Posted on 03/29/2011 11:30:11 AM PDT by wagglebee
Rick Santorum the former Pennsylvania senator who is eying a bid for the Republican nomination for president, blamed part of the insolvency problems related to social security on abortion.
He says the system would be stronger if not for the 53 million abortions that have robbed the nation of potential workers who would be contributing to the program. Santorum’s comments came during an appearance at an event in New Hampshire, the site of one of the first primary election battles.
“The social security system, in my opinion, is a flawed design, period,” Santorum said in an interview with WEZS Radio in Laconia, New Hampshire.”But having said that, the design would work a lot better if we had stable demographic trends.” Santorum cited the “abortion culture” and said “we don’t have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion.”
The former senator and House member made the comments in response to a caller to the radio station who made the same point about abortion hurting Social Security and Medicare and the Catholic Republican said he was “absolutely right.”
“We have seven children, so we’re doing our part to fund the Social Security system,” Santourm added.
Leading pro-life advocates have made the argument for years that abortion has contributed to some of the instability of the Social Security stems. Steve Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute and a demographics expert made the point in an article in 2009.
“In 1940 there were 160 workers supporting each person on Social Security. By 2006 this number had fallen to 3.3 workers per pensioner,” he said. “By 2034, there will be only 2.1 workers for each person collecting a government retirement check.”
“When you look at the projections that show our population aging rapidly over the next few decades, when you see our economy and government programs such as Social Security risking bankruptcy, you can see that the United States’ annual 0.9% population growth rate is not enough,” he adds.
Dennis Howard, the president of the pro-life group Movement for a Better America, has researched the economic impact of abortion since 1995. He found in October 2008 that the abortions taking place in the United States have cost the American economy $35 trillion. That comes in the form of lost productivity by having fewer workers contributing to society.
Those contributions also come in the form of taxpayers contributing to state, federal and local governments that would have had more funds to pay teachers, offer health care benefits or put more police on the streets. The cost to the economy also includes the lost support for the social security system, which experts say still presents a host of challenges for the future and questions about whether younger Americans will receive anything from it.
“Aggressive population control has exacted a huge price in future economic growth that can never be recovered,” he told LifeNews.com.
Howard indicates the estimates are based on GDP per capita per year times the cumulative number of abortions since 1970. He said that is a more conservative approach than that used by government agencies, such as the EPA — which employs an “estimated statistical life” as a benchmark for its cost/benefit analyses for new regulations. A typical ESL averages about $7.8 million per human life and Howard says using that as a standard shows the cost for all abortions to date would be more than 11 times his estimate, or an excess of $390 trillion.
The concern is not just from the pro-life camp as a United Nations (UN) report found the global trend of fertility decline and population aging will have devastating economic and societal effects on the developing world. “World Population Ageing 2009” was published in December 2009 by the UN Population Division, a statistics research branch within the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).
Because fertility is decreasing in the developing world, there will be fewer and fewer workers to support aging citizens, the report found. The ratio of workers to older non-workers dropped from 12 to 9 between 1950 and 2009. By 2050, there will be only 4 workers supporting every retiree: “The reduction of potential support ratios has important implications for social security schemes, particularly for pay-as-you-go pension systems under which taxes on current workers pay the pensions of retirees.”
The effects of fertility decline and population aging will hit the developing world hardest, according to the report, because, “The pace of population ageing is faster in developing countries than in developed countries. Consequently, developing countries will have less time to adjust to the consequences of population ageing.” Furthermore, “ageing in developing countries is taking place at lower levels of socio-economic development than has been the case for developed countries.”
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Well, it’s mathematically correct. I just don’t think it’s a great argument against abortion; nor does it address the real problem of Social Security.
Birth control pill inventor laments demographic ‘catastrophe’
Vienna, Austria, Jan 11, 2009 / 02:10 am
The chemist who made a key discovery leading to the invention of the birth control pill has written a commentary calling demographic decline in Europe a “horror scenario” and a “catastrophe” brought on in part by the pill’s invention.
Mr. Carl Djerassi, now 85 years old, was one of three researchers whose formulation of the synthetic progestagen Norethisterone marked a key step in the creation of the first oral contraceptive pill, the Guardian reports.
In a personal commentary in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, Djerassi said his invention is partly to blame for demographic imbalance in Europe. On the continent, he argued, there is now “no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction.”
“This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete,” he wrote.
Djerassi described families who had decided against reproduction as “wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it.”
The fall in the birth rate, he claimed, was an “epidemic” far worse but less highlighted than obesity. In his view, young Austrians who fail to procreate are committing national suicide.
If it is not possible to reverse the demographic decline, an “intelligent immigration policy” will be necessary, Djerassi said.
According to the Guardian, Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schonborn told Austrian TV that Pope Paul VI had predicted the pill would cause a dramatic fall in the birth rate.
“Somebody above suspicion like Carl Djerassi ... is saying that each family has to produce three children to maintain population levels, but we’re far away from that,” the cardinal said.
No, he isn’t. Adding more workers to the pool of people looking for jobs would have increased unemployment even more than it is today.
Logic anyone?
It is not correct. What you would have is more people competing for jobs that currently don’t exist.
One branch of the nihilist Left pushes the idea of family planning and curtailing population growth. At the same time, another branch of the nihilist Left pushes womb-to-tomb benefits for a Socialized culture.
The resulting economic stress (not enough workers to produce the goods and services needed to keep the scheme going) results in calls to open the immigration floodgates, admitting quantities of second- and third-worlders that are so large as to change the demographic and political balance of the culture.
At this point Europe is further along in this progression than we are, but we're catching up fast.
It’s just common sense, but common sense is not particularly common these days, especially with the irreligious left.
Yup. That’s how a Ponzi scheme works.
It was working very well before a succession of Presidents exported jobs to the world and called it 'fair trade'.
didn’t think of that one. you’re right!
In the Liberal mindset, human lives may be worth no more than Social Security payees or recipients (drones to serve the State), or perhaps useful idiots to be used in union demonstrations/hooliganism. Santorum might have been trying to bring the discussion down to the Liberal level, but in doing, he’s taken himself down there as well.
Unemployment is another question in this scenario.
Mr. Santorum’s conjectures are based on the idea that the missing people would be solid, hard working citizens. I wonder how many of these aborted babies would have been born to poor, sickly, marginal people, and/or disfunctional families which could have ended up as welfare cases, special education kids, medicade recipients, juvenile delinquents, among the 20% plus unemployed among certain groups of the population, and ultimately in prison. With almost 9% unemployed now, how many more would have been unemployed. Does anyone have more information on this thought?
Nothing new, only been screamed about for twenty years now. Glad the idiot had an epiphany come lately.
I agree, but it sounds good, especially for a potential candidate.
Not really. What Santorum is doing is trying to say that more people eligible for the workforce would translate into more entitlement (welfare) money. He shows his ignorance of economics and the true nature of the nanny state.
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