I'm all for raising taxes on the wealthy but demographic realities will require the developed world to make structural reforms (I'm not talking slashing services) to retirement programs in the next quarter century. The more countries restrict immigration, the sooner the bill will be due.
I'm all for raising taxes on the wealthy but demographic realities will require the developed world to make structural reforms (I'm not talking slashing services) to retirement programs in the next quarter century. The more countries restrict immigration, the sooner the bill will be due.
The double-edged sword there is that immigration accelerates Medicaid enrollment. Check out, once again, Springfield, Ohio, where the spike of Haitian migrants from Biden's backdoor guest-worker program was nearly directly proportional to the explosion of Medicaid enrollees in Clark County as taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for the cheap labor hired at the very jobs that were government-subsidized in the first place. Don't expect this to be an isolated incident, and it's the latest reminder to me that the credits and debits ledger as far as immigration and entitlements is concerned isn't as lopsided as we're led to believe, especially if immigration is weaponized to consolidate wealth for oligarchs as Biden assisted with in Springfield.
It's Medicare and exploding end of life costs for an aging population that are most sending the U.S. to a fiscal cliff, not Medicaid.
I'd be curious to know what in your view was an alternative pathway to growth that existed for Springfield absent immigration. I'm quite familiar with towns that have followed the trajectory of Springfield; their options are basically always a) Reinvent itself as a tourist hub (not always possible) b) Attract a bunch of immigrants.
Occasionally a new manufacturing facility is option 3, but that's often more luck than anything the town did to attract them (and pickings are slim).
Given that Medicare and Medicaid can't and won't survive without each other, I don't think we can dismiss the connection between low-wage employers dumping their employees onto Medicaid and the pending entitlement crisis.
The Springfield situation is Exhibit A of the risk for immigration done disastrously wrong. We've bequeathed their employers both the labor supply, through a work permit gimmick, and their compensation package by allowing them to dump said guest workers onto the Medicaid rolls. It's unsustainable both politically and financially, but I got no sense from Biden or the Democrats that they saw a problem with it.
I don't dispute your premise that more immigration will be needed to prop up both economic growth and entitlement financing, but we needed to foster a culture where the public's intuitive skepticism about immigration could be minimized to accomplish the needed political environment to pull that off. Instead, we spent three years pretending there was nothing we could do to stop 10 million people from crossing the border and then slipped in a backdoor guest-worker program to funnel refugees into manufacturing jobs that pay so low that their workers are all signing up for Medicaid.....even as American citizens are told Medicaid is approaching bankruptcy. It's hard to imagine a more perfect blueprint to destroy our chances at winning over the public on immigration.
I'm not claiming the Biden Admin's response to the record-migrant surges at the border was sound, just saying we have to acknowledge trade-offs in pursuing a more restrictive immigration policy to having to reform entitlement programs sooner (just like there are tradeoffs to a more open borders immigration policy both positive and negative).
The right wing is completely oblivious and/or refuses to acknowledge that reality, whereas the left usually just pivots to "we can soak the rich out of the problem" and with immigration, is struggling to grapple with the fact that strong pluralities if not outright majorities of Western electorates want to slow down immigration rates regardless.
I'm all for raising taxes on the wealthy but demographic realities will require the developed world to make structural reforms (I'm not talking slashing services) to retirement programs in the next quarter century. The more countries restrict immigration, the sooner the bill will be due.
The double-edged sword there is that immigration accelerates Medicaid enrollment. Check out, once again, Springfield, Ohio, where the spike of Haitian migrants from Biden's backdoor guest-worker program was nearly directly proportional to the explosion of Medicaid enrollees in Clark County as taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for the cheap labor hired at the very jobs that were government-subsidized in the first place. Don't expect this to be an isolated incident, and it's the latest reminder to me that the credits and debits ledger as far as immigration and entitlements is concerned isn't as lopsided as we're led to believe, especially if immigration is weaponized to consolidate wealth for oligarchs as Biden assisted with in Springfield.
It's Medicare and exploding end of life costs for an aging population that are most sending the U.S. to a fiscal cliff, not Medicaid.
I'd be curious to know what in your view was an alternative pathway to growth that existed for Springfield absent immigration. I'm quite familiar with towns that have followed the trajectory of Springfield; their options are basically always a) Reinvent itself as a tourist hub (not always possible) b) Attract a bunch of immigrants.
Occasionally a new manufacturing facility is option 3, but that's often more luck than anything the town did to attract them (and pickings are slim).
Given that Medicare and Medicaid can't and won't survive without each other, I don't think we can dismiss the connection between low-wage employers dumping their employees onto Medicaid and the pending entitlement crisis.
The Springfield situation is Exhibit A of the risk for immigration done disastrously wrong. We've bequeathed their employers both the labor supply, through a work permit gimmick, and their compensation package by allowing them to dump said guest workers onto the Medicaid rolls. It's unsustainable both politically and financially, but I got no sense from Biden or the Democrats that they saw a problem with it.
I don't dispute your premise that more immigration will be needed to prop up both economic growth and entitlement financing, but we needed to foster a culture where the public's intuitive skepticism about immigration could be minimized to accomplish the needed political environment to pull that off. Instead, we spent three years pretending there was nothing we could do to stop 10 million people from crossing the border and then slipped in a backdoor guest-worker program to funnel refugees into manufacturing jobs that pay so low that their workers are all signing up for Medicaid.....even as American citizens are told Medicaid is approaching bankruptcy. It's hard to imagine a more perfect blueprint to destroy our chances at winning over the public on immigration.
I'm not claiming the Biden Admin's response to the record-migrant surges at the border was sound, just saying we have to acknowledge trade-offs in pursuing a more restrictive immigration policy to having to reform entitlement programs sooner (just like there are tradeoffs to a more open borders immigration policy both positive and negative).
The right wing is completely oblivious and/or refuses to acknowledge that reality, whereas the left usually just pivots to "we can soak the rich out of the problem" and with immigration, is struggling to grapple with the fact that strong pluralities if not outright majorities of Western electorates want to slow down immigration rates regardless.