Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm feeling a little old and crabby. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm not entirely sure I can go ahead and top that introduction. But nevertheless, listeners.
N. Rodgers: I didn't know I was old and crabby until the census data mentioned it actually. The census data does not mention being crabby.
J. Aughenbaugh: They mention it over.
N. Rodgers: Probably just comes comes with being old.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, our long standing listeners know this about the US census because we've discussed this in previous episodes. You got the big census where the results.
N. Rodgers: Every ten years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Every ten years etc. But the cool thing about the United States Census Bureau is they do updates every couple years. We got an update this summer and Nia and I were just utterly fascinated by one of the conclusions and that is the United States population is older than it has ever been. In fact, that was actually the name of an article in The Washington post that Nia and I.
N. Rodgers: Dana Goldstein we want to give credit. Dana Goldstein.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that Nia and I independently, we both read and we're like we need to talk.
N. Rodgers: We have to talk about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: We have to talk about this.
N. Rodgers: What's the median age? Let's start with that Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, so the median age is 38.
N. Rodgers: It's 38.9.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's closer to 39, yes.
N. Rodgers: Which is the census world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is important.
N. Rodgers: Is important just is so important in the sense.
J. Aughenbaugh: As we'll talk about in terms of public policy, it's also extremely important in public policy but we'll get there in just a moment.
N. Rodgers: Well, and we should note for the record, for listeners that is 2022 data.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Data is always, with the census is always six months behind because they have to compile it and then they have to publish it. That's the most recent population data that we have for the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, the big deal about all of this was that in a mere 42 years, the median age has increased in the United States by over eight years. In 1980, the median age was 30. In 2000, the median age was 35, so in a mere 22 years, the median age in the United States has gone up almost four years.
N. Rodgers: That's crazy. When people say our population is aging, that's what they mean.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The reason that we're aging, we going to age to start with, is that there's no younger people at the other end of the scale to balance out median, so how do we get to medians Aughie? Do little math for folks who don't understand how we get to a median age.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, so let's just say for instance you have nine people, and they all are roughly different ages. If you order them, either youngest to oldest, oldest to youngest, the median would be the fifth person. Would be the fifth person. Whether it'd be the fifth oldest, fifth youngest, that would be the median.
N. Rodgers: As opposed to the mean.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Which is adding all their ages together and dividing by nine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which might skew the results a little. What you're trying to find is who's in the middle.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who's in the middle. If you took just that middle person in the United States, and by the way, that would be rather difficult because Nia, how many people are there in the United States?
N. Rodgers: Three hundred and thirty six million, I think.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah and change, but nevertheless. You're talking about that 183 million person is the median.
N. Rodgers: But you get that. But if everybody in that nine group, let's say that nine group of people, instead of starting at age two and going to age 70, they started age 50, and go to age 70.
J. Aughenbaugh: Seventy, yes.
N. Rodgers: And the median gets pushed up age. Just finding the middle and that's a different place.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's why, for instance, the median age is generally viewed by demographers and statisticians to be a more, if you will, precise, if you will accurate depiction of how old a nation's population actually is.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, and we're not having babies.
J. Aughenbaugh: The median age we have.
N. Rodgers: And we have extraordinary medical.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I mean, now people are living longer. People are living longer and younger people aren't having kids and so the skew of that pushes.
J. Aughenbaugh: The median age even higher. Nia, you just mentioned.
N. Rodgers: This is going to get worse. It's not going to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, unless some trends change but you mentioned two trend lines that help explain why the median age has increased so dramatically, so quickly in the United States. One, because of advances in medical knowledge. People are not dying as young as they used to. Now, many of us would say that's a good thing.
N. Rodgers: Especially those of us who are.
J. Aughenbaugh: Getting closer.
N. Rodgers: Closer to that end of the scale that the younger end of the scale.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Nia, you mentioned a second trend. Younger people in the United States are having fewer babies or they are waiting until they are older to have children. We're getting significant gaps between when younger people have kids or when they are biologically ready to have kids until they actually do. That's significant because again, we know this from medical science. The older you are when you try to first start to have kids, the more difficult it is.
