Cato Study: would our nation be broke without immigrants?

[Turner2099]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

The study encompassed only 3 years of Biden and 2024 didn't count apparently but would have been extremely negative to the Cato Study reporting as were all of Biden's years as President. The Cato Study is a bullshit report not reporting facts.

Mathematically, one year shouldn't move numbers measured over 30 years much, if at all.

[CPT Savajo]

Originally Posted by Turner2099

Mathematically, one year shouldn't move numbers measured over 30 years much, if at all.

Forget 30 years, 16 years of combined destruction was all that was needed. Under Obama, Trump, and Biden's Presidency's the United States has printed and borrowed more currency than ALL other United States Presidents COMBINED who came before them. Ponder that. Can you say BANKRUPT?

If the CEO of the Cato Institute was truly a Libertarian he should be telling you this.

[Turner2099]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

The Federal Reserve and the bought-and-paid-for politicians have put the United States in a debt crisis. If the immigrants have saved America then why is America in trillions upon trillions of dollars in debt? The immigrants have contributed to America's debt crisis. America's unfunded liabilites add up to what 150-200 Trillion in debt that cannot be mathematically paid back. Can you say BANKRUPT? The US Dollar can go to $0 but physical gold or silver cannot.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/#

Also from the Cato Institute, March 20, 2024:

"The Financial Report of the United States Government (also known as the Financial Report) raises significant concerns about the country’s long‐​term financial health. Unsustainable deficits contribute to rising debt levels as spending growth outpaces revenue growth at an accelerating pace. Over the next 75 years, US taxpayers face over $73 trillion in long‐​term unfunded obligations. What’s more, this unfunded obligation is entirely driven by only two federal government programs: Medicare and Social Security."

From The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

"The Social Security trustees’ report highlights how immigration improves the trust fund’s solvency. Social Security’s actuaries estimate the impact of immigration over 25, 50, and 75 years, showing in all time periods that as immigration increases, the trust fund deficit decreases. The Social Security Administration (SSA) assumes average net immigration of about 1.2 million people per year in its projections. Immigration higher than that level will help the trust fund balances as compared to the most recent estimates done in 2024, while lower-than-expected immigration will increase the funding shortfall."

From The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College:

"On the Medicare side, the potential for positive impact exists largely because immigrants spend less on health care than those born in the United States. Figure 1 shows the result as tabulated by KFF for a nationally representative sample. Across every single type of health expenditure, immigrants spend less than the native-born population. Summing across all the categories, immigrants spend just two-thirds what the native born do – $4,875 versus $7,277. And while Figure 1 applies to all immigrants – not just those 65 plus – that same study found that those on Medicare spend just 60 percent of native-born folks. In addition to this lower spending, immigrants also contribute a disproportionate share to Medicare, if for no other reason than they are more likely to be working-age taxpayers than the native born."

https://www.cato.org/blog/medicare-s...ed-obligations

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/immigrants...%20institution.

https://crr.bc.edu/the-truth-about-i...cial-security/

[Turner2099]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

LMFAO are you serious? You're kidding right? The United States is the most bankrupt nation on the PLANET. How is bringing in broke 3rd world economic migrants going to prevent a debt crisis in the United States when the USD as the global world reserve currency is losing reserve status when compared to physical gold holdings held by Central Banks? The United States is living through a debt crisis right now and it's going to get a lot worse. Don't worry higher inflation is coming soon and everyone is going to feel it. The immigrants that came here legally or illegally don't know what they walked in to. Especially the ones that came here illegally.

Wording is everything. Their heading could have been written better.

From the report:

How Immigration Has Prevented a Debt Crisis

Immigrant taxes exceeded the cost of immigrant expenditures, such that removing immigrants would have increased US debt. But as noted earlier, removing the US immigrant population would not only deprive the government of tax revenue, it would also deprive the country of workers and shrink the US economy. This is not a trivial matter. Immigrants’ share of total earned income grew from 8 percent to 17 percent from 1994 to 2023. Moreover, immigrants’ contribution to the economy is disproportionate to their share of the population, meaning that losing them would shrink the economy even more than losing a random group of Americans. GDP would shrink drastically without immigrants—by at least $4.8 trillion in 2023—so the negative effect on government finances from fewer immigrants is manifested in more debt and a much smaller economy.

