in power, who can’t complete full sentences without sounding like either idiots or long-winded jack-asses.
I suspect that a large part of the illegal immigrants here aren’t here to stay but to funnel money home, so immigration reform alone wouldn’t fix the problem. We need to create an environment that would encourage the best and the brightest to want to live here, and that would involve fixing the education system, stablizing the real estate market, building up our transport and communication infrastructure, and growing more blondes. With the economies in the East improving quickly (they had nowhere else to go but up, eh?), we need to take advantage of our strengths, not encumber them with things like the Patriot Act.
Oh, and we need to unseat more lawyers out of Washington. They’re slowing strangling us all.
In 2008 we had roughly 70 million people over 55. In 2020 they’ll all be eligible for social security (if alive). To return to that 5 to 1 worker to retiree ratio we need 120 million new workers in 10 years.
The solution to social security is to raise the age of eligibility. Life expectancy was roughly 60 when social security was initiated. Eligibility age should be indexed to average life expectancy.
The baby boomer entitlement generation messed this country and planet up for the rest of us. I for one don’t feel guilty they have to keep working.
Simple answer to the problem. Death panels.
Now we know just how politically ignorant Aunt Dave is when he describes Robert Reich as a “tad to the left.” It’s like saying Rush Limbaugh tilts just a tad to the right. And yet again, this blog jumps yet another shark. John Dvorak, you have failed with this blog but I have to thank you for giving me a daily laugh at just how moronic your blog posters are. I think you have gone from cranky to senile by not realizing how bad this site has become.
If we each were paid what we are worth, and not based on some union pay schedule or some relationship between “the boss” and his favored employees (of which I tend to be), then we would be encouraged to stay “in shape” mentally, physically, and in our interactions with other people.
Otherwise, if we age, and our value goes down, then we should be paid less, but if we can still work, we should work (lowered pay and all).
#15 Yes Pedro, I look forward to reading your blog on this topic instead of some pretentious former Secretary of Labor. Who does he think he is?
Speaking of illegal immigrants, are you paying taxes on income from hauling shit around with your mule?
Four words: Biggest Ponzi Scheme EVER.
It’ll happen whether you like it or not. Who is going to change the catheters on all those baby boomers?
While I like to hear reasoned arguments from both sides to fix society’s problems, this has to be the one of the worst. Maybe if illegal immigrants numbered in the hundreds of thousands and we could control an 1,000% increase in both legal and illegal immigration, then maybe, maybe a government policy could be written to have a positive long-term benefit. Unfortunately, the system is already broken and such a policy as Secretary Reich suggests would ‘capsize the island’.
#22 Eric
I find that offensive. I would personally prefer more redheads.
#5: “It only works if the immigrants pay taxes and contribute to social security. Illegal immigrants do neither.”
Illegal immigrants are almost always working for an employer that is a legal resident or citizen, but the illegal gets paid a lower wage under the table compared to legal immigrants or citizens. The employer may even be taking the equivalent of taxes and social security out of the illegal immigrant’s pay (because the illegal has no recourse), and pocketing that money. The illegals and the Feds both get screwed.
#20 FTW.
what about with the new people retire the ratio will be broken again.
Sorry, Uncle Dave, but more illegal aliens is not the answer. Politicians with financial intelligence and a backbone is the answer.
Use Google to search for a very informative analysis of out-of-control border control – just search for Gumball Immigration. The impact is devastating.
Wait a minute, I thought Bernie Madorf was in prison, and here he is pretending to be Reich?
How about just send old people to Mexico? Think of the savings.
moss said,
“The easiest way to solve the SSA “problem” is stop giving a free ride to anyone making over $80K/year.”
I am not sure what you are suggesting.
Are you to saying that the higher wage earners who put the most into the SS system should get the least out of it?
Or are you saying that the more creative, bright, successful people should be taxed at a higher rate than the rest of us because they worked harder and earned more money?
Neither way sounds very fair to me.
This problem now is the same it was 50 years ago and again 80 years ago.
The process for people to be LEGAL immigrants is too restrictive.
I would be willing to bet that over 80% of all of our immigrant ancestors would not have been able to be legal if they had to jump through the hoops people do now.
Want to end illegal immigration? Make it easier to be legal.
Cursor_
Cursor_ said,
“The process for people to be LEGAL immigrants is too restrictive.”
Every country on Earth has an absolute right to decide who can come into their country. It is our collective responsibility to try an verify that people who emigrate do not harm our country. In the same manner it is your responsibility to not invite someone to come live with your family who may harm them.
.
“I would be willing to bet that over 80% of all of our immigrant ancestors would not have been able to be legal if they had to jump through the hoops people do now.”
In retrospect, immigration control certainly would have been a good thing for the Native Americans. The indigenous people in North America did not fare well with the unlimited immigration of Europeans.
Here’s a thought:
end SS. Cut benefits. Raise the retirement age.
Oh yeah, and maybe quit fighting these two ridiculous wars and use the money to pay out the remaining benefits.
This is an insanely flawed and oversimplified view on population control and economics.
By the way the US is already using immigration control to keep the US population stable.