They are needed for two important reasons
1) There are tons of entry level jobs that are not being taken as the economy has matured and native Americans disdain many forms of labor that used to be routine. Growing up in Washington State it was a great privilege to get a job picking fruit in the summer because you were outside and you didn't get paid by the hour but by the pound. We loved it and we made a ton of money. Now nobody born in the US stoops to pick fruit. Twenty five percent of the apples in Washington went unpicked last summer.
There are other jobs that are considered to low for Americans to take. My father died when I was in college and it was relatively expensive. I got elected SB President which took care of my tuition and I converted a room in the Student Union Building into an apartment. I made a deal with the maintenance department to let me be the student union janitor and I got up at 6 in the morning and cleaned the SUB for 2 hours a day and that generated the $ 3.00 a day I needed for food.
There was nothing unusual about any of the above. From the time you were 16 you wanted to get a job so you could operate your own car. Your own car meant that you were much more likely to be able to get yourself a date, so nobody looked down on getting an entry level job, even the richest kids took regular jobs.
2) Our social benefits, especially medicare and social security are in part trans generational programs that require current workers to pay for those that are older just as they paid for the ones ahead of them. There is a positive balance but it hasn't paid for all of the benefits that will go to the generation that paid into it.
The current aging population of the developed countries is creating a "death cycle" that will eventually cause tremendous imbalance to the social benefit system.
Having a population at around 30 gives the right balance between producers and those at the retirement end that require more health services and social security. When the average age hits 40 problems start to increase and additional taxes are needed to maintain revenue levels. This means that there is less money for capital to grow the economy and less money for consumer spending which means that there is less tax revenue coming in and the cycle continues until the level of benefit cannot be maintained.
Countries like Japan (47) and S Korea (41) are facing limited options because their culture makes it very difficult to open up to immigrants. Europe huddles around 40.
The US is starting to rise and it is concentrated by region so while some regions are OK others are aging fast
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2017/comm/median-age.html
The median age of the US is gradually following Europe
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/us-median-age-hits-all-time-high-38-record-86248-are-100-or-older
The plain fact is that as countries develop birth rates drop.
The US fertility rate is now lower than replacement levels.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/17/611898421/u-s-births-falls-to-30-year-low-sending-fertility-rate-to-a-record-low
The birthrate fell for nearly every group of women of reproductive age in the U.S. in 2017, reflecting a sharp drop that saw the fewest newborns since 1987, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There were 3,853,472 births in the U.S. in 2017 — "down 2 percent from 2016 and the lowest number in 30 years," the CDC said.
The general fertility rate sank to a record low of 60.2 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44 — a 3 percent drop from 2016, the CDC said in its tally of provisional data for the year.
The results put the U.S. further away from a viable replacement rate – the standard for a generation being able to replicate its numbers.
These facts have been well known but a few weeks ago I saw another round of articles explain in detail how these declining fertility rates will undermine future growth and prosperity and how the increase aging of the population will put stress on funding social security and other benefits in both Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.
It was the same day that the news broke about the US government stripping children away from their parents and us initiating a campaign of terror against the very workers we need.
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