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The Death of the American Welfare State
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 319 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 meaning that it will be a long time, if ever, before those single families put back into the system, and most will never put back in as much as they are taking out. Those children will cost more to educate, be more likely to be involved in crime and less likely to succeed economically. But even if they weren't, the system would still be unsustainable. Because it is, basically, a pyramid scheme ...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. Bernie Sanders admires Europe. But Europe's welfare state is imploding because of low birth rates. And so it adopted the American solution of expecting immigrants to make up the difference. But the immigrants have high rates of unemployment and low rates of productivity. Instead of funding the welfare state, they're bankrupting it even faster. ...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. Academia & NGOs are a form of welfare, nowadays 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. Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-10-31 |
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