The country’s aging population and low fertility rate jeopardizes the solvency of Social Security and the Medicare program, according to a new study by Brookings
The immigration crisis has become a recurring theme in social gatherings and political debates, and is the main issue of the U.S. presidential election. Amid this discussion, one certainty stands out: while it’s well known that migrants have a need to live in the United States, a study has highlighted that the country needs them too.
Twenty percent of U.S. workers were not born in the United States, and it is expected that in the near future more than seven million more migrants will be needed for the labor market. That’s according to a study by Brookings, which warns about how the higher-than-expected increase in pensioners following the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the U.S. economy.
As the baby boomer generation approaches age 80, two challenges are facing the U.S. economy: providing staff to care for the elderly and ensuring the solvency of Social Security and the Medicare program.
Increasing social security taxes would be very unpopular, increasing the age for retirement would be very unpopular. There’s no way to reduce the amount of money social security costs without pissing a lot of people off.
The obvious solution to the problem is to make more citizens out of people who want to work here and benefit from everything our taxes pay for. Even aside from how much they would be paid (which should be a fair honest wage) the taxes off the top would go up faster than social security costs as long as people kept coming in and costs stayed stagnant
How about a wealth tax for people with over $10 million dollars of assets
How about tripling the size of the IRS (or more) so that the government actually gets what it’s supposed to
How about cutting foreign defense spending
How about increasing the corporate tax rate even just a little bit
Or only paying social security to people who need it
Or getting rid of insanely wasteful farm subsidies
But yes, I think we actually agree, that people who come here need to be paid a fair wage. That was really my point. When people talk about immigration to fix labor shortages, they almost always mean minimum wage or thereabouts (or even lower like for farm workers).
But, but, that would be … ˢᵒᶜⁱᵃˡⁱˢᵐ
GASP
We could, but remember that a lot of that defense spending are people in the US’ job. About 2M would be on the block for chopping.
I mean don’t stop there. Especially at just that point. Relax the restrictions for crop insurance. Reduce the barriers between farmers and grocers. Literally break up the giant grocery stores. Kroger’s is a fucking bitch ass. One of the reasons we have to pay massive subsidies is because there’s distinctly a lack of a free market in the farming and grocery business.
And while we’re at it. Tell John Deere to fuck off.
No that’s why I clarified foreign spending instead of domestic