The more children people have, the better shape Social Security will be in.

[Nye Bevan]

Social Security contributions are not invested on behalf of beneficiaries. Instead, current receipts (i.e. Social Security taxes) are used to pay current benefits (which is why the system is described as "pay-as-you-go&quot . In the past the Social Security taxes paid in have exceeded the benefits paid out. The difference has been spent by the Government on other stuff.

One useful way to describe the effect of the change in the aged dependency ratio and the resulting effect on the ratio of beneficiaries to workers is to consider the implied number of workers per beneficiary. For the past 35 years, there have been about 3.3 workers per beneficiary (consistent with the ratio of 30 beneficiaries per 100 workers). After 2030, the ratio will be two workers per beneficiary (consistent with 50 beneficiaries per 100 workers).

With the average worker benefit currently at about $1,000 per month, 3.3 workers would need to contribute about $300 each per month to provide a $1,000 benefit. But after the population age distribution has shifted to have just two workers per beneficiary, each worker would need to contribute $500 to provide the same $1,000 benefit.

...

There is no one clear solution to the problem of increased cost for retirees because of fewer workers available to support the retirees, which in turn is caused by lower birth rates. This issue is not specific to Social Security, but also affects Medicare as well as many other private and public retirement income systems. The decline in birth rates has been far more dramatic in Japan and many European countries that are struggling with the effects of aging populations because of declines in birth rates even more severe than in the United States.

http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html

I know many here like to be judgmental of people like the Duggars, but those kids will be helping pay for our Social Security when we retire.

[randome]

1. Fuck that. There IS a clear solution.

Take a couple trillion from tax breaks and military expenditures. Problem solved.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. No, the Duggar girls will be married, stay-at-home mothers and

only the boys will have their own churches with few followers.

[Nye Bevan]

14. Perhaps. But those girls will have kids, of whom some will be boys and will go to work,

paying for Social Security for our children and grandchildren.

[sinkingfeeling]

22. Only if they having paying jobs. Without TV, the Duggars would be on

welfare. They live about 15 miles away.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. Or we can just have a sensible immigration policy

and expand the workforce that way.

[Nye Bevan]

5. I am totally in favor of that.

We should welcome skilled immigrants with open arms.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.

Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.

Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.

Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.
Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.Raise the cap. Raise the cap. Raise the cap.

[Nye Bevan]

7. I see this all the time on DU. But people almost never explain what they mean by it.

Eliminate the cap, or increase the cap? Increase it to what level? Noting that increasing the cap on contributions (which happens regularly anyway) also increases the cap on benefits, are you proposing to remove the link between contributions and benefits? Are you happy to see rich people receive hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in Social Security in return for their uncapped contributions?

[NYC_SKP]

15. Earners don't pay their 15% tax for Social Security for income beyond the first $106,800.

Kill the $106,800 cap and collect the 15% for earnings over that amount and you've instantly funded Medicare and Social Security for all.

It's the most regressive setup in the fucking world.

[Nye Bevan]

17. Then the maximum Social Security payment will automatically be uncapped.

Are you OK with rich people receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in Social Security payments?

[NYC_SKP]

21. No, it won't. SS payments have to be means-tested.

Why is this a hard thing to imagine or implement?

[Nye Bevan]

25. So you are proposing to turn Social Security into a welfare program.

The reason the Social Security system still exists in its original form is that everyone pays into it, and everyone benefits from it, and everyone's benefits are tied to their contributions. This applies to the poor, the middle class and the rich. So the system has broad support from people of all income levels. If you start to means-test it, so that upper income people pay into the system but do not benefit from it, you have turned it into a welfare program. And you know what tends to happen to welfare programs. It didn't even take a Republican President to "end welfare as we know it".

Delinking benefits from contributions is probably the sneakiest, quickest way of killing off Social Security.

[LiberalFighter]

31. Think of it this way too.

Rich people die before they become eligible to receive SS. What they would pay into Social Security stays there.

[antigone382]

6. Social security won't help you if there is no food to eat, water to drink, or air to breathe.

There are some folks--who are more knowledgeable than I--who say that our planet can only accommodate one billion people without relying on fossil fuel energy. I can't assert that this is true or false, and I hope that things are a bit more optimistic than that. What is clear is that the population cannot increase indefinitely, and that we are rapidly using resources and generating wastes/pollutants at a rate that will ensure suffering on a massive scale globally. I have yet to see compelling evidence that there is any combination of technology and energy sources that will enable the current population to transition to genuine sustainability, much less a dramatically increased one.

Social security is a construction of human beings; ecology is based on unavoidable natural law. It is clear which of the two must take precedence as we make decisions about the future.