N. Rodgers: Smaller the families.
J. Aughenbaugh: The smaller the families.
N. Rodgers: The harder it is for a woman to have a child, the less likely she is to have more of them. When she gets that first one, she might have another one, but she's probably going to stop at that point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Either because of age or because of other factors.
J. Aughenbaugh: Another trend line. Various, if you will policies, presidential administrations have made it difficult for immigrants to come into the United States. Typically, the median age of immigrants is younger. Okay.
N. Rodgers: They have larger families.
J. Aughenbaugh: They have larger family.
N. Rodgers: Generally.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Because they are now in a country where they feel more confident, more stable. More rooted.
N. Rodgers: Food is assured. Schooling is assured. There are certain things that are assured which encourage you to have children. One of the things that encourages childbirth is subsidies, is subsidizing children. The government can have enormous effects. For instance, the one child policy in China had a horrific effect long term over their population.
J. Aughenbaugh: In their median age is not as old as the United States but it has increased faster than even the increase in the United States.
N. Rodgers: Because of the one child policy.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. There are a lot of contributing factors. That's what contributes to the median age rising. By the way, there are other factors. We could probably spend another 10, 15 minutes talking about that. But the ramifications of the median age increasing so quickly in the United States in a short period of time. We just wanted to go ahead and explore two effects. Nia the effect that you wanted to explore was politics. Nia, historically, older sub populations in the electorate, tend to vote how?
N. Rodgers: Conservatively?
J. Aughenbaugh: I was going to say conservative or liberal.
N. Rodgers: Conservatively. There's some interesting psychological stuff behind that. Part of it is that they become more entrenched in the system.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It encourages them to encourage the system because they are more entrenched in it than they are when they're younger. How do I put this? People tend to mellow in general, so their politics mellow but also their social interactions mellow, not many bar crawling 80 year olds, you know what I mean? Like your life general tends to be a little more.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, political scientist Robert Putnam describes this evolution, Nia, in terms of social capital. The older you get, the less likely you are to move. You're not going to go to college, you're not going to move to get a job or your first couple jobs, et cetera. When you get older, you tend to have more permanent employment. You have more permanent relationships including perhaps getting married, you start settling down. Then you start making commitments in investments. You commit to another person. You commit to starting a family. You commit to buying a house. You might want to buy a house in a good, safe neighborhood with good schools. As you do that, as you make those commitments, the social capital within that community goes up because now you are interested in, okay, what's going on with your neighbors, what's going on with your neighborhood.
N. Rodgers: City council, school board. Because you're buying in, you're buying into that system. It's become a bigger weight in your life. When you're 20 and you're like, wait, City council did something yesterday. Whatever I rent, I can just move.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. And I'm only going to be here for another couple years.
N. Rodgers: I don't have to care about.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. I live in an apartment and I may not know anybody else in my apartment building and it doesn't bother me in the least. Because as a young person, I will more than likely rent a new place next year.
N. Rodgers: Adopt building community.
J. Aughenbaugh: Community. I may even be in another city, another part of the country. I may even be in another country. You have that. As you have those commitments, what we've seen historically is older people, as you put it, Nia, start believing in the system. They are less likely to go ahead and want to vote for candidates who want to dramatically change the system.
N. Rodgers: It's benefiting them.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's benefiting them,.
N. Rodgers: This system benefits them at that point. Why would they change it? They tend to be more conservative about changing things too. They're like, but things right now benefit me the way they are.
J. Aughenbaugh: Things that you might have railed about when you were younger. Institutions that perhaps you didn't think served you very well. Well, when you get a little bit older you're like, well, that school system is serving me and my family well.
N. Rodgers: Or alternatively, you become so cynical that you're like, there's no good school system. I might as well stay in this one. Either way, the effect is the same.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Right?
