Tag Archives: Demographics

News

Social Security running deficits now, will be bankrupt by 2037

Leave a comment
Last Republican budget was in 2006
Last Republican budget was in 2006

This is from CBS News. (H/T Robert Stacy McCain)

Excerpt:

Social Security’s finances are getting worse as the economy struggles to recover and millions of baby boomers stand at the brink of retirement.

New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.

This year alone, Social Security is projected to collect $45 billion less in payroll taxes than it pays out in retirement, disability and survivor benefits, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. That figure swells to $130 billion when a new one-year cut in payroll taxes is included, though Congress has promised to repay any lost revenue from the tax cut.

The massive retirement program has been feeling the effects of a struggling economy for several years. The program first went into deficit last year, but the CBO said at the time that Social Security would post surpluses for a few more years before permanently slipping into deficits in 2016.

The outlook, however, has grown bleaker as the nation struggles to recover from the worst economic crisis since Social Security was enacted during the Great Depression. In the short term, Social Security is suffering from a weak economy that has payroll taxes lagging and applications for benefits rising. In the long term, Social Security will be strained by the growing number of baby boomers retiring and applying for benefits.

The deficits add a sense of urgency to efforts to improve Social Security’s finances. For much of the past 30 years, Social Security has run big surpluses, which the government has borrowed to spend on other programs. Now that Social Security is running deficits, the federal government will have to find money elsewhere to help pay for retirement, disability and survivor benefits.

You may remember that George W. Bush tried to reform Social Security during his Presidency, but left-wing media and the Democrats cowed him into submission. Shut up, they explained. Just like they shut him up on his plan to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2003.

Here’s why nothing is going to be done to fix the problem. (H/T Hyscience)

It’s not going to be fixed until we vote out every last Democrat and replace them with grown-ups from the grown-up party.

Commentary

What can we learn from Europe about big government?

2 Comments

From Ace of Spades. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

We see our future playing out in England and France right now. Only our upheavals are going to be much larger and more violent than theirs. Our population is larger, more diverse, and more polarized; our politics more fraught; our debts and obligations massively larger. Our passions are harder to rouse, but once aflame, take a long time to burn out.

As in France, we have let an enormous segment of our population — perhaps as much as half — fall into a state where they depend on government largesse for a substantial part of their income. This is not money they earned themselves, not wages or savings, but rather money squeezed from the more productive half of the country. Half of our citizens pay no income taxes at all. An increasing number will draw public-sector pensions, Social Security, and medical insurance (Medicare/Medicaid) in amounts that far exceed what they contributed to those plans. Half of the US population, in short, lives not by the fruits of their own toil but by the (coerced) charity of others, as filtered and distilled through the hand of the government. This can not — it can not, by the laws of economics and simple physics — continue. The mathematics of the problem trump even philosophical issues of fairness, of governance, of ethics or law. The mathematics simply will not allow it.

Consider the French. They are rioting over a proposal to raise the national age of retirement from 60 to 62. Germany’s is 65 (going to 67) — how happy will German workers be to subsidize the early retirements of their French neighbors? The French labor unions are on a rampage, denouncing the move as a violation of a “promise” the country made to the workers. (If this reminds you of California, New Jersey, New York, and Michigan — well, the situations are closely analogous.) The word “promise” is illuminating: people have stopped thinking of social welfare as a “benefit” or a “perquisite”, and have begun instead to think of it as a “right” or a “promise”. A legally-binding promise which cannot be broken, though the heavens fall. Well, the heavens are falling, and the sovereigns will discover a universal truth: a government “promise” is not a suicide pact. Reality will assert itself, one way or another.

Governments the world over are discovering that the river of money is not endless. That seemingly-inexhaustable mountain of wealth has been turned into an ocean of debt that will take decades to pay off. The spendthrift habits of the Western nations will put burdens on our children, and other generations not yet born, that should outrage us as a people. We are investing in the old rather than the young, and are punishing risk-taking and entrepreneurship rather than rewarding it. Our tax regimes seem to be deliberately crafted to kill innovation and long-term thinking. (What does “legacy” mean if the wealth I have accumulated in my life cannot be passed on to my children or heirs, but is instead eaten by the all-consuming government?) Young people — young families — are the foundation upon which Western Civilization is built. Neglect them, overburden them, cheat them, and you are committing societal suicide.

This is what the House Republicans have to stop Obama from doing. This is what is at stake.

Commentary

Barbara Kay explains the coming demographic crisis

9 Comments

Here’s Barbara Kay explaining the relationship between feminism and the coming demographic crisis. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

The causes for the coming demographic crisis are not in dispute: improved longevity, urbanization and rising female education. The United States’ total fertility rate is relatively high at 2.06, but when you break it down, the American women with the highest fertility rates are those who have no post-secondary education. The rule is unvarying: The more educated the woman, the fewer her offspring.

If any. Voluntarily childless couples (oops, make that “child-free” couples), once uncomplaining outliers from the matrimonial mainstream, now confidently assert the superior moral standing of environmentally-friendly “hedonic” marriage, in which shared interests and pleasures rather than children form the relationship glue. Some exhibit overt disgust at “breeders” and “moomies” (nursing mothers).

These righteous depopulators are indifferent to the big picture. An article entitled “The Old World” in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine paints a grim demographic portrait of the developed and developing world’s future. By 2018 65-year-olds will outnumber those under five, “a historic first,” and by 2050 the median age–now 28–will be over 40.

Autocratic governments can make people have fewer children, but they can’t make people have more. Singapore tried. While modernizing in the 1960s after gaining independence from the British, Singapore’s newly minted Family Planning and Population Board launched a billboard campaign, messaging “Stop at Two” and “Small Families Brighter Future.” Abortion and sterilization were encouraged at the government’s expense. Maternity leave was denied after two children.

It worked. Singapore reached its fertility rate target of 2.1 in 1976, a 53% plunge over a decade. But it didn’t stop declining, as women’s education rates went up. A reverse strategy was implemented. Abortion wasn’t banned, but pre-op counselling is now required for women with three or fewer children. The billboard and media messaging was changed to “Have Three or More Children if you Can.” But no dice. Singapore’s fertility rate in 1960 was 5.45. Today it is 1.1.

I would like my wife to have advanced degrees to be able to write and speak so she can protect the family by advocating for good policies that will enable us to have autonomy from the government and taxes and politically correct fascism. I think getting an education is an excellent thing for a woman. And she can complete her education by the time she is 25. It’s having a job outside the home when there are young children that is problematic for me. A writing career is an excellent option since research and writing can be done from the home.

The real concern I have about this is children having a lower standard of living than we do. Because of these massive government pension programs (Social Security in the USA, Old Age Security in Canada), children will taxed at very high rates. Either these entitlement programs have to go, or children will be poor. These redistribution schemes cause people to depend too much on the government and not to plan ahead for their own needs (retirement, health care, etc.). It’s immature to expect other people’s children to pay for your health care and retirement. You have to pay – you have to earn and save your money to pay for what you need.

I was reading recently about how George W. Bush, a fine President and a good man, thought that his greatest success was keeping us safe (true) and his worst failure was the failure to privatize Social Security (also true).  It’s the Democrats who are telling us that Social Security doesn’t need reform, just like the Democrats told us that Fannie and Freddie did not need to be regulated and reformed. Until we get serious about keeping them out of power, it’s not really safe to marry and have children.

UPDATE: Alisha found this story about a woman who focused on her career and his now marrying HERSELF.