Babies and Immigrants
The Left decries babies but welcomes immigrants.
The Right decries immigrants but welcomes babies.
Both are half-right.
And half-wrong.
The nature of our social safety nets... and our government's structure in general, are based on the presumption of a growing workforce.
Social Security was a pay-as-you-go scheme from its inception, reliant on workers to support retirees, and as people live longer and birth rates decline, the ratio of payers to payees shifts.
Medicare/Medicaid is a money loser for hospitals and health care providers (the government-run monopoly pretty much says “you will treat these patients, and you will take what we give you), and those providers rely on over-charging the private insurances of younger, working-age Americans to stay afloat. One of New York City's most storied hospitals is on the verge of economic failure because of this.
Consider this partial list of nations where the fertility rate is below the 2.1 per woman needed to maintain a population.
Now ponder what happens across the next couple decades, as the ratios of retirees to workers increases, as the burden of paying promised benefits lands on fewer and fewer income generators. In the US, in 1965, there were 4.0 workers per retiree, retirement age was 65, and average life expectancy was 70.5. Today, there are 2.8 workers per retiree, retirement age is 67, and average life expectancy is 79.1. That ratio is expected to drop to the low 2s by the end of this decade.
Examples exist all around the world of the perils of aging and/or declining populations brought forth by below-equilibrium fertility rates, and yes, it is a global problem.
There is no way around the pension trap that declining/aging population presents. Pay-as-you-go retirement systems are essentially Ponzi schemes, relying on a steady and growing supply of new money to fund obligations. Some nations have moved to, or are starting to move to, individual accounts, which are far more immune to raiding, over-promising, and manipulation, but any time a politician has even hinted at such a remedy for America's Social Security program, the sky-screams, caterwauls, and "Granny-Killer" epithets overwhelm. Even conservatives, who are purported to be more fiscally responsible than their counterparts, reflexively scream "hands off my money!" whenever reform is discussed. They ignore, of course, the fact that there is no money, that the Social Security "lock box" is a fiction stuffed full of IOUs. IOUs that the government can modify or cancel at any time, by the way.
Given all these reasons for supporting and encouraging population growth, why do both sides of the aisle reject half the remedy?
Over on the Left side of our political sandbox, Malthusians and other "save the planet from the human scourge" misanthropes denounce those who dare have more than two kids, how having fewer babies can help alleviate global warming, and how the nation's resources are misallocated by those who spawn large broods. Democrats tend to have fewer kids than Republicans. Meanwhile, they're either indifferent or in favor of the federal government's abandonment of control at the southern border, with nearly 5 million migrants entering the US since Biden took office.
Meanwhile, on the Right side of that same sandbox, babies are being made, but immigration is denounced and decried. Now, before y'all get your pitchforks of righteousness out, I do recognize the difference between legal and illegal immigration. To contextualize my oft-professed embrace for "open borders," my definition and the current working definition are substantially different. As I wrote many times across the years, a nation that does not control its borders is not a nation. I'm of the Charles Koch school:
I would let anybody in who will make the country better, and no one who will make it worse.
And, yes, I want the government to control the flow of people across the border (and, as a libertarian, do I really need to say I oppose fire-hosing taxpayer largesse upon immigrants? Or anyone else, for that matter?). The difference is that I want that (legal, documented, and able to work in the above-board economy) flow rate to be high, whereas in my travels, I've encountered too many conservatives who, push-comes-to-shove, want fewer immigrants, even those who enter through proper channels. Blah blah blah "stealing American jobs," blah blah blah "welfare hogs" (immigrants take less government dole on average than natives), blah blah blah "we don't like how the country is changing." The same 'shut the doors after I came in' nativism that played out against the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, and numerous other waves of immigration. If you're a conservative in favor, and I men genuinely in favor, of robust immigration, this isn't about you - but take a look around you and you'll find many who make the legal-illegal distinction, and then say "America is full enough.
No, she isn't, not by a long shot. America ranks 161st out of 213 nations in population density, productive workers, even those of lesser skill, enrich the nation, and we became a wealthier and better-off nation after every immigration wave than we were before it.
There's no difference between a productive native and a productive immigrant. Both create wealth and consume goods and services, and both contribute to the economy, the GDP, and societal prosperity.
There are a LOT of people who want to come to America to work, to have the opportunity to strive for success in a land with fewer restrictions on such striving (though we're making it harder and harder here as well - but that's for another day). Look around you and you'll see hard working immigrants, or the descendants of hard working immigrants. People who are as or more productive as Mayflower descendants and eighth-generation natives. People are people - judge them on their merits, not on accident of birth.
And, keep in mind that, if you want to see all that Social Security money you were promised, it's better to have a lot more people younger than you in the work force.
As a somewhat-aside, ponder the possible reasons for the Democrats' abandonment of Southern border security. If they really are all about humanitarianism, why are there such loud squawks from the blue states that the governors of Texas and Florida are sending handfuls of migrants into? Fifty migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard, with 17,000 permanent residents and another 180,000 summer invaders, average household income $133K, have triggered a declaration of a "humanitarian crisis," highly aspirational California governor Gavin Newsom demanding kidnapping charges filed against Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, the usual suspects dialing their outrage knobs to eleven in their denunciations, and Massachusetts' governor calling up the National Guard.
How does this "welcome immigrants in" attitude jibe with "we don't want them in our towns" exclusion? Or with the "sanctuary city" designations emplaced when previous Presidents of the wrong party wanted to deport the undocumented?
It doesn't.
It does, however, suggest that that the border abandonment is about something other than humanitarian concern. That so much of the influx is heading into Texas, a Red state that has a long tradition of skepticism toward Big Government and is a destination for many disgruntled right-of-center folks in blue states, suggests a more cynical conclusion.
Kinda screams it, actually.
A few possibilities come to mind.
One is that Biden and the Left appear to be driven by what the Right holds in priority and what Trump did as President. Reflexive negation and contrarianism explains many head-scratcher Democratic Party policies.
Another is that they want to overwhelm red states, as a means of discouraging those fleeing blue-state misery or as a Cloward-Piven-esque attempt to crash those states’ economies.
A third is that they want to eventually legalize all these illegals, presuming that their doing so will build a reliably blue voter bloc in red states. That’d be 11-16 million (yes, the "informed" estimates range that widely, and that's before we get to those fringe sources claiming it's more like 30M), expected to vote Team Blue and possibly tip a couple states, or Congress, or the Presidency. Deeply cynical, yes, but would anyone be surprised at this juncture? Will Biden attempt a pen-and-phone legitimization as he's trying with student loan forgiveness, and dare someone to stop him? It's an extraordinary supposition, but every day I have more reasons to support my cynicism. Only time will tell.
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Chapter 1 - A Catastrophic Failure
Chapter 2 - A Brief History
Chapter 3 - A Society Rooted in Individual Liberty
Chapter 4 - Use vs Abuse
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Peter.