N. Rodgers: Which is that you tend to be conservative in your voting. I don't mean by that Democrats turn into Republicans, that's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that Democrats tend to go from, if they were progressively wildly liberal, left, they tend to mellow down to moderate Democrats. Similarly with people on the right, they also tend to moderate, somewhat to less extreme physicians because they realize they're not going to win on the extreme physicians. They become more pragmatic. I think a lot of it is everybody becomes more pragmatic as they get older.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're more willing to compromise because you know that you're not going to necessarily get everything that you want.
N. Rodgers: Right. Because you haven't so far. Life experience has shown you. Especially if you've been in a committed relationship, especially if you've been in a family situation, your iron will just does not rule if you're going to have anything like happiness. There's that, that's a political skew of it.
J. Aughenbaugh: That may have some impact in regards to what policies the various political parties pursue. To give you a recent example, Nia, this summer when I was teaching my public policy class, I had a student who wanted to do their policy paper on the Biden Administration's policy to negotiate drug prices per Medicare. The student was somewhat skeptical that this was a policy that they should support and didn't understand why the Biden Administration would do this. I said, well, first of all, Medicare provides health insurance and health programs for the elderly. I said, and that's a growing segment of the US population, and politicians also know this about the elderly. Historically, they tend to vote in higher percentages than do the younger sub-populations.
N. Rodgers: Which we're going to talk about in another episode why that happens. But it does tend to be the case.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless, this helps explain why the Biden Administration was willing to use some of its scarce political capital to go to war with the pharmaceutical companies about using the sheer leverage of Medicare to go ahead and rein in the costs of prescription drugs, because Medicare is a huge purchaser.
N. Rodgers: It maybe the largest.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of prescription drugs.
N. Rodgers: As a group, it's probably the largest, and they can negotiate. There's power in numbers, that's why if you're trying to put in a union at your place of business, once you get to a certain point, even though the business is trying to union bust, it can't do it because there are so many people.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: There's power in numbers in that sense.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. There is leverage power in numbers, and it's important to a huge sub-population that tends to vote a lot in the United States.
N. Rodgers: Why do older people vote more? Part of it is access to the polls.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They tend to have better access to the polls for a variety of reasons. They're not working or their hours are flexible. They're in jobs that allow them to go vote. There's all these other things, they tend to be more motivated and they tend to be more interested in part because they have the social capital to do that. When you are young and you are hustling and you are trying to make things work and you are doing whatever, your awareness of political issues, political science students aside, because that's their job. But other than them, I'm sure that if you're a political science student and your roommate is in some other subject, when you bring up some crazy thing that's happened in politics, and they go, ahh. You get frustrated, you're like why don't you know these things? Because for them it's not important.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Those things start to become important as you have established other things in your life, and again, taking political science students out of it. But once you're a person who's out in the workplace, and you've got a spouse or a significant other, you've got a home, all those things are
established. You're not hustling to get them anymore, now, you're just paying for them. But now you're opening up the access for you to start thinking about.
J. Aughenbaugh: Your priorities change. Let's face it. When you are younger, and you're in college, or even if you don't go to college, you're not thinking necessarily about taxes, you're not thinking about social security. You're not necessarily thinking about health care. Because you might go multiple years as a young person.
N. Rodgers: Without needing any of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Without needing any of that. But when you get older and now you've got a significant other and a couple kids.
N. Rodgers: The City Council wants to raise your property tax $0.02 on the dollar.
J. Aughenbaugh: Dollar.
N. Rodgers: You're like, wow. Now you care?
J. Aughenbaugh: When you're 22, 23, the only time you think about public schools is the fact that you no longer have to go to them.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: You graduated and you hope to put that experience in the rear view mirror. But when you get older now you have kids, and you want your kids to be taught by motivated good teachers in buildings that aren't breaking down or classrooms that are not in trailers, you start thinking about that stuff.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: You have a house and you want to know that when you're done with your work day and you go home, that your house hasn't been broken into.
