3 ms·
Social security's solvency depends on a continuous flow of immigrants to the US, which proves my point. Also, that is one aspect. There are multiple others whe
by RestlessMind 6y ago
Social security's solvency depends on a continuous flow of immigrants to the US, which proves my point. Also, that is one aspect. There are multiple others where US depends heavily on immigrant labor (eg. agriculture industry heavily dependent on illegal immigrants). You also need young workers for other functions of the society. If everyone decides not to have babies, then societies have a very precarious future.
- tom_mellior 6y ago> Social security's solvency depends on a continuous flow of immigrants to the US If social security depends on a continuous stream of new suckers who pay into the system, then by definition it is a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are inherently broken. Births and immigration can prop the system up for now, but the longer we do that the more painful the inevitable crash will be. (Painful for the new suckers, of course. Not "our" problem!) The only way to fix this is to move away from a system that assumes that exponential growth forever is possible on a finite Earth. If I founded a financial services company offering a retirement fund advertised as "pay in a little, get more out, and don't worry about how that can work as long as we can get new suckers to pay out those who came first", I would be in prison in no time. Rightly so. Let's not pretend that governments can make this work. I'm about as governments friendly as they come, but math says no.
- bobthepanda 6y agoI mean, this is why we’ve gone from defined benefit to defined contribution. The problem is that we kind of foisted retirement planning onto individuals without some prerequisite level of financial security, so now you have people working into their old age because their math didn’t work out in the end.