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The Coming Collapse of the Welfare State: We're running out of people; not just money
FrontPage Mag ^ | 02/25/2014 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 02/25/2014 7:16:32 AM PST by SeekAndFind

In 1935, the year that FDR signed the Social Security Act into law, the birth rate was 18.7 per 1,000. In 1940, when the first monthly check was issued, it had gone up to 19.4. By 1954, when Disability had been added, the birth rate at the heart of the Baby Boom stood at 25.3.

In a nation of 163 million people, 4 million babies were being born each year.

By 1965, when Medicare was plugged in, the birth rate had fallen back to 19.4. For the first time in ten years fewer than 4 million babies had been born in a country of 195 million. Medicare had been added in the same year that saw the single biggest drop in birth rates since the Great Depression.

There could not have been a worse time for Medicare than the end of the Baby Boom.

Today in a nation of 317 million, 4.1 million babies are being born each year for a birth rate of 13.0 per 1,000. 40.7% of those births are to unmarried mothers so that it will be a long time, if ever, before they pay back into the system, and most will never put back in as much as they are taking out.

Liberals and libertarians both act as if the crisis facing us can be fixed if we take more from the “wealthy elderly” or give them less. The crisis is born of demographics. It can’t be fixed by targeting the elderly because they haven’t been the problem in some time.

It’s the same crisis being faced by countries as diverse as Russia and Japan. The difference is that Russia is autocratic and has little concern for its people while Japan shuns immigration and has a political system dominated by the elderly.

The United States however takes in a million immigrants a year. In his 2013 State of the Union address, Barack Obama praised Desiline Victor, a 102-year-old Haitian woman who moved to the United States at the age of 79 and never learned to speak English, but did spend hours waiting in line in Florida to vote for Obama.

Between 1990 and 2010, the number of immigrants over 65 doubled from 2.7 million to 5 million. Twenty-five percent of these senior immigrants were over 80. Elderly immigrants are also much more likely to become citizens, in part because the requirements for them are lower. Many, like Desiline Victor, don’t even have to learn English to be able to stand in line and vote.

15 percent of senior immigrants come from Mexico largely as a result of family unification programs. If amnesty for illegal aliens goes through, before long the country will be on the hook not just for twelve million illegal aliens, but also for their grandparents.

The welfare state has been spending more money with an unsustainable demographic imbalance. There are fewer working families supporting more elderly, immigrants and broken families. The Russians invest money into increasing the native birth rate. Instead we fund Planned Parenthood because liberal economic eugenics dictates that we should extract “full value” from working women as a tax base to subsidize the welfare state while discarding the next generation.

The “modern” system that we have adopted with its low birth rates, high social spending and retirement benefits is at odds with itself. We can have low birth rates, deficit spending or Social Security; but there is no possible way that we can have all three.

And yet we have all three.

In the European model that we have adopted, men and women are supposed to spend their twenties being educated and their thirties having two children. These Johns and Julias will work in some appropriately “modern” field building apps, designing environmentally sustainable cribs for the few children being born or teaching new immigrants to speak enough English to vote. Then they plan to retire on money that doesn’t actually exist because they are still paying off their student loans.

John and Julia began marriage with tens of thousands in debts, only one of them will work full time, while the other balances part time work, and they will do all this while being expected to support social services for new immigrants and a native working class displaced by the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, not to mention the elderly and the entire bureaucracy that has grown around them. If John and Julia are lucky, they will find work in a technology field that is still growing, or, more likely they will pry their way into the social services bureaucracy which will keep on paying them and cover their benefits until the national bankruptcy finally arrives.

In this post-work and post-poverty economy, those most likely to have children are also least likely to work or to be able to afford to have those children.

Birth rates for women on welfare are three times higher than for those who are not on welfare. Within a single year, the census survey found that unmarried women had twice as high a birth rate as married women. These demographics help perpetuate poverty and feed a welfare death spiral in which more money has to be spent on social services for a less productive tax base.

Children raised on welfare are far more likely to end up on welfare than the children of working families.

Fertility rates fall sharply above the $50,000 income line and with a graduate degree; that has ominous implications in a country whose socio-economic mobility rates continue to fall.