N. Rodgers: Well, other city services, you want to know that there's power. You want to know that there's water when you turn on the tap.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, it's not an indictment of young people, is the fact that your priorities change.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's how the system is set up. But the effect of it can be that young people don't see themselves in politics as much as older people do, and we're going to get to that in another episode.
J. Aughenbaugh: But then if you start thinking about major public policies, whether at the federal government level, state government level.
N. Rodgers: There's a reason they skew old because the olds are making the decisions and the olds are voting for losers.
J. Aughenbaugh: I joke with my students, if you're a politician, and you get the census data, you see the experts projections that Social Security is going to go bankrupt in 2030.
N. Rodgers: And half of your constituents are affected, what's the chance is you're going to be like, oh, well, let's ignore that issue and go on to something else.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or do you really want to go ahead and propose significant changes to Social Security.
N. Rodgers: I irritate the snot out of the people who put you there in the first place.
J. Aughenbaugh: I joke with my students. Do you really want to go ahead and deal with a bunch of pissed off in your language that you started this episode with? You're feeling old and what?
N. Rodgers: Crabby.
J. Aughenbaugh: Crabby. If you're a politician, do you want to deal with a bunch of old crabby people?
N. Rodgers: Do you know what old crabby people do? They write letters and they make phone calls, and they send emails and they send texts, and you can't get away from them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: They're horrible.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I say that as one of them, we're horrible.
J. Aughenbaugh: We are horrible.
N. Rodgers: We will not let you go if there is something we don't like.
J. Aughenbaugh: While we may not raise our voices like we did when we were younger.
N. Rodgers: We will make you feel it in other ways. Our revenge is quieter.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you're talking about retired older people now, they got time on their hands.
N. Rodgers: They are organized because they have the AARP, which as soon as you start turning 40, they start saying, you're only a few years from being a member of the AARP.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They get you early and they get you involved in.
J. Aughenbaugh: And you got time on your hand which means that you can wake up every single day and crank out yet another letter, another email, another text message. They do it over and over and over again and I've worked for politicians.
N. Rodgers: It's another letter from that Crancker. But if we don't answer him, we'll get five more, so we might as well answer.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's the effect on elections.
N. Rodgers: Carry on effect to policy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, we made reference to the article written by Dana Goldstein, and she's got some information in here that should not be ignored.
N. Rodgers: She wrote. This article is really solid. We would suggest you read it if you get a chance.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not very long, but think about this. Social programs once they are created, they're often known as entitlements. It basically says, if you meet certain kinds of criteria, you are entitled to the benefit. Now comparatively the United States has fewer social programs than, for instance, our Western European counterparts. But nevertheless, when you create an entitlement program, it's almost impossible to get rid of it. Things like Social Security, Medicare, et cetera, you're going to see the numbers explode as the median age rises, which means larger percentages of the federal government's budget is going to have to be devoted to those programs.
N. Rodgers: Right. Or alternatively finding other ways to fund those programs. They will have to be adjusted in some way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Way. But it's not just the federal government. Nia, I was utterly fascinated by the States that have the highest median age.
N. Rodgers: Oh my gosh.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're talking about Maine, New Hampshire are the two oldest. Maine's median age is nearly 45.
N. Rodgers: I don't know how people who are 90 are handling the cold in Maine, but they are.
J. Aughenbaugh: But this also helps explain why Maine has such a difficult time funding public schools.
N. Rodgers: Right. Because there aren't as many children, children.
J. Aughenbaugh: Children. There's not as much if you will mass demand.
N. Rodgers: That's it. That's what I was trying to get at. Thank you.
J. Aughenbaugh: There are certain communities, certain towns, certain counties in Maine that have no public high schools.
N. Rodgers: Right. Because there's not enough kids.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you have a child who grows up to be a teenager in Maine, then you have a difficult time finding a place to educate them.
