Killing the Golden Goose

Killing the Golden Goose
The View from the Middle

No, this isn’t the title of Bill O’Reilly’s newest book, but it should be. Hopefully you’ll all remember the Aesop’s Fable of the Goose that laid a golden egg each morning for its owners making them, as you might guess, quite wealthy. At some point, however, this “one egg per day” delivery system was not enough to gratify the greedy owners. They theorized that the goose must be full of gold to produce its eggs, so they cut the goose open to have access to all the gold at one time. Of course, this just killed the goose and deprived the owners of their steady and even generous income.

The United States is the modern-day version of the Golden Goose. It provides the world with a steady flow of wealth through its generosity and ingenuity. The US economy, for example, is about $20 trillion per year. That’s 25% of the world’s GDP, which is remarkable since we represent only about four percent of the world’s population. Every country in the world wants access to this huge market, and the US is very accommodating, importing about three trillion dollars worth of goods and services from them.

The United States is also the most generous country in the world. The citizens of the US give about $300 billion dollars to charity, which represents 1.4% of our annual GDP. No other country is even close to that number. In fact, the next closest country in terms of giving is New Zealand, whose people give .8% (that’s less than one percent) of their GDP. That’s only about half of the rate of the US citizenry, but since their economy is so much smaller its absolute dollars given is dwarfed by the US.

And our government is also the most generous in the world, giving about $40 billion in 2017 to over 100 countries around the world. And this, of course, is just another example of the citizens of the United States giving, because, as I have told you many, many times – THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO MONEY. Every dollar our government spends or gives away comes from its citizens or is borrowed in our names. We, The United States of America, are truly the world’s Golden Goose.

So, how and why would anyone want to kill this Golden Goose? Let’s look at “how” first. The easiest way to kill this Republic is to just overwhelm it. As this 7,000-person caravan (the nice term for this invading army) approaches our southern border, it’s a good time to talk about the cost of illegal immigration to the United State. And don’t forget, since the government has NO money, the cost is actually yours.

The cost to you for every illegal immigrant is $8,075 per year for a total of $135 billion dollars in 2017. Education is the biggest burden, accounting for $46 billion of that total, with medical care coming in at almost $30 billion. Public education is, of course, free to them, and while they don’t buy many insurance policies, most of these illegal immigrants use our emergency rooms as their primary care providers. Welfare and Judicial costs round out the top four economic burdens this group places on our budgets, combining for another $32 billion per year.

Of course, this assumes that we have only 12.5 million illegal immigrants in our country today. Yale University has just done a study that estimates that we are more likely to have 22 million illegals in our country. If this is true, our annual costs go up from $135 billion a year to about $240 billion. The caravan / invading army of 7,000 alone could cost us over $56 million dollars next year, provided they all get in.

As a country, we need to understand and control these costs. We are compassionate, as our giving proves, but we do not have unlimited resources. We also have a culture, a constitution and an economy to protect. Are these people assimilating into our “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” republic? What are our national employment needs? Do we need more low wage earners? Do we need more professional people? These are all things that must be managed if we are to survive.

But there are some who do not want America to survive as a free people and free market country. Back in 1966, American socialists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven proposed a strategy to overwhelm and thus destroy America’s welfare system through a guaranteed income program. This plan is still being pursued today by many politicians on the left. Unlimited illegal immigration, or even uncontrolled legal immigration, is simply an extension of that “overwhelm the system” strategy that is aimed at our entire constitutional republic.

We are the most compassionate and generous country in the world. We are the Golden Goose. Don’t be fooled into disemboweling the foundations of this great country by the misguided and fallacious promises of those who want to destroy America as we know it. Perfect we are not, but this still is the greatest country in the world which will only get better because of our people, our culture and our constitution.