How will the economy pay for Baby Boomer retirement without more workers? (naturalization, born)
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18 of the 24 states JP Morgan handles have been contracted to pay the bank up to $560,492,596.02 since 2004. Since 2007, Florida has been contracted to pay JP Morgan $90,351,202.22. Pennsylvania’s seven-year contract totaled $112,541,823.27. New York’s seven-year contract totaled $126,394,917.
These contracts are transactional contracts, meaning they are amendable based on changes in program participation. Each month, the three companies that administer EBT receive a small fee that can range from $.31 to $2.30 (or higher depending upon the number of welfare services on an EBT card and state contractual requirements) for each SNAP recipient.
So the more people that are out of work and that need to turn to the government for food, the bigger profits that JP Morgan makes.
the suckers aren't the people who want to fix this.
Surely saving enough to keep yourself off public assistance when you're old is in the country's interest, but how does saving for retirement beyond that level benefit the country more than pouring that extra amount into the economy?
with no disrespect intended (it was an intelligent question), it sounds like wimpie, "give me the burger today and I will pay for it tomorrow". That isn't a strategy that would or could work for a country.
I don't see how you got that from what I wrote. :shrug:
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Originally Posted by floridasandy
what I am saying is that if there are more start up businesses, run by american citizens/legal immigrants, more demand can be created.
Isn't that "pouring that extra amount into the economy"? There is a substantive difference between investing in wealth accumulation and starting new businesses.
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Originally Posted by floridasandy
we need tariffs on foreign goods to price american goods competitively and to "steer" americans to their own products.
Perhaps, but whatever we do there needs to be fair: We're the superpower. We cannot engage in exploitation of others, as they have been exploiting us. So tariff parity is a decent idea, but protectionism isn't.
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Originally Posted by floridasandy
we need energy independence
We can start by directing all energy subsidies exclusively to creating new energy technologies that don't rely on scarce resources, which are in abundance mostly somewhere else.
I liken this proposal to constantly patching a leak instead of fixing it properly the first time. Say like you have a roof with a ton of leaks. You could throw a bunch of shingles on top of it and that might stop the leak temporarily, but it will leak again. So what do you do? More shingles. And more. And more. Eventually the weight of all of these patches will cause your roof to completely fail and water will come pouring in.
What you should have done was tear the roof off and fix it right the first time. It would have been more painful at first but would have saved you time and money in the long run.
With millions of Americans unemployed/underemployed, it is a slap in the face to the rest of us to bring in a bunch of immigrants to do jobs that these unemployed Americans could do today, or could do within 12-24 months with some on-the-job training. Most jobs do not require a four-year degree...even cushy high-salary I.T. jobs like mine.
The government needs to pull its finger out of its rear end and take care of AMERICANS before bringing in a bunch of minimally-to-moderately skilled foreigners to do jobs that Americans CAN do, and that they WANT to do. I work with a bunch of these 'highly skilled' H1-B visa holders from India and China and believe me...they aren't that skilled.
I agree with this. I'm willing to pay taxes to fund job retraining for our displaced or unemployed Americans for two-year technical degrees or trade school rather than import foreign workers. To me that is money well-spent.
Don't be silly or disengenuous in your remarks. There is no shortage of jobs which American workers would take if given the chance. Illegal immigrants are working in the USA, millions upon millions of them. They're not sitting around doing nothing. Harshly punnish the enablers ... the employers who are breaking the law by hiring illegal aliens ... and we'll find out just how many Americans want to do the work the illegals are doing. Dry-up the source of income and security for the illegals and they'll mostly return home. That's the quickest "fix" for a huge portion of the illegal alien problem.
Illegal immigration creates a shortage of jobs for Americans and don't call me silly. Add outsourcing to that and that also creates a shortage of jobs for Americans. Are you claiming that illegals are only doing jobs Americans won't do?
Who in here that is opposed to illegal immigration has said we shouldn't go after the employers and that they shouldn't be punished and that we shouldn't remove all of the incentives for illegals to remain here or to continue to come here? The advocates of illegals are the ones most opposed to e-verify, removing any benefits they may receive including ending birthright citizenship. I thought you were one of the ones opposed to self-deportations or said it woudn't work. Have you changed your position now?
Illegal immigration creates a shortage of jobs for Americans and don't call me silly. Add outsourcing to that and that also creates a shortage of jobs for Americans. Are claiming that illegals are only doing jobs Americans won't do?
You don't know how the jobs market works. Plain and simple. I'm still waiting for you to produce an academic economic study that shows that immigration causes unemployment in the long term.
