The Unfunded Liabilities Bomb (Re: Aztlan Arising: 700,000+ March)

In article <5N2dnU5mZePJFrLZRVn-hg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Pope Secola IV
<Supreme_Pontif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Its even worse than that. Some 18 year old kid jumps the fence on the
border and gets a job for 8 to 10 bucks an hour doing manual labor which
is good money to a poor Mexican. But 20 years later only manual labor
is the only job he can get and it still pays 8 to 10 bucks an hour
except now he has a bad back, and can't work. He also now has 6 kids
who think the American Promise is a shame, so they start running with
the gangs, raping, robbing, selling drugs, murdering and running a sting
of whores.

In California today 25% of all *Legal and Illegal* Mexican workers are
on public assistance. As you near the age of 40 the number goes up to
75%. There are 15,000 illegal Mexicans in the California Penal system
and cost the state the financial equivalent of building a major
University and research center every two years.

So when somebody tells you of the economic contributions that Illegal
Immigration make to the economy of this country lay that little fact on
them.

A very good point, almost never brought up by those arguing about the
economic benefits of the "young, strong men who do the work American
kids won't do."

The town nearest me is facing the shut-down of its only hospital,
mostly for the usual reasons: they are required by law to take
Emergency Room patients whether they can pay or not. As a result, the
ER waiting room is filled with Mexicans (it was on my trips to the ER a
year ago).

This is being repeated up and down the state, and in other states.

And this town has had a big surge in drive-by shootings,
execution-style slayings of rival gang members, and teenaged Mexican
girls pushing baby strollers.

Oh, and Highway 1 was shut down by the California Highway Patrol so
that the Mexican kids could "peacefully march" down the highway with
their Mexican flags and "Aztlan" banners.

(The public school administrators are now demanding that the school be
paid its money allotment that is based on attendance, even though the
Mexicans were not in attendance. The public schools _like_ the idea of
more Mexicans, as this increases their budget...whether the high school
students can even read and write at the 6th grade level is of no
concern to them.)

By the way, the national debt (currently hovering around $8+ trillion)
is NOT the biggest economic timebomb waiting to go off. A much bigger
debt overhang is the one of "unfunded liabilities":

-- pensions "guaranteed" by Uncle Sam, though no money has been set
aside for this (and the companies offering the pensions don't have the
money, either, or are bankrupt or long gone...Bethlehem Steel was just
one of these...the large auto makers are not going to have the tens of
billions needed to pay out pensions)

-- "loan guarantees," again with Uncle Sam promising to be the insurer
of last resort

-- military pensions....no funding is separately set aside for
this...the costs 20-30 years from now will be staggering

-- Social Security, Medicare, the government pension plans which have
no funding except from current taxes (that is, there is no separate
account...this might not matter, the business of account names and all,
except that deficit spending means that it really does. Think of all
government operations as being run on a giant credit card. The
"official" amount of the debt is $8+ trillion, but in 20 or so years
the vast payouts of SS pensions, plus Medicare, will run the credit
card debt up a vastly accelerated pace.)

-- "debt forgiveness" -- many of the trillions of dollars in foreign
"loans" (really just bribes, money for tanks and weapons and Swiss bank
accounts for various political factions) will NEVER be repaid, and will
eventually be written off. (These debts are not counted in as part of
either the national debt or anything else...they are carried as
"assets," so the national debt is even worse than figures show.)

-- in general, "unfunded liabilities" are the things which government
has _promised_ or _guaranteed_ or _insured_ but for which no funds have
been actually set aside for (as an annuity, for example).


This is like living on a credit card, with the indebtedness rising
constantly.

How big is this unfunded liability? An accountant friend of mine, who
said this was a hot topic amongst certain conservative/libertarian
accountants, told me in the early 90s that the estimated size was $60
trillion. I've seen other estimates (try Googling on "unfunded
liabilities" for various estimates and analyses) that range from $40
trillion to $80 trillion.

Picking just a "reasonable" compromise figure of $50 trillion, what
does this mean, exactly?

This is the current debt, which will rise, with interest. To be paid
off _today_, $50 trillion would be needed.

If we divide this by the approximate number of U.S. personal taxpayers
(not the total population, but the number of those filing tax returns),
here's what we get:

$50 trillion = $50 x 10^12

divide by an estimated 125 million filing taxpayers = 125 x 10^6

equals

$400,000 per filing taxpayer

This is the amount, on average, that each household would have to come
up with RIGHT NOW (or finance as a mortgage is financed) and send in to
the government for all things that have been "charged on the credit
card" or promised to be paid if we wanted to balance the books.

("But," you may ask, "some of these things are not going to be paid to
retiring Baby Boomers for another 15-20 years, so why pay off this
account right now?" Because this is the amount which would have to be
set aside, and grow with interest, to equal the amount that the
estimated $50 trillion will also have grown to, with interest. Put yet
another way, failure to put this money aside (which is a given, of
course) means that whatever funding problems we have TODAY will be much
worse in 20 or so years, as the promised payouts are paid-out of
current tax revenue. And since more and more of today's jobs are paying
less in real dollars (McJobs), the implications are clear....)

This $400,000 estimate, which may be as low as $300,000 or as high as
$700,000, depending on who is making the estimate, means that each
taxpayer has a "credit card debt" that is effectively more than his
average net worth (which is much lower than $400K).


Of course, taxpayers pay at different rates, so to fund this unfunded
liability, a lot of taxpayers who pay at the low rate would have a
smaller share, and others would be soaked for millions or tens of
millions of dollars. And corporations, etc. would be taxed.


My supposition is that America will default on many of these promises,
guarantees, pensions, disability payments, loan underwritings, etc.

The alternative, of taxing the then-working people at 90% rates will
not be viable.

This all came about because government--politicians, working with
lobbyists, union leaders, social planners--set up social programs
without a plan to set aside actual money to pay for. Some of this shows
up in "actual" national debt, mainly through interest paid on bonds
sold to investors, pension funds, banks, foreign countries, and some of
it is "just there," as a promise to supply some benefit (retirement,
disability, loans, veterans benefits) that has no funding source.

The debt bomb cannot be defused by anything short of defaulting or
making the workers of 2030 into full-time slaves of the government.

Living high on credit cards...


--Tim May
.

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