Judging by his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, George Melloan does not understand what a Ponzi scheme is. In reference to the Social Security Trustees’ report he remarks:
Without working-age immigrants steadily expanding the American labor force, the trust funds would be going broke even faster than they are now. Yet Congress, under pressure from President Trump and other nativists in the Republican Party, is focused on curtailing rather than expanding the supply of immigrant labor.
More high-wage immigrants will increase the system’s liability somewhat while increasing its revenues quite a bit. More low-wage immigrants will increase the system’s liability by an amount much greater than the amount they will pay into the system. It’s like that old wisecrack about the guy who lost money on every sale but would make it up in volume.
The net effect of our policy of family reunification is to increase the number of low-wage immigrants. Far from healing the Social Security system, that will render its problems even less tractable.
The structural problem with the Social Security system is not that there aren’t enough people contributing to the system but that not enough income is subject to the tax. We’ve either got to raise median wages which is proving to be very difficult or we’ve got to raise the level of wages subject to the tax (FICA max) a lot. Or, as I’ve suggested, eliminate the trust funds altogether and pay SSRI out of the general fund. I believe that would by far be the easiest solution.
The picture on this post is, of course, from the shlock classic Mars Needs Women. I was inspired by the caption given to the op-ed: “Social Security System Needs Immigrants”.
Nah, people just need to go into STEM and retirement won’t be a problem.
Like this guy:
TL;DR I’m about to get evicted because I ran out of money and can’t seem to land a job. I’m also in a bit of a rush, so i apologize for any grammatical errors.
I have been a web developer / software engineer for 15 years (fullstack, 5 languages).
I am living in Colorado with my wife — I quit my job In Jan due to issues I had with the way our company was treating customer data. This turned out to be a foolish move as it has proven difficult to find a new job (I had something lined up when I quit, but it fell through).
I did land a contract between then and now, but in order to survive I had about 1.5 months to find a new job and that hasn’t happened.
I was 3 days late on my rent this month and now have to appear in court to explain why i haven’t paid. I fully expect that to lead to an eviction.
I’ve never had an issue finding a job prior to this so I’m quite frustrated with myself.
I don’t own a good laptop (i use a desktop) and have about $400 to survive on. I’ve tried upwork but can’t drum anything up quick enough / at all. I have multiple interviews lined up but I’m not hopeful at this point. I have things I can sell but I’m not sure how quick I can turn them around. My wife has a job but its only a couple days per week so not enough to survive on… she has another interview on monday but no clue how it will turn out of course. We own a car and are currently planning on a shelter (car is second plan).
The questions I have for HN are: what are my best options for survival? any pro tips on how to live on the streets and still land an engineering job?
Thanks in advance guyshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17316695
What we need is more LEGAL job-holding immigrants who pay into the system, not illegal immigrants who don’t or sponge off it. Illegals depress wages, and as a result Social Security witholding. Legals can do that too if they flood the market (witness software development), but they have a much better prospect of advancing up the income ladder than illegals.
As I noted under our “family reunification” priority scheme a single immigrant receiving a high wage may ultimately sponsor many low wage immigrants. All perfectly legal but, since Social Security is barely break even on average while Medicare spends more than it takes in, the ratio of high wage to low wage renders the system less solvent over time.
It would be interesting to run a simulation of the effect of the legalization of millions of illegals in the mid 1980s on the Social Security and Medicare systems. Many of those legalized in 1986 are collecting benefits now.
SSI needs a lot more money, and I do think there will be a VAT tax come crunch time.