Aging population and housing

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]So this whole anti-immigration thing is about your quiet lifestyle. You want the world frozen in time to protect your lifestyle.

See, I like it lively and busy. I want change and I want people already born on this earth to do better. Let them come and create something new. And let us be surprised by the new creations.

You may enjoy this article about people retiring in NY:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/realestate/accidental-new-yorkers-grandparents-relocate.html%5B/quote%5D

Interesting article. All but one of these grandparents who relocated to NYC to take care of grandchildren while their parents worked sold very cheap homes in FL to do so. The other sold a home in MD a couple of years after relocating (which isn’t that expensive if located >40 mi from DC). They are ALL paying at least $2750 in monthly rent in NYC/Brooklyn. Unless these grandparents have a really large pension, I can’t see how they can go from minimal housing expense to ~$3K month just for rent. So their children must be paying their rent (or a big portion of it).

What happens when their grandkids get too old to need (or want) a caregiver? Are the children’s parents still going to pay their mom’s (exorbitant) rent every month?

If I was already over 65 yrs old, I would NOT want to sell my <=$170K home to take a chance like this as there are so many variables that could blow up my housing situation. It's sheer folly. Glad that these women are happy in their golden years.

[Anonymous]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Not open borders. Very generous immigration quotas so we don’t have immigrants who live in the shadows.

I know I’m on the minority. That’s why we have 11+ million undocumented residents. Really, how is that good for us? Bad humanitarian situation.[/quote]

Guess what, you legalize the 11 million illegals, you will get 11 million more in no time. You really believe the current illegals will continue working crap minimum or lower wage jobs when they become eligible for full government welfare? No way in hell.

[FlyerInHi]

BG, you’re right, I was thinking the same thing. How did they manage to increase expenses in retirement?
The gist the article is the city has many positives. Very often, news articles leave out the nitty gritty. In this case, how to make it financially.

[FlyerInHi]

Deadzone, we need people like you (but not too many) to make sure that I don’t give away the farm. Plus i get to be the nice guy. Thank you.

I would expect immigrants to join the welfare rolls when they’re eligible. But we can afford it. Plus that won’t last long. They are ambitious people who want to own houses, cars, investments. So they will better themselves beyond the welfare threshold. All and all, it will be good for us.

[CA renter]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Deadzone, we need people like you (but not too many) to make sure that I don’t give away the farm. Plus i get to be the nice guy. Thank you.

I would expect immigrants to join the welfare rolls when they’re eligible. But we can afford it. Plus that won’t last long. They are ambitious people who want to own houses, cars, investments. So they will better themselves beyond the welfare threshold. All and all, it will be good for us.[/quote]

We can’t afford it, Brian. That’s what you’re missing. We can barely afford to take care of our own citizens (we can’t afford it, which is why so many are sinking).

Our infrastructure can’t handle it, and our labor market can’t handle it because we have a massive surplus of labor as it is. And most Latin American immigrants are much more frugal than US-born citizens (wisely so), so they don’t contribute as much to the economy on the consumption/demand side.

Please be realistic, Brian.

[spdrun]

That’s good to have some people in the US which are not good little sheep, consuming cheaply-made Chinese crap like it was water.

It’s NOT everyone’s social fucking duty to spend, spend, spend till they drop.

[Anonymous]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Deadzone, we need people like you (but not too many) to make sure that I don’t give away the farm. Plus i get to be the nice guy. Thank you.

I would expect immigrants to join the welfare rolls when they’re eligible. But we can afford it. Plus that won’t last long. They are ambitious people who want to own houses, cars, investments. So they will better themselves beyond the welfare threshold. All and all, it will be good for us.[/quote]

You lack a practical side to your brain obviously. When those 11 million new immigrants become legal, they won’t do the crap work anymore that our service economy depends on. So now you get 11 million new illegals to take their place, it never ends. Plus as CAR says, we can’t afford it as a society. Starting with my generation (X?) if not sooner, we will have limited to no retirement income. The masses are going to be highly dependent on government aid during their golden years.

So while it is obvious the economy relies on immigrants to do service work, it is also critical that they are deemed as temporary workers and return to their country of origin after a period so that we are not supporting them for the rest of their lives. Government should sponsor this via work visas and workers are paying taxes and provided basic worker protections.

Any current illegal should have to go back to their country and apply for work visa just like everybody else. They should not get preferential treatment for lying and cheating their way into the country.

[spdrun]

Blah-blah-blah. Stupid laws and borders meant to keep the rich rich and the poor poor SHOULD be lied and cheated around. Ideally, anyone would be able to live anywhere in the world without too much red tape. I wonder if, in the 80s, you thought that people who escaped from East Germany should be repatriated by force. After all, they broke the law, right?

I can’t say this as strongly as: fuck the law. Fuck the people who made the laws. Just because it’s a law doesn’t mean there’s honor in respecting it. The people are in the country. Most of them have worked productively and kept their noses free of crime. It’s a done deal — time to legalize them. Future border and immigration policy should be a matter for debate, of course.

Also, most service worker immigrants are fairly young. Why not give them a shot at permanent residence? Chances are, if they’re legal, they’ll start out low, but some of them will get an education and move on to higher-paying jobs. More money into the social security system. What we’ll pay them after age 65-70 will be a comparative pittance.

[Anonymous]

This invasion of immigrant children in San Diego sounds terrible.

I’m sure glad the Border Patrol station is south of Temecula.

[Anonymous]

We already have an immigration policy. If we don’t enforce it, as any other laws, then the policy is meaningless.

