Musk, Cat Ladies, and Immigration

How to solve the birth shortfall

Elon Musk is on a personal crusade to increase the American birth rate, including having 11 children of his own. In part from a similar concern, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has denounced middle-class “childless cat ladies,” singling out schoolteachers who don’t have their own children and therefore, he claims, don’t have a direct stake in the future of our country. As Musk quips, “sales of adult diapers should never exceed sales of baby diapers.” He’s got a point. Our lower birth rate is producing an active workforce that will soon be too small to support a growing number of retirees.

But what Musk and Vance fail to acknowledge is that their valid concern about a looming demographic disaster is inconsistent with their opposition to immigrants from low opportunity countries, as well as their support for President-elect Trump’s vow to deport many of them who are already here.

In truth, the only solution to the shortage of citizen taxpayers who can contribute to the support of the elderly is not only continued immigration of those that Trumpers dislike, but their legalization along with wage and benefit increases that can enable them to be productive citizens and taxpayers.

I explain all this in an article just published by the journal, Democracy. It goes further and explains that a myth created by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 when Social Security was first established has made the crisis worse, because it now puts the program in greater danger than all federal programs, which are equally threatened by a taxpaying workforce that is rapidly shrinking relative to retirees. Yes, Social Security is soon going to “run out of money,” but no more so than defense spending, student loans, nutrition programs, our national parks and everything else for which we pay our federal taxes.

The full article is here: https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/how-to-solve-the-birth-shortfall/