N. Rodgers: Although Maine's building out, it's Zoom educational stuff, but that it takes time and it has commitment.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a policy change.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a policy change.
N. Rodgers: They're having to adjust how they do school.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, this did not shock me. On the other end of the spectrum, the youngest is what state Nia?
N. Rodgers: Utah.
J. Aughenbaugh: Utah. Again, you can make jokes about how many Mormons live in Utah, but because Mormons tend to have more children. Mormon families do. They have a younger population, which also means they have more younger people in the workforce. Which means they potentially have a more solid consistent tax base going forward than many other states. That's the other downside of older states. When you have a whole bunch of older people who are now retired, they're not working, which means their income is not being what Nia?
N. Rodgers: Taxed.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's tight. The taxing of income is important at the federal level, but also at the state level. For the federal level it's important for Social Security tax. We need more young people working.
N. Rodgers: Because we've built a Ponzi scheme. But that's a whole separate episode.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a whole separate episode. But at the state level, so many state resources are driven by state tax income. But also, if you don't have young people earning a lot of money, then they're not going to bars, restaurants, grocery stores which means their transactions aren't being taxed.
N. Rodgers: They're not traveling as much. We're not trying to be ugly, but old people travel less.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They don't get in the car and go for joy rides. I know you think they do on Sunday afternoons, in some states maybe they do. But for the most part, older folks tend to travel less. For the most part, older folks tend to spend their money where they live and on medical issues. Because as they get older, their health deteriorates. But can I mention the statistics from this article that I love?
J. Aughenbaugh: Go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Among the counties with populations over 100,000 according to Dana Goldstein, the Washington Post, the oldest was Sumter County, Florida. That's unsurprising, Florida because that's where the villages is. If you haven't heard of the villages, it's because you're young. Because once you turn, oh, I don't know, 45 or so people start saying, you thinking about moving to the villages because the villages are where people go to be old. Everybody there drives a golf cart and it's physically beautiful. It's a planned community for old people. That's why it's called the villages. The median age there is 68. That is the median age. That is the fourth person in your nine pile list that you talked about earlier is 68.
J. Aughenbaugh: I read that, I was just like that doesn't surprise me.
N. Rodgers: Tell us who the youngest is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is Utah County, which is the home of the City of Provo. Provo, Utah the median age was 25.7 Nia.
N. Rodgers: Twenty-six? Do we know what's in Provo, Utah?
J. Aughenbaugh: I do believe a university.
N. Rodgers: Brigham Young University. Where young Mormons come back from their mission and they go to college and they immediately get married and they immediately start having babies.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because that is part of that faith organization. But Utah can't save us. Mormon families can't save us. We're going to have to think in terms of policy going forward, at least somewhat with immigration.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We're going to have to think about how we can be attractive to young immigrants who are willing to come here and have their babies.
N. Rodgers: But that will bring out another population thing that's going to freak out a whole bunch of people. That is, if you do that, the diversity in the United States will change.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, significantly.
N. Rodgers: By necessity. It will have to. Because people who are immigrating from other places tend to be immigrants of color. Not all, but they tend to be.
J. Aughenbaugh: But we've seen this in the past Nia with previous immigration waves. I'm not talking about people of color necessarily, but the immigration waves, I'll focus on one. The immigration wave of the late 1800s. 1880s, 1890s turn of the 20th century were primarily from central in Eastern Europe. It really forced second and third-generation Americans to come to grips with a changing demographic of the country. We see this with immigration waves.
N. Rodgers: We had an Asian immigration wave approximately 70 years after that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It freaked people out so much that they made regulations against.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That was the next thing I was going to mention.
N. Rodgers: Oh, I'm sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: But listeners what Nia is getting at here is this country does not have a great reputation for opening its arms to new people, immigrants if you will. We need to be prepared for that because the reality is, and we've already seen this in other countries Nia. Listeners, if it sounds like Nia and I are being alarmist because we're focusing on the United States well, it's even worse in other democracies.
