Sunday, May 10, 2009

Birthrates and Paying For a Leftist Agenda

Yesterday, RS McCain compared the birth rates in states that have sanctioned gay marriage to five states who favor traditional marriage. In my post, I began making the case that while the Left can’t be bothered having their own children, they certainly have plans for ours.

Margaret Thatcher pointed out socialism’s fatal flaw, “sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” In other words, the Left needs taxes, on an ever growing scale, to fund their agenda. They have only three means of raising taxes; soak the “rich”, open the boarders or birth more babies.

Our closest global cousin is the United Kingdom. Auntie Elizabeth’s children enjoy the kind of birth to cradle socialism that our own Lefties want to bring to the United States. I think, therefore, it is fair to take a look at how it is working out for the Brits.

According to Wikipedia, the United Kingdom’s birthrate as of 2008 was 1.66, far below the replacement rate. Strike one.

However, Wiki also tells us “The birth rate is higher amongst foreign-born women than UK-born women, although it is only the latter which is rising.[97]” So, the United Kingdom, like much of Europe, has decided to import their taxpayers. The problem is, when the fastest growing segment of the population uses more services relative to the native population and has higher rates of unemployment, they really aren’t contributing to the bottom line. Strike two.

Faced with increased demand for services from a population that no longer knows how to care for itself, the UK raised its top tax rate to 61 percent. One quote sums it up:

“The Government has taken tax up to 50 per cent, and if it goes to 51 I will be back in America," he said at the weekend. "We've got 3.5 million layabouts on benefits, and I'm 76, getting up at 6am to go to work to keep them. Let's get everybody back to work so we can save a couple of billion and cut tax, not keep sticking it up."
Sir Michael Caine

Strike three.

When something sounds too good to be true, it is, and the Leftist Social Utopia is no exception. Don’t forget, once upon a time Social Security seemed like a good idea. But Social Security was predicated on people working until they died and never even collecting it. Birthrates were higher then and people worked longer. Now the system is broken but too many people have grown dependent on the state to scrap it. Why would we trust anymore of our personal welfare to a government that can’t deliver on its promises?

h/t The Other McCain

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