Figure 38 shows the trajectory of US debt with and without immigrants as a percentage of GDP from 1994 to 2023.52 By 2023, US debt at all levels would have been approximately 205 percent of GDP—75 percentage points higher without immigrants. This estimate is based on immigrants’ share of total earned income as a proxy for the share of GDP that immigrants create, so it understates the true effect by ignoring the indirect ways in which immigrants make US-born workers more productive, such as through increased investment, entrepreneurship, and skill complementarities. It also ignores how much higher interest rates would have been at such higher levels of debt.

Debt at 200 percent of GDP could trigger very negative fiscal and economic consequences. Some analysts believe that, at this threshold, the United States will face a debt crisis. Researchers at the Penn Wharton Budget Model reported in 2023 that “the US [federal] debt held by the public cannot exceed about 200 percent of GDP” without default, monetization (inflation), or economic catastrophe.54 Figure 38 depicts estimated total government debt without the positive fiscal effect of immigrants; though it includes some state and local debt, 91 percent of public debt is federal public debt. In other words, immigrants might have already prevented a debt crisis in the United States. Other analysts are less sure of whether 200 percent—or another threshold—would mean a crisis at that scale without other changes. Regardless, there is a broad consensus that debt rising so far above GDP would have serious negative effects on economic growth and fiscal health.

[Turner2099]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

Forget 30 years, 16 years of combined destruction was all that was needed. Under Obama, Trump, and Biden's Presidency's the United States has printed and borrowed more currency than ALL other United States Presidents COMBINED who came before them. Ponder that. Can you say BANKRUPT?

If the CEO of the Cato Institute was truly a Libertarian he should be telling you this.

Which he very well might, but that's not relevant to the report referenced in this thread.

[rooster]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

...I don't trust the numbers in the Cato report from 1994 to 2023 because the numbers can always be massaged.....

Originally Posted by rooster

Similarly, your lack of "trust" is without merit. The source here is impeccable. Your judgments of it are not based on any real fact.

.

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

My lack of trust comes with plenty of merit. Giving trust freely only to see that the inverse is true is what leads to mistrust. Perhaps you should try reading between the lines rooster.

Ya know....if almost ANYONE else had said this, I would have given them the benefit of the doubt. But you? No fuggin way. Your "reading between the lines" leads to things like...we didn't walk on the moon....and 8 million people kept their mouths shut when the CIA killed JFK...and Ilhan Omar faked the attack on her.

These ideas...ain't got one bit o' "merit." While the CATO Institute and Rand Corp....pretty fair amount.
.

[CPT Savajo]

Originally Posted by Tiny

The government first began gathering detailed information on benefits use by citizenship status in 1994. The data show:

For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.

Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.

Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level.

These results, which do not account for any of immigration’s indirect, tax-revenue-boosting effects on economic growth, represent the lower bound of the positive fiscal effects. Even by this conservative analysis, immigrants may have already prevented a fiscal crisis.


https://www.cato.org/white-paper/imm...gets-1994-2023

Immigrants like Elon Musk. Elon Musk generated the lions share of that $14.5 trillion, probably 98% wouldn't you say? It's immigrants like Elon Musk that the article represents. The uber rich immigrant, the few. Probably 5 rich immigrants account for all of it.

[rooster]

Originally Posted by rooster

...Your "reading between the lines" leads to things like...we didn't walk on the moon....and 8 million people kept their mouths shut when the CIA killed JFK...and Ilhan Omar faked the attack on her.....
.

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

Immigrants like Elon Musk. Elon Musk generated the lions share of that $14.5 trillion, probably 98% wouldn't you say? It's immigrants like Elon Musk that the article represents. The uber rich immigrant, the few. Probably 5 rich immigrants account for all of it.

Nope! It was Martians!

Really. It's true. Lookit up.

Why TF do you think Elon wants to go there so bad?

.

[RX792P]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

Immigrants like Elon Musk. Elon Musk generated the lions share of that $14.5 trillion, probably 98% wouldn't you say? It's immigrants like Elon Musk that the article represents. The uber rich immigrant, the few. Probably 5 rich immigrants account for all of it.

sorry for snark, but couldn't resist...