Again, those on this board arguing for amnesty are for open borders for one reason or another. But in the real world no country has open borders (don’t use EU as an example). Certainly no country has open immigration policy towards citizens of 3rd world countries. Why do you suppose that is?

[bearishgurl]

[quote=spdrun] . . . most service worker immigrants are fairly young. Why not give them a shot at permanent residence? Chances are, if they’re legal, they’ll start out low, but some of them will get an education and move on to higher-paying jobs. More money into the social security system. What we’ll pay them after age 65-70 will be a comparative pittance.[/quote]

spd, only the very highest earners will put a substantial amount in the OASDI program of Social Security thru wages paid to them. A younger worker in the US only needs ten years worth of quarters to qualify for a SS benefit between 70 and 73 years old. Most immigrant workers crossing the border every day aren’t high-wage workers but service workers who will ostensibly be eligible for a SS benefit after ten years worth of quarters of wages reported, provided the SS number they are using to work is legitimately theirs. If they live past 75 years old (and the OASDI program is still in place at that time), this lower wage-earning group will have already likely collected the entire amount of their contributions thru their wages in monthly benefits. So, your last sentence is incorrect in that this (younger – GenX and below) group of current workers will be able to qualify for a SS benefit between 65 – 70 years old and that their benefit will be a “mere pittance” in relation to the monthly benefit they will receive if they live long enough.

I don’t believe for one second that there aren’t enough US born workers who reside on the US side of the border to take these thousands of SD County service jobs occupied by Mexican Nationals who have a legal right to work in the US. For example, there are a LOT of boomers (and older) who wouldn’t mind at all working as a laundry supervisor at the Hotel Del to supplement their (often meager) income or working in ANY of the many service-sector jobs in the county. The working conditions are actually pretty good at many of the hotels and restaurants throughout the county, especially those located in busy tourist areas. If the work visa program was not in place for this HUGE group crossing the border every day, these employers would HAVE to hire resident US citizens. They would have no choice. What has been happening over the last 40+ years (and much more pronounced the last 20 years) is that the vast majority of these jobs (a portion of these positions represented, with accompanying benefits) are given to border-crossing work visa holders and thus those US citizens who are “retired” or “semi-retired” or college students who need extra income know they won’t be considered for them so have given up. The employers use the guise of fluent Spanish being “required” for these jobs as a roadblock for many US-citizen applicants but that may only be partially true for customer service positions. It is NOT true for housekeeping, laundry and kitchen positions, among many other non-customer service positions.

I believe entry into service industry and retail positions has been “sewed up” in SD Metro and SD South/East County (and likely North County, as well) to the point where anyone who is not fluently bilingual cannot be considered for a job and that is just plain wrong and discriminatory because this is the US.

Service employers in SD County like the current system of having a never-ending supply of daily “border crossers” to choose from for their hiring-pool composition. They know this pool of applicants is able to live relatively cheaply, has other relatives back in MX to take care of their small children and don’t want anything changed in this regard. This hiring practice has resulted in their workforces consisting of 90-95% of ONE race/Nationality of employees and they don’t care. None of our state representatives have proposed any solutions to this problem because Americans don’t file EEOC claims and the like for “failure to hire.” Why? They have been conditioned to become complacent over the issue in past decades and thus no longer attempt to apply for these jobs. They know that if they should be successfully hired in the laundry room of XYZ 5-Star Hotel in SD County that they will be the black or the white sheep of ALL of their co-workers who are constantly speaking another language at the worksite in front of them and don’t want to deal with it.

In other major cities much further from the int’l border, hotel, restaurant and retail staff is comprised of a much broader range of employee races and Nationalities. The reality is that this huge “border-crossing” group DOES take good jobs away from Americans who want them but the employer-sanctioned practice of hiring only one race/Nationality for these jobs will continue to go on into perpetuity SD County, because, in all practicality, they CAN and have gotten away with this practice for many, many years.

[spdrun]

Comparing San Diego to NYC or Boston, I’ve seen more first-generation immigrants working in hotels and restaurants in either of those two Northeastern cities than in San Diego.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=spdrun]Comparing San Diego to NYC or Boston, I’ve seen more first-generation immigrants working in hotels and restaurants in either of those two Northeastern cities than in San Diego.[/quote]spd, you were seeing the customer service end when you were here in SD. There are a LOT of bilinguals of every race/Nationality here. A 5-Star restaurant/hotel MAY have wait staff, bartenders and front desk staff of various races/Nationalities but the employees occupying nearly ALL of their other service jobs are predominately of ONE or TWO (incl Filipino) nationalities. A staff position which makes regular and good tips is difficult to obtain without at least 10 years experience, preferably local, with references (especially for dinner shift), so therefore it is not an entry-level service job. A few of these customer service jobs are occupied by border crossers where almost ALL of the other operational service-sector jobs are (which comprises 80-90% of the service jobs in any one establishment).

[Anonymous]

Excellent summary of the situation BG. Only point that I would contend is you implied the border crossers working in San Diego have work visa. That is not typically the case in my experience. I know many who have border crossing card (i.e. tourist Visa) but are working illegally. Absent a green card, what work permit or work visa do you think they have that would legally allow them to work in hotel/restaurant industry?

[flyer]

It will be interesting to see how these issues play out as more and more of the population retires (either by choice–or by being forced out of the
workplace–due to age, health, downsizing, offshoring, etc.)

I know we Piggs are well prepared, but when you consider the median net retirement savings in America is less than $60K, it does make you wonder what the future holds for the population as a whole.

[Author]

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