Right now, the social security system works, does it not? Just from the perspective of a citizen ... I have health and unemployment insurance, good public transportation, I won't get shot in public, the police will less likely kill me, etc.

I really don't get your point. Because there's stuff that could go wrong, the good things we have are irrelevant?

The second part is, well, like asking why should we sit in the lockdown and wear masks when not a lot of people are dying of covid right now. It's not something that may happen, it will happen if evething goes as it goes and no one makes anything about it

We know what happens with Covid due to science, modeling and stuff. But a virus spread is oretty easy to model compared to a society and its economy. So until now it worked really nice, haven't seen a lot of studies saying it won't in the future, rather the opposite.

Edit: or do you mean because we're getting older and hace fewer kids? Yeah that'll be a challange. Bit eventually every country will experience that, so lets figure out how to deal with this! And yeah, also let immigrants in ;)

No, not at all. But you don't have the same party ruling in U.S. for several decades. That would be legally possible, but that just doesn't happen due to how the system works.

> So until now it worked really nice

I'm not very well versed with the statistics here. But my impression is that social security is on decline. Welfare benefits sum grows much slower than inflation, and there have been studies that it's already not enough to even get the necessary nutrients. So it is a tendency that we see right now, not a prediction about some possible catastrophic event in future.

> And yeah, also let immigrants in ;)

There will be no immigrants if economy is weak, that's the thing.

Look at state/city level and you will have a different picture of United States.

And for Europe, let's take France as example. Here are the ruling party changes in the last forty years : 81,86,88,93,97,02,12,17

Do you know the average tenure of the current American senators ?

It depends on what country you're talking about, but looking at which party is the biggest/who the prime minister is and summing it up as the "ruling party" is a gross oversimplification of the power dynamics in a parliamentary democracy. The power balance shifting between smaller parties can bring about huge effects on the government and the policies that are passed.

But again, just because social security does not deliver all it promises - throw it out completely? I don't get that point. Tendencies that exist right now can be corrected.

And that wouldn't even be more expensive, but at least in Germany, the money would just have to be distributed more fairly. For example, you get the same amount of child benefits no matter what you earn. That doesn't make sense. So change that a little and lots of people won't notice while lots of people will do way better.

Americans think it's racist but actually it is just business.

how is this racist?

Wrong for Germany, those immigrants from 2015 integrated well into the workforce.

I have no horse in this race, but I'm curious about a source for this, mostly for how it's been measured.

It says that by 2020 half of them has found a job, which is way higher unemployment rate than is average in Germany though.

But even if they don't find jobs themselves, at the very least they have children which is critical for sustainability of a country with inverted population pyramid.

Half of immigrants being unemployed after half a decade is bad, especially compared with America, where immigrants are more likely to find themselves employed than the native born [1].

> if they don't find jobs themselves, at the very least they have children

Sure. But I'd hate to do the math on how much each of those children cost the German taxpayer.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LZTRCwAAQBAJ&oi=...

And it's not like refugees were allowed to look for jobs immediately, getting work permit for a refugee takes awfully long in Germany.

Cost of their children is pretty much the same as for German children. And it's a necessary expenditure, otherwise the said taxpayers are going to have a pretty rough time when they retire.

If the principal benefit of a refugee couple is their children, the the cost of accepting and maintaining that couple is part of the cost of that child.

I believe there is a moral responsibility, on the part of rich countries, to accept some refugees. But we have to be honest that it is usually charitable work. Framing it as economically beneficial can be misleading and lead to a backlash when the promised gains don't pan out.

Funny how often people start a sentence with "we got to be honest" and finish it with something that has long been debunked.