Long Term Worries

With all the attention being given to President Bush's too little too late plan for assimilating millions of Hispanic law breakers, there is an aspect to it that is not being given much thought. After Bush won reelection he spent an entire year trying to get the nation and our congress interested in doing something about Social Security and Medicare and the obvious demographic fact that we are, as a nation, growing older and our government has made very specific promises to those over 65. He failed in this effort, but we are faced with the inevitable clash that is going to come when we ask our young workers to support more and more elderly with higher and higher taxes. Now consider how much worse this is going to be when a larger and larger percentage of the workforce is low-paying, poorly educated, and essentially untaxed. We have constructed our tax code so that low incomes are largely exempt from income tax. Where is the money going to come from to honor our commitments to the elderly. It is going to be fun watching our gutless politicians deciding whether to screw the poor or the old folks.