“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
Source: Perotcharts.com
The above chart proves we cannot possibly grow our way out of this problem. On average, more than 10,000 baby boomers will become eligible for Social Security benefits each day for the next two decades. As they do, there will be fewer workers supporting a growing number of retirees. This eventually will place an unfair burden on younger workers, who will end up bearing the brunt of future taxes. A politically unpopular decision deferred today is a tax increase on future generations. The United States spends 16.5% of GDP on healthcare every year. This is far more than any country on earth. This amounts to $2.3 trillion per year. Even with this immense spending, there are 47 million Americans without health coverage. Canada, Australia, and Sweden only spend 9% of GDP and cover all of their citizens. The waste, fraud and bureaucracy of our system are out of control. Nationalization would be a disaster. Totally free markets favor only the rich. There is no easy answer. It will take compromise, sacrifice, and intelligence to solve this problem.
Immigration
As our country sinks deeper into this recession and more people lose their jobs, anger at illegal immigrants will continue to grow. This is not an unexpected reaction, as anger has to be directed somewhere. According to a Pew Institute report, there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, with almost 50% of the total in California, Texas and Florida. Approximately 57% of the illegal immigrants are from Mexico and another 24% from other Latin American countries. The cost to the American taxpayer is huge. Estimates of the annual cost are in the range of $300 billion per year. Some disturbing statistics include:
- $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.
- $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
- $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
- $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally.
- $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
- $3 Million Dollars a day is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
- 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
- $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for welfare social services by the American taxpayers.
Why are there 11 million illegal immigrants in the country? So the rich can have housekeepers and landscapers. So homebuilders have cheap labor to put roofs on their houses. So farming conglomerates can have someone to pick their crops. All of these people benefit from cheap illegal labor. The American taxpayer foots the bill for the social costs.
Source: Perotcharts.com
Now the really bad news. We need a large increase in immigration in order to have any chance at maintaining a decent standard of living in the future. The number of Americans over 65 years old will increase by 75% between 2010 and 2030. These 70 million people will all be collecting Social Security and sucking our system dry. There aren’t enough young people to replace them in the work force. With only 28% of Americans achieving a college degree, we need to undertake a concerted effort to bring in as many smart immigrants as possible and convince them to stay here after graduation. Our educational system is graduating too many Bluto Blutarskys and not enough Einsteins.
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