Huh? Yep, they will not admit it, but we must have a steady influx of immigrants or else the great Social Security Ponzi scheme will be exposed. What, you ask, does birth control and immigration have to do with Social Security?
See, when Roosevelt designed Social Security it was designed to supplement, not replace, pensions and savings. At first it limited eligibility. Second, people only lived to be about 65, so most people did not collect Social Security funds for long. But since the program paid a certain amount each month regardless of how much you paid in, it did not take long to see that it took more people paying than collecting. Soon everyone was forced to contribute. Then came the war. We won the Big One and everyone was so happy to be alive they came home got married and reproduced like rabbits. The baby boom generationwas born. This was great for Social Security. There was a ton of money pouring in from worker's wages. Only a fraction was paying out. It was like a lottery. So the government increased benefits, started paying widows and orphans. They sent checks to people who could not work. There was still cash left over, so the Feds just started "borrowing" a few million here, a few million there. Then they wrote IOUs for a few billion to fund a war in SE Asia and to pay for LBJ's Great Society. It was OK, all those baby boomers were working and paying their Social Security taxes.
Those "we are all gonna die" because of overpopulation crowd went into hysterics (they layer decided the crisis of the day was
Some smart guy looked at the state of things and did some math. "Holy Shit", he exclaimed. " By the early 2000s there will be way more people collecting Social Security than ate paying in. We are going to run out of money". You see, in those days economists and politicians thought it was a very, very, bad idea to just print more money to pay the government's bills.
"We need more people" said the politicians. They also concluded, with the help of business lobbyists, that if those new people would work cheap it would be a very good thing. Who had extra people that could send us some. Easily? Not Europe, they wiped out two generations in the twentieth century.Teddy "swimmer" Kennedy was listening to his family pal Frank Sinatra croon one day and heard the magic lyrics "South of the border, down Mexico way" and ta da, he pushed for new immigration laws that brought in our neighbors from Central and South America to be the new bodies to work and pay those pesky Social Security taxes.
Not enough came north legally, so we encouraged them to come illegally, planning to bestow legality later. Reagan played along. Now we need to do it again. Either we make babies faster than old people die or we bring in workers. That is the choice or the whole Social Security pyramid collapses. That is the choice and not a single politician wants you to know the truth. Because the administration that lets asocial Security fall apart will never hold office again. The political lesson of the Great Depression was not lost on either party. The Republicans were blamed for 40 years for the Wall Street collapse just because Hoover was a Republican and was President.
That is why sooner or later Congress will pass an amnesty bill.
Yep pretty much, and if a few thousand old Americans get dead because of the immigration free for all, it's good for the economy.
ReplyDeleteJames Old Guy