Just stirring the pot....plus a double feature

Time for me to make at least half of you mad, and maybe all of you.  A topic back in the news today has touched a nerve....immigration reform.

On the face of it undocumented workers who literally wade the river or jump the fence ARE ILLEGAL.  It's undeniable.  The knee-jerk reaction is to round them up and send them back.  IMO, that is probably the worst thing we could do, and probably impossible to do, too.

Truth is, we NEED these people.  Stop and think about it....without them most of our restaurants would simply not be able to function.  They grow and harvest our crops.  Roads and bridges, not to mention homes or office buildings, would not be built.  Landscape companies, janitorial companies, all sorts of blue collar companies would go out of business.  They do honorable work that we want and need and value.  

And no, there aren't enough native-born (white, black, or brown) Americans to fill those positions if all the illegals were sent home.  There are "Help Wanted" signs out there right now and I don't see whites or blacks lining up to apply.  I frankly doubt that even much higher wages would entice enough whites to fill those positions.  Consumers simply can't pay more for their daily necessities.  Our buying power is stretched now.

So what form should immigration reform take?  I have no idea, but I know we need to agree to something that will make these illegals a legitimate part of our economic landscape.  Industrious, clean living undocumented workers should be made taxpaying partners in America.

This ties in with another news bullet that just popped up on my 'puter:  Whites in America had more deaths than births last year for the first time ever.  We need MORE workers to pay taxes, and we can't count on those new workers being white.  

We'll need to either raise taxes or make even deeper cuts in services, including defense, and as the recent sequester has shown, we squeal like 2-year-olds when you ask us to do without something.  The solution (to me) is obvious.

OK, rip me.

S

PS....I had another post in the que, but decided this one was more "in the news".  It follows if you're interested.

I don't like where this is going

Ahh Oh.  This isn't good.  I just heard on the news that the birth rate among women in the US has dropped below the level needed to sustain a growing population.  In other words, more people are dying than being born.  The break-even number is 2.1 births per woman, and now we've dropped to 1.9 births.

I don't think this is due to a lack of "lust".  The main excuse given for not having as many children is they are unaffordable.  Not too many decades ago one income in the household was usually enough to support a family.  Today it more often than not takes two incomes.  Apparently we're now on the cusp of two incomes not even being enough.

We've known that middle class incomes have been flat for the past 30 or so years while the most wealthy have seen their rate of income growth skyrocket.  This isn't politics, just fact.  It looks like we're approaching the breaking point.

This really has far reaching consequences.  With new technology and increases in productivity, it takes fewer workers to make the same amount of stuff it did just a few years ago.  Today it takes more of us buying even more stuff to keep employment up.  Fewer of us consumers can only exacerbate unemployment.  (This makes the slogan "Buy American" even more urgent.)

Higher unemployment = more misery.  And less tax revenue, which = higher deficits and/or less services.  We say we want to cut spending, but when we try (think the recent budget sequester and cuts in air traffic controllers and airport TSA agents) we scream bloody murder.  It's time to "pay up or shut up".  We simply can't have it both ways.

To a point I can see us slipping towards what Europe is experiencing right now.  For years they have been experiencing negative growth.  This is what we have to look forward to.

S