N. Rodgers: Oh. You'd think that it would be better in Italy because of the number of Catholics.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: But it's not even though the Catholic faith also encourages large families.
J. Aughenbaugh: Families. But the median age in Europe, in the European Union, is 44. Forty-four Nia. That's five years older than the United States. They have more generous social program benefits by and large than does the United States.
N. Rodgers: Which implies that the world is moving towards a more diverse population, with its youth coming from from countries where the majority is countries of color.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It's going to require some significant policy changes.
N. Rodgers: Some social changes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Changes. There are going to be some tensions here and right now a large part of the debate in regards to immigration in the United States doesn't even take a look at those social changes. But also those economic policy changes if we are going to successfully integrate those people into the United States.
N. Rodgers: Which we need to do because we need their youth and we need their young families and we need their demographics. Aside from the fact that we need intellectual and other reason, their labor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Their energy.
N. Rodgers: Aside from all the cool things about them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We just straight up need their youth.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We need to start going around the world and pirating people's young people and bringing them. I'm not suggesting slavery. That's not what I'm saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: I hurt them by paying them lots of money. Bring them here and say now please feel free to stay and have some children and invest in your community.
J. Aughenbaugh: Community.
N. Rodgers: That means the communities are going to have to be welcoming. The communities are going to have to be places where these young people want to stay and want to invest them.selves and their children. There's going to have to be some policy shift because of this census data. You're right, I do not believe that other than this article in the Post that I've seen anything else written about it.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: I'm like, this should scare the sweet Jesus out of us.
J. Aughenbaugh: There should be a commission at the federal government level.
N. Rodgers: Of how do we recruit young people.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is not a liberal or conservative policy issue. This is a public policy problem that needs attention and it's not going to go away.
N. Rodgers: This is a little democracy question as well.
J. Aughenbaugh: This one census data point, has huge ramifications. We should have elected officials saying, okay, let's cut out the polarization being a demagogue. Let's sit down and let's talk about how we're going to deal with this. This is a good government. What you just described as a little D.
N. Rodgers: Because if it were up to me and I were the dictator of the United States, I would just make people have babies. That's how we're going to solve it. You guys should see Aughie almost did a spit take on his computer. There are countries where I could see that being the enforced solution. I could see the enforced solution in China being you don't have a job. You can't have a job until you have a baby first. Or something like that where you make the incentive so hard to ignore. The same way they had the one child policy to reverse it and say, oh, you have to have two children or you can't work outside the home or whatever. Then it becomes an income thing, and people will have a baby because they want to be able to earn the income. By the way, I'm not bringing that up in terms of the abortion debate. I'm not talking about that forced child. Look if I were the dictator of the United States, I'd be like, nobody gets a job until everybody starts having babies get to it. Which of course would make me creepy and weird. How we do those things in democracy is we make it more attractive to do the thing than to not do the thing. That's how policy is pretty much.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, you and I've discussed, for instance, how there are various incentives in the US tax code to encourage behavior that the government thinks is good. If you think about, for instance, the earned child tax credit, the more kids you have, you get tax credits which means you can reduce your tax [OVERLAPPING] . We want Americans to adopt unwanted children.
N. Rodgers: Financial incentives.
J. Aughenbaugh: Incentives in the tax code. We want Americans to at some point want to own their own house. We offer the mortgage interest deduction on one's taxes. There are various ways to where we could go ahead and do this. Now they cost money.
N. Rodgers: If they cost money in the sense that it's not money the government is earning to use for other things.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, if we make the United States an attractive place for young people want to come to, and again, you settle down.
N. Rodgers: Invest in the community.
J. Aughenbaugh: Invest in another person, so much so that you're willing to go ahead, and have children with them. Now you're talking about writ large. One, you might slow the growth or the increase in the median age. That would be a good thing.
