Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

[toad]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

6) Terminate ALL immigration into this country, regardless of where they are coming from or why they are coming. If they don't like their home country it is up to them to change it, not us.
Expel everyone who is not a citizen

With all due respect, but you completely lost it there.

Edit:
Or is this some kind of joke I'm not getting.

[skunk]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

Since Pres. Reagan's administration "fixed" the Social Security program, every single administration has chosen to spend the payroll taxes instead of investing them. So you can argue that for the last 30 years, every single person has paid 15% less taxes than they needed to. Within the next couple of years, the claims on Social Security by the retired will exceed the payments by the working. As Bush II famously put it "There is no Social Security lockbox, just a dusty filing cabinet filled with IOUs".

...
6) Terminate ALL immigration into this country, regardless of where they are coming from or why they are coming. If they don't like their home country it is up to them to change it, not us.
Expel everyone who is not a citizen
...

The only hope that you and your children have of ever seeing any of your Social Security / Medicare promises requires a massive INCREASE in immigration. Open the doors and invite everybody in. And stop spending the payroll taxes instead of investing them.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

6) Terminate ALL immigration into this country, regardless of where they are coming from or why they are coming. If they don't like their home country it is up to them to change it, not us.
Expel everyone who is not a citizen

With all due respect, but you completely lost it there.

Edit:
Or is this some kind of joke I'm not getting.

No joke. A presentation of the problem is given here: http://www.numbersusa.com/content/re...rs-charts.html or, a more BLUNT version is given here

I know what you are thinking: is he a racist, Xenophobe, and bigot? Hardly. Pigeon holing views is often used to avoid looking seriously at the issues involved. While a teenager I read "Brave New World" by Aldus Huxley. He wrote "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." That's even more true today.

Legal immigration in 2010 was 1,042,625 and it averaged over a million per year for the last 10 years.

Illegal immigration in 2010 is more difficult to measure because the numbers are being gamed by both sides, and the general population's ignorance of the effects of exponential growth limits intelligent discussion at the grass roots level, but hand waving with platitudes aren't going to make the problem go away or be less worse than it already is. That said, the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center reported that the

undocumented immigrants accounted for 5.2 percent of the American labor force in 2010, while the national unemployment rate exceeded 9 percent all year.

Pew also reports that illegal immigrants reached 8 million by 2000 and was growing at an annual rate of about 500,000, but put the total at 11.2 million as of November of 2010. . Those 8-11 million had 3 million children born in the US, giving a low end total of about 14-16 million. High end totals approach 28 million. The DHS puts the growth at 700,000 annually. SIX years ago Bear Stearns estimated the illegal immigrant population to be 20 Million and growing at 700K to 800K per year, a growth rate which agrees with Pew. So, you can see that the figures jump around wildly, primarily because they are undocumented, and thus easily gamed.

To understand that our government is lying about the problem all you have to do is note the dramatic population explosions of Hispanics in towns along the I80 interstate hiway, and in towns which have meat packing, agriculture and construction work. Workers are picked up at shifting locations, transported to work, paid at the end of the day in cash, and given a ride back to various parts of town. ICE raids are usually accompanied by advance warnings and undocumented workers stay away that day, or leave for the hour or two the ICE agents are there. In some rural towns illegals outnumber legals 2 or 3 to 1. Of the 16 TV stations which transmit broadcasts over the air in my town 5 are Spanish language 24/7, and this is just the Eastern 1/3rd of Nebraska. I often watch the news on Alarma or Azteca to see how it differs from English language news broadcast. That those Spanish TV stations have a market is obvious. Approximately 1 out of 4 or 5 people I see while shopping at China Inc, or in fast food stores, gasoline stations, etc..., are Hispanic. Of the four Hispanic families that live within two houses of my house, only one was born here and he is frequently asked to supervise gangs of illegals because he speaks Spanish, but he says he refuses because he doesn't want to be part of the illegal activity.

The only hope that you and your children have of ever seeing any of your Social Security / Medicare promises requires a massive INCREASE in immigration. Open the doors and invite everybody in. And stop spending the payroll taxes instead of investing them.

People are moving North by the millions but sending money South by the BILLIONS. Being undocumented they do not pay FICA or payroll taxes, which is why greedy employers use them -- they don't have to supply matching funds nor keep payroll records and can write those payments off as ambiguous "expenses", thus getting a tax break as well. Rather than contributing to the Social Security fund many are withdrawing from it. It is estimated that more than $28 Billion has been wired South since 2006, and $253 Billion since 2001. I am not including figures on the affect of illegals on our medical system (many emergency rooms have closed because they cannot absorb the cost of giving free medical treatment to illegals), our school system, etc... But I will if you ask.



