But thanks for stopping by.
Posted on 04/12/2010 1:10:18 PM PDT by Lorianne
we boomers have a lot to be worried about because most of us plan to retire in a few years and Social Security and Medicare are on the way to going bust. I should know because I used to be a trustee of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Those of you who are younger than we early boomers have even more to be worried about because if those funds go bust they won’t be there when you’re ready to retire.
It’s already starting to happen. This year Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes. The tipping point came sooner than anyone expected because the recession has kicked so many people off payrolls. But it was coming anyway. And it adds new urgency to reforming Social Security — a task the president’s commission on the nation’s debt is focusing on.
So what’s the answer?
Fed Chair Ben Bernanke this week listed the choices. “To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits,” he said in a speech on Wednesday, “the nation must choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.”
Bernanke is almost certainly right about “some combination,” but he leaves out one other possible remedy that should be included in that combination: Immigration.
You see, the biggest reason Social Security is in trouble, and Medicare as well, is because America is aging so fast. It’s not just that so many boomers are retiring. It’s also that seniors are living longer. And families are having fewer children.
Add it all up and the number of people who are working relative to the number who are retired keeps shrinking.
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 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.
IT'S ALL ABOUT US
I would hope not. The case is exceedingly stupid. Replacing professionals paying 30%+ of their incomes into the system with unskilled manual laborers taking out of the system isn’t a solution that passes the math test. Europe has already tried it. It isn’t working.
Of course, immigration in a scale that would offset Social Security and Medicare shortfalls would lead to massive housing inflation and higher governmental costs to educate the kids of those immigrants, both of which would jack up property taxes well beyond the budget of most seniors, but don't let the details get in the way.
too bad we can’t go back and unabort all those kids that have been killed since Roe v Wade...I bet they’d be helpful as taxpayers to fund the Ponzi schemes known as Social Security and Medicare...
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Après Moi le Deluge!
It would just keep the Ponzi scheme going for another generation, at which point it would collapse even more devastatingly.
RRRRReichhhhh demonstrates once again that he’s just a moronic little troll.
exactly ... but as long as I get mine ... who cares?
Will never see a cent of the 125,000 that I have put in SS. The gov. will seize my IRA’s and 401K’s in the name of “Social Justice”. Thats what
Pelosi wants.
This is how boomers think... how can I scam people. Everyone is just here to benefit me.
Or keep AMERICANS WORKING ... duh
The rag has the word “Progressive” in it.
Move on. Nothing further to know or bother reading.
Robert Ryesssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh is full of crap. All 2 feet of him.
We need a slave class.
We need someone to pull the cart.
Isn’t this “racist”?
Probably not when libs argue it.
Will somebody tell the Lollipop Guild’s spokesman that if they consume more than they put in to the system, adding immigrants only makes the problem worse.
Why would they want to come here? All freedoms are lost and the government has everything like where they are at. Wages will be equal to there’s and this admin has turn out the shining light on the hill.
Why would they come - there are more freedoms and less taxes in russia.
Yeah it has worked real well in California. MexiFornia is so broke it is almost beyond comprehension.
“Will never see a cent of the 125,000 that I have put in SS. The gov. will seize my IRA’s and 401K’s in the name of “Social Justice”. Thats what Pelosi wants.”
- Oh but they will give you IOUs for your hard earned 401K. We see how well that worked in California.
Sounds racist to me ... but hey, as long as BOOMERS get theirs, the ends justify the means.
That would be under the best case scenario of carefully selecting immigrants who had the skills and earning power to pay more into the system than our current crop of moochers who will take out far more than they will ever pay in, probably from day one.
Those poor,poor Boomers.
They are over 30 and can’t be trusted anyway.
Reysssssssssshhhh is making the classic Alinskyesque move, to place into the discussion some handle to which fools may hang their unlit lantern when called to comprehend the evil before them. It’s kind of like having a tagline designed to be contradicted.
But thanks for stopping by.
Even if the immigrant thing did work, it's just postponing the inevitable.
Egg-zactly. That is sum total of their ‘logic’.
To hell with Reich and his boomers!!!!
Reich is a pathological liar, and a fool
what make Reich think that people will hire immigrants “on the books” and make employer contributions to the government on their behalf?
“Immigrant” labor boomed because it let unscrupulous employers avoid those pesky payroll taxes.
PS - whoever thought the rallying cry of the left would be “We need an underclass!!!”
Actually, they have been shaping the honest, tax-paying middle clss into the underclass for a long time. Make too much to get free stuff, make to little to negate the pain of paying for everyone else’s stuff.
Final destination to be sure ... but not before they destroy the USA.
California - the answer to any kind of effort is to get some 3rd worlder to actually do the work. This holds whether it is yard work or computer code.
This midget is delusional.
So, what Robert is saying is we need a fresh crop of field hands to pick the cotton?
Madness!
“Will never see a cent of the 125,000 that I have put in SS.”
i’ve already got both halves plus interest of everything that was put into my account!
I’ll be dead before it runs out!
I think that’s exactly what he is saying.
There do appear to be people taking Reich seriously in the matter. They're welcome to him as a spokesman. He isn't mine.
I can't help but resent that. Most people my age have known for years that SS would likely be bankrupt by the time we were eligible; certainly I have. I have always thought that inflation would make SS worthless if the checks were still being issued at all. I don't want anything to do with Medicare, though I will be
forced to sign up for it. The only government "Benefit" I do feel entitled to is my VA disability pension. After having my body broken and poisoned in SE Asia and going through forty years of constant pain, excuse me if I think my country owes me a little.
Even so, I would gladly forgo even that small stipend in exchange for true liberty.
What California spends on services for illegal immigrants could instead buy one million new robots, each and every year, and give them away free. And it would create high pay/high tax jobs for young Americans to build, program, and maintain them.
The Baby Boomers ushered in the AGE OF ABORTION. 50 million babies dead. The first wave of which would be turning 37 this year.
Hey, I’m in the ‘boomer’ generation too (tail end).
But the predomininat mentality of people in our generation is IT’S ALL ABOUT US.
It’s disgusting, but there it is.
Reich’s brain is a withered little glob, just like him.
I’d take quality over quantity. Give us some more top technical entrepreneurs from India!
Hey, why not? Worked for europe...
They also wire billions out of the country rather than growing our economy.
It’s all about immigration, huh? The same theory prevails in Europe and see what it got them — the death of their culture.
What good is immigration when immigrants are uneducated, have no intention to assimilate, hate this country and trying to establish their own law (sharia) or their own language.
As I see it — you can stick a fork in this country.
My father and my aunts and uncles got theirs. They are way above 75 and been collecting for over 20 years. They put in half of what I put in. 50% interest on the SS Ponzi scheme.
This whole collapse is primarily due to more than two decades of displacing American workers to lower and lower incomes, while importing foreign visa workers and illegals, while also offshoring more American jobs to China and India, during a time when 70% of economic activity was driven by consumer spending.
The USA cannot afford another single Ivy League Retard in any position of influence, from either political party.
I have to agree with you 100%. We tried to do something when we passed prop. 187 in California. What we wanted didn’t count and most of us against mass immigration don’t count 20 years later
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