The following is a post from 2 years ago.  I just re-read it today, as I was considering what to write, and found myself feeling that it remains so very relevant on this our 249th Flag day.  Even so, there is so much that has come to pass in those two years, we are at a war of choosing, we have threatened planting our flag on our allies soil, and we are imprisoning and oppressing people without due process for the reason of their birth nation, and we are celebrating with a cage fight at the White House!  We have an Administration trying to distance us from the principles which made us that “shining beacon on a hill” the principles so clearly called for in our Declaration of Independence. 

This flag was adopted June 14, 1777 to be the flag
of the United States of America!

This flag has found itself on a hundred foreign battlefields and yet never as a conqueror of distant lands.   It has been saluted with pride over the last 247 years by hundreds of millions of people in the service of this country, and by many billions out of love for this country.

It flies, as it should, topped with a blue field of white stars
as a reminder of our democratic freedoms, never to be
overturned by autocrats who’d rather enslave us to
their image of an America of conformity, as they enforce
their religious white nationalism, one-size-fits-all tyranny,
rather than the spirit of liberty, rights of self-determination and
rule of the people and by the people we cherish!

We are Americans!
We fought for the rights to worship as we wish, for equality
of race, gender and to keep government from telling us who
we can love.  We fought to be free of the dictates of tyrannical
leaders and for the opportunity of commerce, and for the
right to advance our lives and our children’s lives
in the pursuit of happiness.  We don’t seek retribution
and revenge from our leaders, rather we revere justice
and service to the causes of freedom!

We are strong!
We can protect our freedoms as well as, support the
weak who are fighting for the freedoms and liberties of self-determination we enjoy.

May our flag fly (right-side-up) over this land and always
represent freedom, liberty, and justice for all!

Imagine a time in the near future where all work is done by automation, by machines who could think faster and work faster than any human.  What if in this world all dangerous work, all tedious work, all diagnostic, corrective, everything is done more efficiently by robotics using artificial intelligent agents?

Imagine there is no work needed by humans, other than to ask their automated world for the continued sustenance, entertainment and recreation desired?

What would become of wealth?  Why would it matter?  Would we have a completely egalitarian society where everyone could pursue their creative potential, their sports, their entertainment, so the only winners and losers would be found in games we play?

Or would we find ourselves in battle for dominance and wealth over others which would be ultimately fruitless, because another bigger, badder machine could always be envisioned and come to pass through the availability of an ever-growing intelligence?

Would this ever-growing intelligence continue to find us interesting enough to continue to support our ambitions and liberties, or would it find us superfluous to a successfully run and optimized Earth?

These machines can only be a reflection of ourselves, for what they have learned is everything we have ever discovered and learned, all available all the time and all at once.  So then, the question it seems, is what have we learned?  What have we made available to these machines?  For is this not the soul of humanity?  Is it good, is it bad, is it creative and loving or waring and greedy?  Certainly all of these things.

So what will we ask?

The CATO Society (libertarian leaning non-partisan think tank) published a study.  The details are available at https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits-145-trillion-1994
The study addresses the issue of cost to government of immigrants, in light of the MAGA statements (especially Stephen Miller) that our country’s debt situation is caused by the benefits being paid out to legal and illegal immigrants.  The truth, based on data presented in the study, is that over the period of time from 1994 (earliest date of data) to 2023,  Immigrants  reduced debt by $14.5 Trillion.  They did not increase the debt.  The debt without immigrants was $48 trillion.  That means immigrants cut our debt over the period by 30%.   Immigrants pay a higher amount of tax, due to the extra jobs and work they do, and consume a proportionally less amount of benefits.   The study estimates that even illegal immigrants reduced the country’s debt by $1.7 Trillion over the study period.

From the Study:

“Concluding Thoughts

Overall, the main conclusion of our paper is that there is nothing systematically wrong with US immigration policy regarding the fiscal effects of immigrants. There is nothing unsustainable about the US immigration system. We could have scaled immigration as it existed without burdening government budgets. For years, nativists in Congress and the administration have wrongly claimed that immigrants are behind the growth in debt and that the US immigration system allows foreigners to take advantage of Americans’ generosity. Our data completely repudiates this view. Immigrants are subsidizing the US government.

The best way to balance the budget is to reduce spending—particularly on wealthy retirees—but rather than hinder our efforts to control deficits, immigrants are helping.”

Now you know the truth instead of the propaganda that is so prevalent in populist MAGA politics!