Progressive activists still talk as if we can afford any level of social service expenditures if we raise taxes on the rich, but workers can’t be created by raising taxes. Everything that the left has done, from breaking up the family to driving out manufacturing industries to promoting Third World immigration has made its own social welfare spending completely unsustainable.

By 2031, nearly a century after the Social Security Act, an estimated 75 million baby boomers will have retired. Aside from the demographic disparity in worker ages is a subtler disparity in worker productivity and independence as senior citizens are left chasing social spending dollars that are increasingly going to a younger population. ObamaCare with its Medicare Advantage cuts was a bellwether of the shift in health care spending from seniors to the welfare population.

Increasing welfare is only a form of Death Panel economic triage that doesn’t compensate for the lack of productive workers. It’s easy to model Obamerica as Detroit, a country with a huge indigent welfare population and a small wealthy tax base. The model doesn’t work in Detroit and it’s flailing in New York, California and every city and state where it’s been tried.

After a century of misery, the left still hasn’t learned that there is no substitute for the middle class. It’s not just running out of money, it’s running out of people.

The welfare state has no future. It is only a question of what terms it will implode on and what will happen to the social welfare political infrastructure when it does. The violence in Venezuela and the slow death of Detroit give us insights into the coming collapse of the welfare state.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: demographics; greenfield; idiocracy; welfarestate
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1 posted on 02/25/2014 7:16:32 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Libertarians don’t want the government to take anything from anyone for these purposes.


2 posted on 02/25/2014 7:19:10 AM PST by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Add to that, our government is allowing the dregs of other countries to come here illegally and hand them a monthly checks.


3 posted on 02/25/2014 7:20:33 AM PST by soycd
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To: SeekAndFind

I believe it was in 2009 when it was figured that if every person cashed out of everything they had this nation couldn’t come up with $900 billion. Most “assets” are stock based; meaning, they are worthless if everyone cashes out. the second largest holding is real-estate; again, worthless if everyone cashes out.

We simply do not have the personal cash on hand the liberals think the “rich white guys” have.


4 posted on 02/25/2014 7:23:36 AM PST by CodeToad (Keeping whites from talking about blacks is verbal segregation!)
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To: SeekAndFind

The Obamassiah Barack so loved the poor that he
labored mightily to create millions more of them.


5 posted on 02/25/2014 7:24:08 AM PST by Iron Munro (Eight died on that bridge at Concord, back in 1775. How many will it take this time?)
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To: SeekAndFind

We can’t just replace Americans with Mexicans. Soon the new mantra will be Family and kids, not Gays and Abortion. What happens when there is a big war and we need a 13 milllion man army—drafting women will not fill the ranks. You say there will never be a big war? To think that is to mock history. Wait till we face off with a real enemy and not a third world thug. What did Socrates say so long ago: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” We can spend all our money on welfare and vow to make war no more—but it will come or we will face domination by other lands and empires. The worst thing I see is we may well face civil war. I would never have said that ten years ago—but with Obama...


6 posted on 02/25/2014 7:25:22 AM PST by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll)
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To: FReepers

Click The Pic To Donate

Support FR, Donate Monthly If You Can

7 posted on 02/25/2014 7:29:41 AM PST by DJ MacWoW (The Fed Gov is not one ring to rule them all)
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To: SeekAndFind

Well, providing every woman with FREE Birth Control will certainly fix it! /sarc


8 posted on 02/25/2014 7:29:44 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SeekAndFind

The welfare state will never run out of money; they’ll simply print more, and pay today’s debts with increasingly worthless fiat money in the future.

Meanwhile, the American economy - fueled by hard-working and honest men and women - is slowly ruined by America’s corrupt politicians.


9 posted on 02/25/2014 7:36:44 AM PST by Jack Hammer
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To: SeekAndFind
Why is everyone worried/ Just bring in millions of immigrants to replace the missing babies. I wonder who is really running this country because they knew. BTW, this has been openly discussed in Europe as the problem and the solution.
10 posted on 02/25/2014 7:36:53 AM PST by I am Richard Brandon (center)
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To: SeekAndFind

An ever expanding population is only required if society relies on socialist pyramid schemes.