Well, one immigrant did just contribute $28 million to the economy.

Does Musk's contribution get split since he holds both US and Canadian citizenship?

[CPT Savajo]

Originally Posted by RX792P

sorry for snark, but couldn't resist...

Well, one immigrant did just contribute $28 million to the economy.

Does Musk's contribution get split since he holds both US and Canadian citizenship?

This isn't an Obama apology tour so you can save the apology. The US gets all of Musk's contributions. Forget Canada, if Trump has to deport Elon Musk he'll send him to a South African farm in the hands of Julius Malema. Musk was born in a BRICS nation.

[CPT Savajo]

Originally Posted by rooster

Nope! It was Martians!

Really. It's true. Lookit up.

Why TF do you think Elon wants to go there so bad?

.

The lack of the ability to read between the lines is causing you to miss the hidden meaning of the OP's original article rooster. It is only the rich immigrants who're represented in the figures. Elon Musk and the top 10 other rich immigrants close to him in net worth account for that $14 Trillion, the bottom 95% of poor immigrants in the US account for the .5 of that $14.5 trillion, a drop in the bucket. That accounts for the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. All the wealth consolidated into the hands of the few.

[pxmcc]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

The lack of the ability to read between the lines is causing you to miss the hidden meaning of the OP's original article rooster. It is only the rich immigrants who're represented in the figures. Elon Musk and the top 10 other rich immigrants close to him in net worth account for that $14 Trillion, the bottom 95% of poor immigrants in the US account for the .5 of that $14.5 trillion, a drop in the bucket. That accounts for the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. All the wealth consolidated into the hands of the few.

AI does not concur, not in the least..


You said:
how much do immigrants not in the top 1% contribute to GDP in the U.S.?

ChatGPT:
"There isn’t a straightforward official figure that isolates how much non-top-1% immigrants specifically contribute to U.S. GDP, because most economic analyses report aggregate immigrant contributions without breaking them down by income percentile (e.g., excluding the top 1% of earners). However, we can combine what we do know about immigrant share of economic output and what research shows about immigrant income distribution to get a reasonable picture of the scale.

📊 What We Do Know About Immigrant Contribution to GDP
Overall immigrant contribution:

In 2023, immigrants (foreign-born individuals) accounted for roughly 18 % of total U.S. economic output—about $2.1 trillion in GDP contributions—which is larger than their share of the population (~14 %).

This figure includes immigrants of all income levels and types of work (low-wage, middle-income, and high-income earners).

📉 What We Know About Immigrant Income Distribution
Research based on U.S. Census data shows that immigrants are present across the entire income spectrum, including in the top income groups:

About 1.1 % of immigrant workers are in the top 1 % of earners (similar share as U.S.-born workers).

This means the vast majority of immigrant workers are not in the top 1 % of income distribution.

🧠 Putting It Together (Non-Top-1 % Immigrant Contribution)
Since:

Immigrants overall contribute ~18 % of U.S. GDP, and

Only about ~1 % of immigrant workers are in the top 1 % income bracket,

we can reasonably infer that the immigrant share of GDP driven by non-top-1 % immigrants is very close to that same ~17–18 % total, minus a small slice attributable to the highest earners.

To make it intuitive:

If immigrants contribute ~18 % of U.S. GDP and only ~1 % of immigrant earners are in the top-1% bracket of income, then non-top-1 % immigrants likely account for ~17–18 % of total U.S. GDP.
(The precise share from top-1 % immigrant earners is relatively small compared with the overall value, so the reduction from total immigrant share would be minor.)

Bottom Line

💡 Most of the immigrant contribution to U.S. GDP comes from immigrants outside the top 1 % of earners. Given that immigrants overall contributed about 18 % of GDP and only a tiny proportion of them are in the top income bracket, you can reasonably estimate that non-top-1 % immigrants contribute roughly ~17–18 % of U.S. GDP."

[CPT Savajo]

Originally Posted by pxmcc

AI does not concur, not in the least..


You said:
how much do immigrants not in the top 1% contribute to GDP in the U.S.?

