4um: Europe's Revolt of the Pampered

Title: Europe's Revolt of the Pampered
Source: VDARE
URL Source: http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/101014_revolt.htm
Published: Oct 16, 2010
Author: Pat Buchanan
Post Date: 2010-10-16 14:15:23 by F.A. Hayek Fan
Keywords: None
Views: 468
Comments: 31

For the fourth day running, France has been crippled by strikes. Airlines are canceling flights. Travelers making their way to Paris from DeGaulle and Orly face long delays.

Tourists are stranded. The Eiffel Tower was closed. Rail and subway traffic into the city has been curtailed. By shutting down refineries, French oil workers may cause a shutdown of gas stations and force the government to raid the strategic petroleum reserve.

Millions have gone on strike. One in 10 high schools has been closed. Students at secondary schools and universities march beside workers and block entrances to paralyze the educational system.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has moved through the National Assembly and is pushing through the Senate a measure raising the retirement age for state pensions from 60 to 62.

For if France does not raise that retirement age, its social security system will face a $58 billion deficit by 2018. Sarkozy's reform follows his victory in repealing a decade-old Socialist law that mandated the 35-hour workweek in France.

Around 2050, those high school and college students will be near or above today's retirement age of 60. Who do they think is going to pony up for their pensions? Are they not aware of what is coming for France and Europe?

Today, 23 percent of French men and women are 60 or older. That will rise to 33 percent by 2050, when there will be one French worker for each French retiree, if 60 is retained as the age of retirement.

Today, 5.5 percent of French men and women are 80 or older. By 2050, that doubles to 11 percent.

Who do the French strikers think is going to pay the taxes for the medical expenses of this infirm and aged ninth of a nation?

Where the median age of the French is 40, in 2050 it will be 45. But that number disguises a far drearier reality.

Since 1970, the fertility rate of French women has been below the 2.1 children needed to sustain France's population, what demographers call zero population growth. For the next four decades until 2050, the fertility level of French women is projected to remain roughly 15 percent below ZPG.

Yet France's population of 62.6 million is projected to make a healthy leap to 67.7 million. How can a population continue to grow when the birth rate for almost 80 years running to 2050 is below replacement level?

Answer: As the French retire, age and die, France is filling up with immigrants coming to replace the departed and departing French, and the millions of French children who were never born because their potential parents did not want them.

Some come from Eastern Europe. But more are arriving from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and the former French colonies of the sub-Sahara. Arabs and Africans are populating cities like Marseilles and Grenoble, and filling up the burgeoning banlieues around Paris, where every few years, they go on a tear and burn thousands of cars. For Paris police, the banlieues are off-limits, except when traveling in platoons.

These immigrants do not bring the occupational skills, education or language abilities of French youth. Most will not earn the wages and salaries of native-born French, and thus not contribute the same level of taxes to sustain a welfare state constructed by a Socialist Party that has ruled France on and off for decades.

With the end of the 35-hour workweek and retirement at 60, the peeling back of social welfare benefits granted to the French in the salad days of socialism has only just begun. They can march and protest and strike, but they cannot avert the inevitable.

What is true of France is true of Europe, where not one nation has a fertility rate that will replace its native-born. Among Russians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians, the death rate already exceeds the birth rate. These countries have begun to pass away. And their neighbors will follow.

With the financial crisis of 2008-09, followed by the threatened debt default of one or more of the European Union PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain), all of Europe also seems to be slashing defense budgets to save all they can of their welfare states.

Which raises questions we debt-swamped Americans cannot put off forever. Why, 65 years after World War II, are we still defending these nations? When Europe has more wealth, more people and a more lavish welfare state than we do, why should we impose sacrifices on our people to pay for the privilege of defending her people?

Instead of borrowing from Europe to defend Europe, why do we not charge them for providing that protection? If we are going to play Romans, why not demand tribute, as the Romans did?

Th United States is facing these same problems except at a larger level. IMHO that's one of the reasons why the federal government refuses to do anything about illegal immigration. Someone is going to have to pay for the gimmie generation, i.e. baby boomers.

Illegals contribute less in taxes than they absorb in social programs, so they aren't our salvation, IMO.

I never claimed they were our salvation bot. You are the one who supports the party of illegal immigration not I.

