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.
I can’t think of a more fitting punishment for all of those elderly MAGA boomers who have alienated their entire families by being hateful and disgusting dying because of a lack of good elder care due to their hatred of immigrants.
I think it would be funnier to have them cared for by immigrants
I don’t want them being assholes to even more people.
The US will do anything except tax rich people
It’ll trickle down. Ronnie said it would.
“The United States needs 7 million immigrants to keep the blood of the capitalist machine running or else it’ll have to add taxes to the rich 😱”
You know the ones who, at the same time, want to pay people to “support boomers” a non-livable wage are many of the same ones who need the boomers’ vote to stay in power… Something tells me the solution to both problems is in there… 🤷🏼♂️
Or ya know, pay people more
Or eliminate the cap on the tax so they actually pay their fair share. That would fix all the problems that Social Security and Medicare have in an instant.
Removing the cap would go a long way, but it’s not enough by itself. We’ll still need more people, or a time machine with a fertility clinic in it. From what I can tell, boomers seem to be thinking we’re going to find that time machine somehow.
I’ve never seen any math that disproved that. Now if you’re looking at actual federal income tax paid, maybe, but social security tax is based on income, it doesn’t get reduced by often fraudulent deductions and credits. So a lot more income is taxable under social security tax than federal income tax which is laden with loopholes and complexities. So when Jeff Bezos in 2007 paid $0 in income tax, he likely would have paid tens or hundreds of millions in Social Security tax if there wasn’t a cap, because he did have income. Of course, we aren’t legally able to get the actual numbers because of privacy laws, but there have been some leaks recently if you want to see some of the numbers.
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2022/11/social-security-reform-options-to-raise-revenues
There’s a ton of right wing sites that would tell you eliminating the cap is a complete waste of time horrible for the economy, bringer of the end of days, etc.
Bezos, like many ultra wealthy, most likely paid himself some token amount in wages. Many CEO’s used to pay themselves $1, just to say they had an income. They have accountants that decide how much he should claim as wages, just to maximize the returns from Social Security, without paying into it any more than needed.
Why do they need immigrants? There are people here now who need jobs, they can do it.
If I hear “immigrants will accept lower wages” one more fucking time I’m going to lose it, that’s just an intentional creation of a lower class, it’s feudalistic and coercive. Same thing with farm labor. Pay a reasonable amount and local people will do it.
Because unemployment isn’t really that low. When we talk about “people here now who could use those jobs”, we’re usually talking about people in dead end jobs that could use a career job.
So great, pull them into our elder care system, give them a career level up…now their old jobs are still unfilled. And while we’re super shitty as a country towards entry level service workers, we also as a country really want those jobs to be filled. So we’d need to fill that gap in the employment pool somehow.
Maybe we shouldn’t have the idea of a dead end job in the first place. Almost all work should be valid and provide livable wages. There shouldn’t be a class of jobs “just for kids”. As if their time is less valuable anyways. This is a super late stage capitalist viewpoint.
It also gets corporations of the hook and uses immigrants as a scapegoat. The argument shouldn’t be “immigrants will accept lower wages,” it should be “companies should be paying higher wages.” Even for immigrants.
Yes exactly, thank you.
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).
Our whole capitalistic system is built around endless growth. That’s the reason population has to grow endlessly too.
Old age support programs? Ah, I thought that was just called “I had to quit my job 7 months ago to take care of my father.”
Am I crazy or does that not even sound like much? I’m not even sure if I’d notice 7 million immigrants coming into the country, at least if they were relatively spread out. The US is big and we already have lots of different types of people.
Tangential to the topic, these photos choices are wild. The out of focus grammy photo bomb, and what does tobacco farming have to do with the problem?
Good thing we have all those open borders with people flowing over constantly. /s
According to this 2022 YouGov poll, respondents over the age of 65:
- 31% want to provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
- 22% support increasing the number of legal immigrants vs 36% who want to decrease the number of legal immigrants. 42% either want no change or are not sure.
- 61% think that immigrants detained at the Mexico border are being treated humanely.
Overall, it looks like the plurality (42%) of Americans believe immigration has made the U.S. better. A minority (25%) of Americans believe immigration has made the US worse, and less than that (16%) believe it has not made much of a difference.
So for boomers specifically, it looks like around two-thirds are digging their own grave here.
Well, it’s extremely unfortunate then that the last half-century of zoning and building policies have put us two million homes in the hole. Where y’all plan on putting millions of surplus people, broken down RVs in the Walmart parking lot? (Except now it’s also illegal to be homeless in many places… It’s hard to pay into social security when you’ve been fired for your job after getting arrested for “loitering”!)
Okay okay, but no body will bring up the pose on the photo? WTF people! What are those fools doing? It’s like a hybrid between tobacco harvesting and processing and maybe some sort of naughty yoga thing for TikTok or the P hub? … Free use tabaco leave processing?..hey Pedro! I see you’re hard at work!.. Well you don’t mind if…
Anyway, I don’t know what the guys are supposed to be doing just by looking at the photo. It’s missing some sort of explanatory legend.
“We need 7 million migrants!”
“Sorry, best I can do is a border wall made out of shipping containers. Promises made, promises kept.”
This is where technology advancement need to be focused. I’m looking at smart home stuff right now so that I can automate as much of my house before I get old. Memory? We currently have AI transcription and context processing medallions, think of a decade of progress on that could get us to (please keep it opensource and the transcripts out of corporate hands). Walking? Well, lots of exo-skeletons out there. One might take off - I’m hopping for a balloon powered one. Dementia? Actual good use of context-aware genAI. Medications? Diabetics already have smart pumps, why not work on something like that for other medications?
I think once the babyboomers pass through the system, hopefully the next generations will finally begin to embrace technology and lessen the need for so many healthcare workers. I want LAN parties at my nursing home, not shuffleboard.