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Who in here that is opposed to illegal immigration has said we shouldn't go after the employers and that they shouldn't be punished and that we shouldn't remove all of the incentives for them to remain here or to continue do come here? The advocates of illegals are the ones most oppose to e-verify, removing any benefits they may receive including ending birthright citizenship. I thought you were one of the ones opposed to self-deportations or said it woudn't work. Have you changed your position now?
We all agree on E-Verify, but we aren't gonna pass it on its own without fixing the mess we are in with the 11 million, and no mass deportations or attacking by attrition are not practical or humane solutions. You're not gonna get something for nothing.
As for birthright citizenship, that's a Constitutional issue, and amending the Constitution requires ridiculously high level of support. There have been 10,000 proposed Constitutional amendments, but only two dozen passed the legislative hurdle. For practical purposes, that just can't be part of legislative immigration reform. Constitutional reform is another thing entirely and there isn't enough political will to even go there.
The really sad thing about this all is that the same question was asked in the early 1980's. And the problem was actually solved:
The 1983 changes to Social Security both raised SS taxes substantially, and raised the retirement age to 67 for those of us born after 1960. It resulted in the creation of the "Social Security Trust Fund" that was to be invested to pay all the additional money needed. A total of $2.7 trillion already paid by workers, over and above what was needed to pay current retirees--which some people think is actually sitting in the SS Trust Fund, available to be sold when needed.
Unfortunately, our federal government CANNOT be trusted, and they proved it by spending the extra money going into the SS Trust Fund as fast as they collected it. Politicians did NOT put the money in a bank, or even buy T-bills or Treasury bonds with the money as an investor might--these have actual value and can be later sold. Instead, they spent the money on other things, and replaced it with worthless IOUs that they call "securities" simply to confuse people. Most securities have value and can be sold. The "securities" in the SS Trust Fund are "special" securities that can't be sold, because there was no money invested in the first place.
Even official government publications clearly admit this fact; the information is there for the asking:
"These [Trust Fund] balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other Trust Fund expenditures – but only in a bookkeeping sense.... They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures." --Office of Management and Budget, FY 2000 Budget, Analytical Perspectives, p. 337
So, people, it's time to smarten up and STOP allowing Big Government to confiscate your income in the hopes that it will someday "take care of you." Now that huge numbers of Americans (like me) have lost 12.3% of every dollar they ever earned to this scam, and given the early generation of retirees back far more than they put in, there is simply no way that the very few, low-paid workers of the future can afford to support us.
We were forced to gamble on trusting Big Government with our retirement savings, and we got robbed of a large portion of our earnings that could have been saved and invested and supported us in very high style in retirement. Not only that, but we would have had the entire principle sitting in a bank/investment account to either live like a millionaire, or leave a fortune to our children and grandchildren. We GAVE Big Government the entire pot of our retirement money, for THEM to spend instead of us.
And to add insult to injury, we don't even have a legal right to the minimal returns currently promised to us. We gave away the principle entirely, and don't even have a right to expect the small 4% return currently promised!
And STILL today we have liberals arguing that Big Government is the "answer" instead of the problem.
Looking at retirement trends and using social security as a trend indicator
As you can see while there has been a negligible increase in the number of non-farm employees - social security "contributions" have decreased sharply by almost $70 billion from its peak.
What exactly can we do to remedy this? At this point retirement of this generation is going to tax the entire economy.
I don´t think illegal immigration is the answer, but we need more economic input. More skilled workers is a definite way to do that.
Australia has decided to remedy this with immigration. They now have 25% foreign born population. They also did not have economic collapse and still enjoy a stable economy.
Right now it is very difficult even for the most educated foreigners to become residents. Many foreign students receive technical or medical degrees and are then forced to leave due to their visa type.
So the question is, how do we transition to this legal immigration mode that suits the economy with the needed high number of skilled workers?
Well we need to advertise that if they cross the river at night they can still get high paying white collar jobs. Maybe we can attract 11-20 million EDUCATED illegals ?
No, what we need is job creation and for illegals to go home. We currently have 23 million Americans out of work. I wouldn't call that a labor shortage.
If we keep increasing our population growth to support the baby boomers we are just perpetuating a new baby boomer generation in the future. At some point we need to stabilize our population growth not keep increasing it. It also puts less stress on our social infrastructures and our natural resources.
We already have a "new baby boomer" generation. They're called Millenials.
Those illegal aliens STILL need to leave the US and go back home. Sheesh!
Only 40% of those here illegally entered legally and overstayed their visas. The other 60% entered illegally. Most are border jumpers.
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