{"id":236,"date":"2007-05-22T08:27:18","date_gmt":"2007-05-22T14:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=236"},"modified":"2007-05-22T11:32:52","modified_gmt":"2007-05-22T17:32:52","slug":"the-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=236","title":{"rendered":"The Cost"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of Right-Wing chatter will center on Heritage’s<\/a> report that illegal immigrants are costing the nation $89 billion a year.<\/p>\n

Here’s what they’re ignorning. This has little do with illegals and everything<\/em> to do with the de facto welfare state. Unless you are earning at least $50,000 in this country (and half of us aren’t), you are getting more in government services than you are paying for. It’s called the progressive tax.<\/p>\n

But only a fool, only an idiot, only a reactionary moron would say that the best thing to do would be to get rid of the low-wage workers. That’s the tricky thing about economics. The numbers don’t tell the story. Without all the low-wage earners, the economy ceases to function. The low-wage guys picking oranges, building houses and sweeping floors enable the millionaire farmers, home-builders and stock brokers that really pay the bills in this country.<\/p>\n

Remember, it wasn’t the lowest<\/em> third of their economy that the Golgafrinchans disposed of.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Something else I thought of. Illegal immigration is a generational thing. The current generation of illegals are low-skill workers. But their children, better-educated, english-speaking and Americanized, are going to move up the socioeconomic ladder quickly.<\/p>\n

All waves of immigrants have started out poor. It’s the children they bring here — children we need to keep our Medicare and Social Security ponzi schemes afloat — that really benefit the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of Right-Wing chatter will center on Heritage’s report that illegal immigrants are costing the nation $89 billion a year. Here’s what they’re ignorning. This has little do with illegals and everything to do with the de facto welfare state. Unless you are earning at least $50,000 in this country (and half of us … Continue reading The Cost<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-3O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}