IF the USA doesn't get control of the immigration the "joke" will be on us. With regards to many of the resources in this country we are already in overshoot. And, we are in overshoot on our population as well. We already have models for nations whose populations have exceeded the carrying capacity of their lands. We call those models "India", "Africa", "Bangladesh", etc... The problem is illustrated with this documentary film: http://causecast-videoblog.blogspot....d-current.html

[GreyGeek]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

My favorite SciFi author, Issac Asimov stated the problem most succinctly:

Democracy cannot survive over population.

Human dignity cannot survive over population.

Convenience and decency cannot survive over population.

As you put more and more people into the word, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies, the more people there are the less one individual matters.

[toad]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

I wasn't thinking racist, xenophobic or anything like that, just: he cannot be serious.

Now that you stated your case more succinctly and explained why you want to shut borders etc. I cannot but wonder how on earth you manage to support open source and freedom and at the same time propose the most restrictive and totalitarian measurements possible on people: restriction of movement. Sounds awfully like the former GDR or East Germany.

I beg you to think about what you wrote and leave it at that as I find it deeply upsetting.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

...
I beg you to think about what you wrote and leave it at that as I find it deeply upsetting.

Don't assume that just because my world view doesn't agree with your world view I haven't given my world view serious thought and research. I have given ample data and facts to support my views and as Huxley said, "Facts do not cease to be facts because they are ignored."

I am not blaming the Hispanic immigrants. I have met those that have moved into houses close to mine. They are hard working people who exhibit a strong family life, and I would not want to see them exported. They are an asset to the neighborhood and the community. If I lived in a 3rd world country, or in 3rd world conditions, I would do everything I could to move to a better place, a country like mine or yours, especially if there was no hope of improving things. But, I would prefer that no other immigrants arrived in this country. We don't have the physical or environmental resources for them. We don't even have enough for those who are already here.

The breakdowns of society that you see in Mexico, the MidEast, Asia and Africa are precisely the affects of population overshoots exhausting the resources of those countries, along with the corruption in the political process that accompanies such problems. So, I do not blame those living South of the Rio Grande for wanting to immigrate to the USA, legally or illegally. But, clearly, neither your country nor mine can sustain the massive influx of people that is presently occurring.

It is one thing to run out of resources. Matters are made significantly worse if a repressive theocracy were to take control of political and social life. History has proven that both Christianity and Islam have created oppressive theocracies. When your countryman, Martin Luther, opposed the excesses of the Catholic Church he touched off a revolution which brought down more than 1200 years of religious oppression in Western countries. Now, from the reports of my friends who have traveled in England and Europe, formal religion is in such decline that in some areas less than 1% of all church buildings are still being used for religious services, even though a majority of the populations give lip service to Christianity. But, that is no cause for celebration by atheists.

Sufficient numbers of MidEasterners have migrated to your country that even if you stopped their migration now, those that are already arrived have birth rates that are 8X that of your countrymen. Leaders of Islam can do math too, and their calculations gives them cause to brag that by 2050 Germany will be an Islamic Caliphate, and its citizens living under Sharia Law. Any who are not Muslim will have to pay the Jizya . But even if, by some miracle, the Muslims in your country reject the mandates of the Qur'an and the wishes of those who would love to return to the first millennium. and create a political system like that in Turkey, the problems of resource exhaustion remain. It took war to change the Ottoman empire caliphate to a republic but there are now pressures in Turkey which will probably return it to a Caliphate within a few years.

Even your own Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country :

The Chancellor’s remarks represent the first official acknowledgement that Germany, like other European countries, is destined to become a stronghold of Islam. She has admitted that the country will soon become a stronghold.

In France, 30% of children age 20 years and below are Muslims. The ratio in Paris and Marseille has soared to 45%. In southern France, there are more mosques than churches.

The situation within the United Kingdom is not much different. In the last 30 years, the Muslim population there has climbed from 82,000 to 2.5 million. Presently, there are over 1000 mosques throughout Great Britain - - many of which were converted from churches.

In Belgium, 50% of the newborns are Muslims and reportedly its Islamic population hovers around 25%. A similar statistic holds true for The Netherlands.

