As you know, my paramount focus is providing retirees with the vital information they need to live a successful, healthy, secure life during their post-employment days. Thus, my focus on freedom in all forms, and most importantly economic freedom from crushing taxes and big government regulation.
The website, TopRetirements.com has listed its 10 worst states for retirees, these include: Illinois, California, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Nevada. That’s a nasty list! Take a look at the list and think about how many Americans live in those states. Those ten states are home to a third of the American population.
The problem for many of these states is that they are fiscal wastelands, laid low by decades of liberal Democratic control that have run the state coffers bare. Compounding the problem is that many of these states have massive illegal immigrant populations that are using up resources that they aren’t paying taxes for. California: 2.6 million illegal immigrants, New York: 550 thousand, Illinois: 554 thousand, New Jersey: 360 thousand according to the PPIC. Those numbers don’t come without a cost. Those immigrant populations aren’t paying the taxes necessary to fund state expenditures, and therefore the states are supporting retiree populations with fewer and fewer young taxpayers as a percentage of the population.
According to a study by the Federation for American Immigration reform, each American household is paying the equivalent of a $1,117 tax every year to make up for the illegal immigrant population. In a Top Worst Retiree state like Connecticut, where social security benefits are taxed, retirees are paying too.
It’s hard to get angry about immigration though when the federal government has made so many other dreadful mistakes with taxpayer money. Funding an endless war in Afghanistan is an outrage. As Richard Haass writes in the Wall Street Journal:
The costs of the policy are considerable. There are just under 100,000 U.S. troops in the country. This year alone nearly 500 American soldiers have lost their lives. Ten times that many suffered casualties. It is costing U.S. taxpayers between $100 billion and $125 billion a year. The commitment is tying down a significant portion of military and intelligence assets, and it is absorbing significant time and energy of U.S. officials in Washington and abroad.
Blood and treasure are being wasted in Afghanistan, and Americans are borrowing money from China to do it. The costs of this empire-building will be shifted onto America’s future generations. It’s their problem now.
In legislation, Andrew C. McCarthy writes that the GOP still hasn’t figured out what it was elected to do. Allowing more and more spending into what was supposed to be a bill that simply kept taxes at the current rates was a major failure, hopefully the last of the 111th Congress, and there have been many. Looking forward the 112th Congress needs to focus on a major overhaul of the tax system.
And, as Larry Kudlow reminds conservatives:
A great battle will be joined over the spending, taxing, and regulatory mandates of Obamacare, which is probably the biggest job-killer of all. Conservative reformers in the new Congress will force this fight, along with tax, spending, entitlement, and monetary reform. Behind all this, however, the new Tea Party GOP must maintain a message of economic growth and prosperity.
The repeal of Obamacare will be the biggest feat of all for the new Congress, and will take every ounce of political capital to secure. But it is the right thing to do both for America’s retirees who will be looking more and more medical attention as they get older, and for America’s future generations who will be paying for it all.