ChatGPT:
"There isn’t a straightforward official figure that isolates how much non-top-1% immigrants specifically contribute to U.S. GDP, because most economic analyses report aggregate immigrant contributions without breaking them down by income percentile (e.g., excluding the top 1% of earners). However, we can combine what we do know about immigrant share of economic output and what research shows about immigrant income distribution to get a reasonable picture of the scale.

�� What We Do Know About Immigrant Contribution to GDP
Overall immigrant contribution:

In 2023, immigrants (foreign-born individuals) accounted for roughly 18 % of total U.S. economic output—about $2.1 trillion in GDP contributions—which is larger than their share of the population (~14 %).

This figure includes immigrants of all income levels and types of work (low-wage, middle-income, and high-income earners).

�� What We Know About Immigrant Income Distribution
Research based on U.S. Census data shows that immigrants are present across the entire income spectrum, including in the top income groups:

About 1.1 % of immigrant workers are in the top 1 % of earners (similar share as U.S.-born workers).

This means the vast majority of immigrant workers are not in the top 1 % of income distribution.

�� Putting It Together (Non-Top-1 % Immigrant Contribution)
Since:

Immigrants overall contribute ~18 % of U.S. GDP, and

Only about ~1 % of immigrant workers are in the top 1 % income bracket,

we can reasonably infer that the immigrant share of GDP driven by non-top-1 % immigrants is very close to that same ~17–18 % total, minus a small slice attributable to the highest earners.

To make it intuitive:

If immigrants contribute ~18 % of U.S. GDP and only ~1 % of immigrant earners are in the top-1% bracket of income, then non-top-1 % immigrants likely account for ~17–18 % of total U.S. GDP.
(The precise share from top-1 % immigrant earners is relatively small compared with the overall value, so the reduction from total immigrant share would be minor.)

Bottom Line

�� Most of the immigrant contribution to U.S. GDP comes from immigrants outside the top 1 % of earners. Given that immigrants overall contributed about 18 % of GDP and only a tiny proportion of them are in the top income bracket, you can reasonably estimate that non-top-1 % immigrants contribute roughly ~17–18 % of U.S. GDP."

AI was never apart of the conversation. AI cannot account for human corruption and ficticious reporting. The AI will deceive you. Do not be fooled.

[Turner2099]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

This isn't an Obama apology tour so you can save the apology. The US gets all of Musk's contributions. Forget Canada, if Trump has to deport Elon Musk he'll send him to a South African farm in the hands of Julius Malema. Musk was born in a BRICS nation.

That's actually not Musk's tax contribution--it's Tesla's. Musk owns 11-15% of Tesla. He receives no salary from Tesla, so pays no income tax, which means no Social Security tax and no Medicare tax, either.

Much of Musk's net worth is from SpaceX, which pays virtually no tax. Musk owns 42% of SpaceX. No salary there, either, so no income, Social Security, or Medicare tax.

The two largest customers of SpaceX are NASA and the Department of Defense, which are the primary drivers of SpaceX's launch business. The US Government pays SpaceX.

https://www.google.com/search?q=what...hrome&ie=UTF-8

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+...hrome&ie=UTF-8

https://www.google.com/search?q=are+...t=gws-wiz-serp

[Turner2099]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

The lack of the ability to read between the lines is causing you to miss the hidden meaning of the OP's original article rooster. It is only the rich immigrants who're represented in the figures. Elon Musk and the top 10 other rich immigrants close to him in net worth account for that $14 Trillion, the bottom 95% of poor immigrants in the US account for the .5 of that $14.5 trillion, a drop in the bucket. That accounts for the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. All the wealth consolidated into the hands of the few.

Net worth doesn't have an impact here, if that's what you mean.

Using Elon Musk as an example, his $800b+ net worth is made up of virtually only stock in Tesla and SpaceX. He pays no tax on that, nor does he pay any capital gains taxes because he doesn't sell stock.

If he needs money for business or personal reasons, he borrows against his stock. This money is not considered income, so there are no tax liabilities. If anything, he can deduct the interest from the loans against any taxes he may owe.

This example is typical of very rich people, so other high net worth immigrants will most likely follow the same pattern.

As far as what they spend into the economy, it probably won't come close to what the sum total of what the remaining immigrants spend.

https://www.google.com/search?q=does...hrome&ie=UTF-8