Costs of Illegal Immigration: Illegals Cost Feds $10 Billion a Year; Amnesty Would Nearly Triple Cost

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies is one of the first to estimate the impact of illegal immigration on the federal budget. Based on Census Bureau data, the study estimates that households headed by illegal aliens used $10 billion more in government services than they paid in taxes in 2002. These figures are only for the federal government; costs at the state and local level are also likely to be significant. The study also finds that if illegals were given amnesty, the fiscal deficit at the federal level would grow to nearly $29 billion.

The study, entitled The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget, will be available on line at http://www.cis.org. Among the findings:

-- Illegal alien households are estimated to use $2,700 a year more in services than they pay in taxes, creating a total fiscal burden of nearly $10.4 billion on the federal budget in 2002.

-- Among the largest federal costs: Medicaid ($2.5 billion); treatment for the uninsured ($2.2 billion); food assistance programs ($1.9 billion); the federal prison and court systems ($1.6 billion); and federal aid to schools ($1.4 billion).

-- If illegal aliens were legalized and began to pay taxes and use services like legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual fiscal deficit at the federal level would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total federal deficit of $29 billion.

-- With nearly two-third of illegals lacking a high school diploma, the primary reason they create a fiscal deficit is their low education levels and resulting low incomes and tax payments - not their legal status or their unwillingness to work.

-- Amnesty increases costs because illegals would still be largely unskilled, and thus their tax payments would continue to be very modest, but once legalized they would be able to access many more government services.

-- The fact that legal immigrants with little schooling are a fiscal drain on federal coffers does not mean that legal immigrants overall are a drain. Many legal immigrants are highly skilled.

-- Because many of the costs are due to their U.S.-born children, who are awarded U.S. citizenship at birth, barring illegals themselves from federal programs will not significantly reduce costs.

-- Although they create a net drain on the federal government, the average illegal household pays more than $4,200 a year in federal taxes, for a total of nearly $16 billion.

-- However, they impose annual costs of more than $26.3 billion, or about $6,950 per illegal household.

-- About 43 percent, or $7 billion, of the federal taxes illegals pay go to Social Security and Medicare.

-- Employers do not see the costs associated with less-educated immigrant workers because the costs are spread out among all taxpayers.

Why Legalization Is So Costly. Costs rise unavoidably because amnesty will not change the low education levels of illegal aliens or the fact that the American economy offers such workers very limited opportunities, regardless of legal status. The vast majority of illegal aliens will continue to have very low incomes, and make very modest tax payments. However, legal status would allow them to use many more programs. We know that cost would rise dramatically because legal immigrants with the same levels of education make extensive use of public services. Thus, even though we estimate that average tax payments would rise by 77 percent, we also find that costs would rise 117 percent. To understand why this happens it is helpful to consider a program like the Earned Income Tax Credit, which pays cash to low- income workers. Illegals currently account for only 1.5 percent of the program's total costs, but if they were legalized their use of the program would grow tenfold because with legal status they would no longer need stolen or bogus Social Security numbers to get the credit. This dramatic rise in cost is not due to laziness on the part of immigrants. In fact, only those who work receive the EITC. The dramatic rise in costs simply reflects the low educational attainment of illegals and their resulting low incomes.

If Illegals Stay, So Will the Costs. To the extent that policy makers have considered the fiscal costs of illegal immigration, they have generally tried to reduce the costs while allowing illegals to remain. But this strategy has not been effective because the average illegal already receives less than half as much in services from the federal government as do other households. Moreover, many of the costs are due to their U.S.-born children, who are awarded American citizenship at birth under current law. Other programs are simply too politically sensitive to cut, such as the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. And others costs are unavoidable, such as incarcerating illegals who have been convicted of crimes. Conversely, enforcing immigration laws is both popular with voters and administratively more feasible. There are really only two options: either we begin to enforce the law, significantly reducing the number of illegals in the country, or we accept the costs created by the presence of a large pool of unskilled workers.

Results Similar to Other Studies. A 1997 report by the National Research Council (NRC) on the fiscal impact of immigrants concluded that education levels and resulting income is the primary determinant of tax payments and service use, which is also a central finding of this report. The results of this study closely match the findings of a 1998 Urban Institute study. Our estimated average tax payment for illegal households in New York State is almost identical to that of the Urban Institute, when adjusted for inflation. The results of this study are also buttressed by an analysis of illegal alien tax returns done by the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Treasury in 2004, which found that about half had no federal income tax liability, very similar to our findings of 45 percent.