To: James F. Hopkins who wrote (64531 ) 12/18/2000 11:37:14 AM From: KymarFye Read Replies (1) | Respond to I agree with Impristine: You da man! Amazing the people you meet, or pseudo-meet, on message boards. But I still think cap gains tax cuts, if handled correctly, may not quite be that dagger in the gut of all that's good and right that you describe. On the other hand, the whole issue appears to be rather academic at this point. It doesn't appear to be on hardly anyone's radar screen outside of yours, mine, and Bob Novak's. Also, though I think you're right about demographic imbalances as a looming problem in the U.S., you do leave out the one saving grace which, at least in the past, has previously rescued this country from the kind of structural sclerosis that typical afflicts developed nations: Ability to absorb new immigrants. In the past, we've received new injections of immigrant zeal when we've needed them, and I haven't yet seen a good reason to expect them to disappear - to the contrary. There are literally billions of people in the world who would risk their lives for the privilege to fork over FICA taxes. That's not the only way to address the problem - there are others that might sound a little more science fiction-y, but a lot of what we take as normal life in Y2K would have seemed rather unlikely not too many years ago. Anyway, I'm just making a general point here: You may be right - we may be going to Hell in a handbasket, or be in a worse position than is yet widely recognized - but it's also possible to conceive of solutions to a number of seemingly daunting challenges of this type without having to engage in wild utopianism. Hey, it's the American way, no?