[One_Life_To_Give]

9. +1

[Nye Bevan]

10. And in 1894, the London Times estimated that by 1950 London would be 9 ft deep in horse manure (nt)

[antigone382]

16. I don't think the two situations really compare.

We have already lost over half of our top soil. Last year a drought that was almost certainly induced or worsened by climate change led to massive crop failures, and necessitated the premature slaughter of livestock. That increases food prices. Agriculture is one of the biggest users of fossil fuel; the green revolution saved us from mass starvation in the mid-20th century, yet it depends on mechanization and synthetic additives; these things are contributing to climate change, nitrogen pollution, soil depletion, and other problems at a rate that already is generating suffering for millions of people all over the world. People are ALREADY dying because of climate change, and that climate change is inextricably linked to the number of people on the planet and the increasing degree to which they depend upon destructive technologies to survive.

It is nothing more than unethical and antiscientific to call for an increase in the population if you are not *absolutely certain* (not just vaguely hopeful because people were wrong in the past, not just trusting that somehow, some way, technology will prevent the depletion of soil and resources that has brought about the decline of so many other civilizations in the past) that we will have the resources to provide for their material needs in the future.

[upaloopa]

8. Hell there aren't enough jobs for the people we have now?

I think you are way off the mark. Just because we have more people doesn't mean we will have jobs for all of them.

[Nye Bevan]

12. Ah, now that's what economists refer to as the "Lump of Labor" fallacy.

In economics, the lump of labour fallacy (or lump of jobs fallacy) is the contention that the amount of work available to labourers is fixed. It is considered a fallacy by most economists,[1] who hold that the amount of work is not static. Another way to describe the fallacy is that it treats the demand for labour as an exogenous variable, when it is not. It may also be called the fallacy of labour scarcity, or the zero-sum fallacy, from its ties to the zero-sum game.

Historically, the term "lump of labour" originated to rebut the idea that reducing the number of hours that employees are allowed to labour during the working day would lead to a reduction in unemployment. The term has also been used to describe the commonly held beliefs that increasing labour productivity and immigration cause unemployment. Whereas some argue that immigrants displace domestic workers, others believe this to be a fallacy, arguing that such a view relies on a belief that the number of jobs in the economy is fixed, whereas in reality immigration increases the size of the economy, thus creating more jobs.[2][3]

As a fallacy, the lump of labour often takes the form of a false premise. In rhetoric it is usually a hidden premise, which makes the conclusion of one's argument a non sequitur. That means that the lump of labour is usually either a subtype of a false premise fallacy, a non-sequitur fallacy, or both.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

[redqueen]

23. All economists agree on this?

Or only certain types of economists?

Of course the number of jobs isn't static, but only a fool would ignore long term trends.

[upaloopa]

30. What's the unemployment rate? Why do we have so many graduates

Living with their folks. Screw economics. It isn't a science it is opinion.

[tabasco]

11. Are you ignorant of the problems caused by overpopulation?

Please educate yourself.

[Nye Bevan]

13. I am familiar with the predictions made by Thomas Malthus in 1798 (nt)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

[tabasco]

19. So what?

I am familiar with facts as they exist today.

[antigone382]

20. At that time there were other places to go to.

Modern scientists with much more refined methods than Malthus are asserting that we are in trouble. It is irresponsible to dismiss them if you are not aware of what knowledge has been gained in the intervening 200 years since Malthus first articulated that we just might have a problem some day.

[antigone382]

24. Moreover, if you're going to reduce all the arguments against overpopulation to Malthusian hysteria

Perhaps we should reduce all arguments in favor of increasing the population to the delusions of Nicolae Ceausescu

http://www.ceausescu.org/ceausescu_texts/overplanned_parenthood.htm

"Nicolae Ceausescu loved nothing better than a monument to himself. But his ministerial palaces and avenues paled next to another of his schemes for building socialism: a plan to increase Romania's population from 23 million to 30 million by the year 2000. He began his campaign in 1966 with a decree that virtually made pregnancy a state policy. "The fetus is the property of the entire society," Ceausescu proclaimed. "Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity."

It was one of the late dictator's cruelest commands. At first Romania's birthrate nearly doubled. But poor nutrition and inadequate prenatal care endangered many pregnant women. The country's infant-mortality rate soard to 83 deaths in every 1,000 births (against a Western European average of less than 10 per thousand). About one in 10 babies was born underweight; newborns weighing 1,500 grams (3 pounds, 5 ounces) were classified as miscarriages and denied treatment. Unwanted survivors often ended up in orphanages. "The law only forbade abortion," says Dr. Alexander Floran Anca of Bucharest. "It did nothing to promote life." "

(snip)

The government's enforcement techniques were as bad as the law. Women under the age of 45 were rounded up at their workplaces every one to three months and taken to clinics, where they were examined for signs of pregnancy, often in the presence of government agents - dubbed the "menstrual police" by some Romanians. A pregnant woman who failed to "produce" a baby at the proper time could expect to be summoned for questioning. Women who miscarried were suspected of arranging an abortion. Some doctors resorted for forging statistics. "If a child died in our district, we lost 10 to 25 percent of our salary," says Dr. Geta Stanescu of Bucharest. "But it wasn't our fault: we had no medicine or milk, and the families were poor."