It’s the same story in Russia where one in five inhabitants is a Muslim.

Muammar Gaddafi recently stated that "There are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without sword, without gun, without conquest. We don’t need terrorists; we don’t need homicide bombers. The 50 plus million Muslims (in Europe) will turn it into the Muslim Continent within a few decades.”

The numbers support him.

In other places it's starting to look like a war of religions.

[toad]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

You are mad. I'm out of here.

[buckeyered80]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

I understand GreyGeek's point of view. It's not racist at all. It's really just about having common sense. No country has enough resources for the whole planet. And he is right about the Muslim growth in Europe. A group of people doesn't have to take over a country with violence anymore, they just take advantage of the now too lenient system.

[Detonate]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

Back at the end of the Cold War, a lot of East German and Czechoslovakian border guards were out of work. We should have hired them.

(Just kidding).

[woodsmoke]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

I post this merely as a discussion point for others since I am both centless and clueless:

China looks to raising it's interest rates probably three or four times a year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...73G0S420110417

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

Here is an article about "who pays" it is slanted against Obama, but Bush did the same only from a different viewpoint in that he just out and said it, but with the caveat that if taxes go down the revenue to the government goes up.

This is politically risky, however,

so Mr. Obama's game has always been to pretend not to increase taxes for middle class voters while looking for sneaky ways to do it.

His first budget in 2009 included a "climate revenues" section from the indirect carbon tax of cap and trade, which of course would be passed down to all consumers. Such Democratic luminaries as Nancy Pelosi have often chattered about a European-style value-added tax, or VAT, which from a liberal perspective has the virtue of applying to every level of production or service and therefore is largely hidden from the people who pay it.

There is also a breakdown in a graph form of who pays what.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj

[GreyGeek]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

Chapter 19 - The Argument From Intimidation. -Ayn Rand
http://marsexxx.com/ycnex/Ayn_Rand-T...elfishness.pdf

There is a certain type of argument which, in fact, is not an argument, but a means of forestalling debate and extorting an opponent’s agreement with one’s undiscussed notions. It is a method of bypassing logic by means of psychological pressure. Since it is particularly prevalent in today’s culture and is going to grow more so in the next few months, one would do well to learn to identify it and be on guard against it.

This method bears a certain resemblance to the fallacy ad hominem, and comes from the same psychological root, but is different in essential meaning. The ad hominem fallacy consists of attempting to refute an argument by impeaching the character of its proponent. Example:
“Candidate X is immoral, therefore his argument is false.”

But the psychological pressure method consists of threatening to impeach an opponent’s character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate. Example: “Only the immoral can fail to see that Candidate X’s argument is false.” In the first case, Candidate X’s immorality (real or invented) is offered as proof of the falsehood of his argument. In the second case, the falsehood of his argument is asserted arbitrarily and offered as proof of his immorality.

In today’s epistemological jungle, that second method is used more frequently than any other type of irrational argument. It should be classified as a logical fallacy and may be designated as “The Argument from Intimidation.”

The essential characteristic of the Argument from Intimidation is its appeal to moral self-doubt and its reliance on the fear, guilt or ignorance of the victim. It is used in the form of an ultimatum demanding that the victim renounce a given idea without discussion, under threat of being considered morally unworthy. The pattern is always: “Only those who are evil (dishonest, heartless, insensitive, ignorant, etc.) can hold such an idea.”
...

Or, "You're mad".

[dibl]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

Only a madman would believe that.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

No, it is exactly what is done today.

If one cannot win a discussion by the facts one must a) distract( the straw man) or b) besmirch or belittle c) shout the other person down.

I was at a forum lately in which I posted some factual statements from a person. A person that is of the same philosophical persuasion as the stated material could not argue with what the person said. It showed that the person was a deceiver, who said one thing and did another. And, on top of that said in no uncertain terms that he did not CARE whether anyone knew it or not.

And the person in the forum got "mad" at me, called me a name, and said that I should be banned.

In other words......the discussion was not a discussion, it was ....this is my rant it is only my rant whether it is correct or not and if anyone does anything to show that I am completely, admittedly by any third party, utterly wrong....

I just don't care....because I want it MY way....and YOU.........are outta here....so I can go back to my belief system.

It is what goes on all the time....

woodsmoke

[MoonRise]

Re: Amid global meltdowns, what's the life of the U.S. government's fiscal solvency?

Sad but true. It's everywhere!