03.31.2008 12:15 pm
How immigration helps Social Security
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Kevin Drum, writing on Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog, has an interesting perspective on last week’s report by the Social Security trustees. Drum drills into the report’s tables to find out how illegal immigrants (which the trustees call “other-immigrants”) affect Social Security’s solvency.
The effect, he says, is positive for at least three reasons:
- Illegal immigrants tend to skew young. This benefits the system.
- Young people have more children than older people. This benefits the system.
- Some illegal immigrants pay taxes for a few years and then leave. This benefits the system.
Here’s Drum’s bottom line:
Give or take a bit, it turns out that this shores up the Social Security system to the tune of around $13 billion per year. Thanks, illegal immigrants!
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
This is a perfect illustration of someone who is an “expert” at finance without understanding the fundamental economics on which it is based.
Of course, the more young people that yhere are paying into the Social Security system, the more money there will be to distribute in the near future (without increasing Social Security taxes or obtaining money from general revenues). But the more immigrants who contribute to Social Security today, the more people that will be withdrawing benefits in the future, and therefore, the more of a burden will be placed on our children and grandchildren to support them.
Anybody who is the least bit aware of physical and mathematical reality should recognize that it is impossible for the population to keep growing forever. Adding more people to the current population through immigration increases total output, but also increases competition for limited, non-renewable resources. The net effect of immigration is to accelerate the decline of critical resources PER CAPITA, such as fossil fuels and desirable land, and THAT is the basis of real wealth no matter how many dollars are floating around. It is extremely optimistic to believe that the standard of living in the U.S., for either working people of retired people, can be sustained under a scenario of continued population growth, attributable largely to immigration.