N. Rodgers: That'd be great. Or if we could lower it, that would be better.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you also have a whole bunch of young people paying into the government because of their income. Because they are producing. Again, we know this about immigrant populations. They have energy, they generally produce economic activity that is good for broadening a nation's economic base.
N. Rodgers: Good for the individual, good for the locality, and good for the nation.
J. Aughenbaugh: For the nation's, that's right.
N. Rodgers: This idea that people come to the United States and hang around on welfare is just not true.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: It's just not true.
J. Aughenbaugh: Particularly because many of them come from nations where the government controls even more the economy. Many of them come to the United States because of economic freedom. They want to have a choice. They want to go ahead and work hard, and build something for them and their families.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Hold onto some of what they make.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Instead of the government telling them when they're 8, 9, 10 years old. You have this aptitude and you must do this the rest of your life. Come on Nia.
N. Rodgers: Or one of the best things about the United States. Aughie and I are often like, this is bad. This thing that we do is not great, but we also try to be honest and say when things are good. I would say that one of the best things about the United States is that for the most part, have a caste system here. For the most part, if you come in and you work hard, you can change. Now, can you go from me to Warren Buffett? No. I'm never going to be that way. There is some elitism in the United States versus there is some class consideration, but there's also a lot of mobility in the United States. You can push your way up, and sadly, you can fall your way down. When you come from a place where if you were
born into a certain family, you will never achieve anything because that's just how that is. But if you come to the United States, we're like, we don't care who your family is. That's not.
J. Aughenbaugh: In a lot of what we're talking about here in terms of, changing public policy would make that mobility even more likely to occur.
N. Rodgers: The more young people we get in, the more likely that mobility is. The easier it is for everybody. Part of what the problem is now is the system doesn't have a lot of movement in it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because of the older age. But if we could lower that age or at least stop that trend.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then we could create a different situation in terms of mobility. Just straight up our own mobility. We probably should stop reading the census. I have to admit it. I saw this and I sent this to Aughie and I was like, should I panic? Aughie did what he always does, which is you should never panic Nia because we just have to work through the problem because that's how he handles panicking students. They come to him and they go, I'm an independent [OVERLAPPING] no you're not. Let's work through the problem. Clearly, part of think working through the problem is we need to encourage legal immigration. We can legally encourage people to do all the things. This is not Aughie and I saying we should have wide open border because neither one of us believes that we should just have wide open borders. We believe that the sovereignty of nations has to do with borders.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nations can better prepare themselves to process those who want to come to that nation.
N. Rodgers: To encourage the energy and excitement that you're looking for.
J. Aughenbaugh: That also means, for instance, that if you're going to be open to legal immigration, then you're going to have to make some significant changes. For instance, immigration courts. You're going to need more immigration judges.
N. Rodgers: You're going to need more border, and people want to ask for asylum?
J. Aughenbaugh: You need that. But we know this.
N. Rodgers: We have just been putting it off for quite sometime
J. Aughenbaugh: While. Then every new presidential administration comes off as reactionary when we know that folks want to come to the United States. I know some of our listeners might be like, well, why? Fine. We can catalog all the problems heck Nia and I can go ahead and do that fairly easily.
N. Rodgers: How long do you have?
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless. When you know you have social welfare programs that are predicated on a particular ratio of young people to old people. That ratio is becoming skewed. Then you need to take some steps to address it.
N. Rodgers: I will put to you, by the way, that at 40, which is what we're coming up on median age 39.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: There are certain things you can't do anymore physically.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But you could do in your 20.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That only is going to get worse as we allow the population to age. If we want to stop that median shift to things where we just simply physically can't do.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Some of the things that young people do, we're going to have to think about that. We need to be smart about this. What presidents have done is kick this can down the road and so have politicians, which is what we're going to talk about next time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, we are. That's a really nice segue to our next episode. Listeners I hope you enjoyed this conversation and we're going to follow it up by taking a look at the age of politicians and know what that actually means for the American Democracy. Thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thanks, Aughie.
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