Quality of Life

"I reckon that one of the things that upholds Beagles quality of life is his social security check.  What keeps it solvent is young people joining the work place and paying their FICA taxes.  Without immigrants we will not have enough young people to do that." - Uncle Ken

Actually, I wasn't thinking about my Social Security check when I said "quality of life".  I suppose that financial security is one aspect of the quality of life, but I was thinking more about things like crime, traffic, and pollution, all the problems that become worse as the population density increases.  Since the alarm was raised back in the 50s, the US and Europe have done a pretty good job of bringing their population growth under control, while most of the Third World countries have kept cranking out babies like there's no tomorrow.  So why should we bear the consequences of other people's irresponsible conduct?  This must be what that famous poem about the Statue of Liberty was talking about:
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yeaning to be free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shores.
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Like the Pledge of Allegiance, and quotes from the Bible and Shakespeare, we all grew up hearing this so often that we have committed it to memory.  But, if you really think about it, why would anybody in their right mind want something like this to happen to their homeland?  We already have more of those kinds of people than we can take care of in this country, we certainly don't need to import more of them.

Getting back to Social Security, I never expected to get a dime out of that Ponzi scheme, so anything I get is just found money.  I considered not signing up for it when I became eligible, but then
I thought that, if I don't collect it, somebody else will.  Why shouldn't I get my share before it's all gone?