11 posted on 02/25/2014 7:38:03 AM PST by SampleMan (Feral Humans are the refuse of socialism.)
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To: SeekAndFind

People with half a brain and a desire to WORK, will always be OK.


12 posted on 02/25/2014 7:41:12 AM PST by SomeCallMeTim ( The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them!)
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To: SeekAndFind
Liberals and libertarians both act as if the crisis facing us can be fixed if we take more from the “wealthy elderly” or give them less.

No libertarian in their right mind would proposing simply stealing more taxes from "the wealthy."

13 posted on 02/25/2014 7:42:35 AM PST by PGR88
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To: Jack Hammer

Its all enabled by the Federal Reserve, debt monetization and political control of interest rates.

Get rid of the FED and 1000 problems solve themselves.


14 posted on 02/25/2014 7:43:42 AM PST by PGR88
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To: DJ MacWoW

THE OBAMA TROJAN HORSE TROOPS PARTY

The “Republicans” are really just Trojan Horse troops sent in by Obama.
They do as they are told to avoid Left Stream Media jeers.
John “The Doormat” Boehner has his paranoid fears:
Obama and the Left Stream Media Journalists will drive him to tears.

And then there is “Capitulation” Cantor,
With a soft Virginia Drawl,
Who wears patches on his knees
From his frequent Cave-In crawls.

Don’t forget “No Resistance” Ryan,
Appeasement is his long suit.
No wonder “Romneycare” Romney
Was such a big Ryan fan.

Obama’s Trojan Horse is now filled with House RINOs,
All promising that in 2014 they will ALL be silent.
The Republican’s RINO Rove, and “Wacko Birds” McCain,
Act as the Loyal Rear Guard for the Obama Trojan Horse.

What have we here? So say the skeptical.
Forward, ever FORWARD rolls the Obama Trojan Horse,
Crushing the Constitution, all Checks and Balances, and all who complain,
While the RINOs in Obama’s Trojan Horse stay always silent. and do not complain.

Did Obama capture the House RINOs inside his Trojan Horse?
Or did the Loyal RINOs stampede on to get there first?
The “What” and the “Why” are just idle chatter,
The RINO Five Years of failure, is what the to voter matters.

With only two plus years left to Impeach Obama,
Can the Trojan Horse House RINOs be trusted,
What the Constitution requires elected Stewards to do?
Or will re-elected House RINOs just continue the destructive Obama trauma?


15 posted on 02/25/2014 7:44:42 AM PST by Graewoulf (Democrats' Obamacare Socialist Health Insur. Tax violates U.S. Constitution AND Anti-Trust Law.)
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To: listenhillary

read later


16 posted on 02/25/2014 7:46:11 AM PST by listenhillary (Courts, law enforcement, roads and national defense should be the extent of government)
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To: SeekAndFind

“Liberals and libertarians both act as if the crisis facing us can be fixed if we take more from the “wealthy elderly” or give them less.”

That is not a libertarian position at all. There are libertarians who think it can be solved by opening the borders to one degree or another, but that is another argument, and they are wrong on it for other reasons. Taking stuff from other people is pretty much the opposite of libertarianism.


17 posted on 02/25/2014 7:48:31 AM PST by cdcdawg (Be seeing you...)
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To: PGR88

The Federal Reserve is a problem, but let’s not pretend it’s the only problem. The author identified several issues that need to be addressed.


18 posted on 02/25/2014 7:48:53 AM PST by volunbeer
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To: SeekAndFind
In 1935, the year that FDR signed the Social Security Act into law...

Let's see; it took the Soviet Socialist Union about 69 years to collapse.
2014 minus 1935 = 79.
Looks like we're about 10 years overdue.

19 posted on 02/25/2014 7:54:48 AM PST by Albion Wilde (The less a man knows, the more certain he is that he knows it all.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Note tagline.


20 posted on 02/25/2014 7:58:25 AM PST by Savage Beast (Hubris and denial overwhelm Western Civilization. Nemesis and tragedy always follow.)
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