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Economix Blog: Immigration and Social Security

July 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The Social Security Administration says that the immigration bill passed by the Senate would help its coffers, adding $276 billion in revenue over the next 10 years while costing only $33 billion.

Immigration Divide

Weighing the economic claims in the Congressional debate.

But 10 years is a short time when you consider that a vast majority of the new and newly legalized immigrants would be paying into the system during that period and drawing out their Social Security benefits later. That is the problem with attempts to determine the effect of immigration on Social Security in the long haul — every study is going to have some sort of end point, after which people who have paid in are going to start drawing out.

The Social Security Administration’s chief actuary, Stephen C. Goss, says he believes that even 75 years out, there will be a net gain from immigrants, as he wrote in May. That is because their withdrawals will be offset by their children’s contributions.

Such estimates are based on a lot of assumptions, says Paul N. Van de Water, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, like how many children the newcomers are likely to have (higher birth rates among immigrants taper off with time), how many are low-skilled versus high-skilled (low-skilled workers tend to cost the system more, while high-skilled workers pay in more than they get out) and just how many new immigrants are admitted under the bill, all of which are open questions.

“It’s amazing that the actuaries have said it would be positive in the long run,” Mr. Van de Water said. “It’s a lot of moving parts.”

Economists who have studied the issue tend to agree that more immigration is better, but that the effect is small. “There are other better reasons to be for or against more immigration, besides its effect on Social Security,” Mr. Van de Water said.

James P. Smith, an expert on labor markets at the RAND Corporation, added that it was misleading to consider the effect of immigration on Social Security alone. “Immigrants contribute on net to Social Security and health care,” he said. “They’re a drain on state and local budgets, largely because of education. So isolating one program is always a mistake.” (Again, it is hard to estimate the long-term effects even of a drain on education budgets because having more educated workers helps the economy.)

There are also two separate pools to consider — unauthorized immigrants who are here already, about a third of whom pay Social Security taxes, according to government estimates, and the additional immigrants who will arrive through new legal channels. The Center for American Progress, a supporter of immigration reform, says if 70 percent of illegal immigrants are eligible for legal status under the bill, they will contribute $500 billion on net in 36 years — the period that the baby boomers will put a strain on the system.

It does not include the period in which those immigrants themselves begin to draw more heavily on the system. But Adriana Kugler, a former chief economist at the Labor Department and the lead author of that study, said it did not take into account projections that an influx of immigrants would result in higher wages for everyone, nor did it calculate the contributions of offspring. “You could look at a longer horizon, but then the benefit is even greater,” she said.

Republicans have tried to clamp down on the amount that illegal immigrants who paid into the system will be able to withdraw. The Social Security Administration estimates that in 2010 illegal immigrants paid a net contribution of $12 billion, either by working under a fraudulent Social Security number or by using a legitimate Social Security number after overstaying a visa or otherwise losing permission to work. Currently, if such immigrants obtain legal status and can prove their earnings with pay stubs or W-2 forms, they can get credit for those contributions. But the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the Senate bill, which paved the way for passage, would bar them from getting credit for the previous decade’s worth of payments even if they obtain legal status.

“To some extent, it’s a taking by the federal government,” said Marielena Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “The people who are going to be most severely impacted by this are going to be low-income immigrants.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 07/03/2013, on page A17 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Calculating the Effect On Social Security.

Article source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/immigration-and-social-security/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

State of the Art: Remote-Controlled Ball Holds Potential Delights

December 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

But that line could just as well have referred to iPhones and Android phones: “If you build wireless features like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi into a hand-held computer, somebody’s going to turn it into a remote control.”

Or lots of somebodies. Today, app phones can control all kinds of toys, either from across the room or across the Internet: computers, home security cameras, home entertainment systems, cameras, toy cars and toy helicopters. But a start-up called Orbotix had an idea for a remote-controlled toy that was simultaneously far simpler and more complex: a ball.

It’s called the Sphero ($130), and it’s just rolling in from China this week. If it hadn’t been delayed and now back-ordered, it might have been one of the hottest tech gifts of this holiday season.

Orbotix calls the Sphero a “mixed reality game experience,” but that’s like calling a nuclear meltdown an “unrequested fission surplus.” Let’s be honest here: It’s a remote-controlled ball.

You stand in one place, tapping controls on the screen of your Android phone, iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The self-propelled, baseball-size sphere rolls around in the specified direction. You can’t stop yourself from trying to guess how that’s even possible.

There’s a lot of advanced miniature technology inside: a tilt sensor, compass, gyroscope and a little motor with wheels that actually makes the thing roll.

From the outside, though, all you see is a whitish translucent hard plastic ball. It has LED lights inside whose color, intriguingly, you can change using the Sphero app on your phone. They cast a strange, fish-shaped shadow on the top of the ball — the shadow of the moving parts inside.

Before you get started with your freakish new remote-control toy, you have to prepare. Using your phone, you have to download the Sphero control apps from the Apple or Android app store.

Next, you charge the Sphero’s battery, which takes three hours and yields an hour of ball-driving excitement. And where do you plug a charger into a featureless white orb? You don’t. You simply set the Sphero down on its charging stand, which is itself plugged into a power outlet. The stand uses magnetic induction — wireless charging — to rejuice the battery. A very slick trick.

You give the ball a couple of shakes to wake it up. Now, in your phone’s settings, you “pair” your ball to your phone — a one-time Bluetooth ritual that ensures that only your phone controls only your Sphero.

On your phone, you now open the Sphero app. A series of tutorial screens walk you through orienting the ball — teaching it which way is forward. You do this by twisting two fingers on the phone’s screen. As you twist, a weird, glowing blue dot, shining from within, moves around the ball’s equator. When it’s pointing right at you, you’re ready to drive.

You’ll get very familiar with this orientation process — you have to do it again every time the ball shuts itself off to conserve battery power, which happens after five minutes of inactivity.

There are actually five different free apps to install so far — and, according to Orbotix, that’s only the beginning. It has released a software-development kit that lets other people write new apps that make the Sphero do new, as yet unimagined things.

For now, though, here’s what the apps do:

SPHERO You drag your finger around inside a big circle on the screen. The ball instantly rolls in the corresponding direction; your finger’s distance from center controls the speed. A Boost button causes the ball to make an extra vigorous thrust — ideal for getting unstuck from carpet pile or cords trailing across the floor.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d6af297ecab1ef8add2b1d4464188ebd

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,