(snip)

Celibacy tax": A woman didn't have to be pregnant to come under scrutiny. In 1986 members of the Communist youth group were sent to quiz citizens about their sex lives. "How often do you have sexual intercourse?" the questionnaire read. "Why have you failed to conceive?" Women who did not have children, even if they could not, paid a "celibacy tax" of up to 10 percent of their monthly salaries.

[Gregorian]

18. Thank you for being brave enough to mention the unmentionable.

Bravo.

I'm so disgusted with the majority of humans. All we can do is sit and watch. It's maddening to think of how much nicer the world could be if only people were conscious.

[RC]

26. All that is needed for Social Security to be in fine shape is to pay a Living Wage.

You know, pay what the job is worth. That and Single Payer, Universal Health Care

[GoCubsGo]

27. That, and raising the cap on what portion of one's earnings get taxed.

As it stands, only the first $110K of one's wages are subject to FICA taxes.

[TheKentuckian]

28. No, that just gluts the labor pool which reduces wages which are declining already

which shrinks individual benefits no matter the raw number of workers paying in.

Wages must go up and the cap must be adjusted up, applied to all income, or even scrapped and no I don't care if wealthy folks get larger payouts to do it. They'll get additional returns but they can be set to diminish in relative weight.

Also, don't forget that Ronnie Rayguns and Tip doubled the pay in so we should be either paying for ourselves or covering a significant portion of any shortfall of folks paying in.

Wages being too low and unemployment being too high are big problems that some never want to consider.

[Nye Bevan]

32. "Lump of Labor fallacy" (see post 12) (nt)

[TheKentuckian]

34. See reality. Labor is not a fixed number but it isn't infinite either.

Neither are resources. Nor is demand a simple multiplier.

Your theory also doesn't account for anything like even current productivity levels or proliferation of automation.

Your thinking is dominated by "supply side" theory here, disregards real world trends, and doesn't account for any future technological advancements (even the ones emerging now).

The need for labor is diminishing, not growing, and the cut of the pie labor gets for its trouble is shrinking far faster.

[MadHound]

29. The more children people have, the worse our entire planet will be.

More pollution, less food, fewer resources, etc. etc. We've already got far too many people on this planet, adding more is not a good idea.

[randome]

33. The more people, the more competition to stand out from the crowd.

The more competition, the more corners are cut, leading to bribery and political payoffs and degradation of social mores.

America alone would be much better off if we reduced our population by about a third.

IMO.

[idwiyo]

35. "Who is going to take care of you when you are old" bullshit mentality. Wonder if anyone who

subscribes to this mindset also tells their kids "of course we love you darling but the the REAL reason we had you is because we need someone to pay our pensions when we retire"...

IMNSHO this is one of those totally fucked up reasons to have children some people offer to justify their choice to procreate.

[bhikkhu]

36. Turning it into a Ponzi scheme is hardly a solution

...and its a common fallacy that social security only works with a continually growing population anyway.

Productivity increases work the same as population increases, and we have sufficient levels of productivity right now for social security to work better at our current birthrates than it did 40 years ago.

[raccoon]

37. No, because most of them will have McJobs and not pay much into SS. nt

[treestar]

38. I'd prefer immigrants

So at least world population would not be increased.

[Nye Bevan]

39. Definitely. We should welcome skilled immigrants with open arms.

The H1 visa cap should be increased as much as politically possible.

[treestar]

42. I was thinking more of young families

That is what Canada goes for, I recall reading.

We're talking about a generation to pay for Social Security since we didn't have the kids. So they wouldn't necessarily be a problem - we need the population, so do that instead of have more kids.

[RB TexLa]

46. Immigration is much better

[cali]

40. wow. stunningly bad op. gets my nomination for worst of the day

though the day is young.

suggesting that people have children to support Social Security is beyond ridiculous. Suggesting that people like the Duggars are a boon is absurd.

Do try and use some critical thinking skills. How about raising the cap?

[Nye Bevan]

41. See post 39 re. raising the cap (nt)

[LittleBlue]

43. Agreed. Got no problem with the Duggars

Weird as hell, but whatever. They'll be chipping in when I'm too old.

[smirkymonkey]

44. Right. With fewer jobs and more of them minimum wage,

we'll do just great. We are on the road to disaster. We don't need more people. We need more well paying jobs.

[RB TexLa]

45. I'm not giving up my time and income to raise children