"Immigration won't save us," says an economist

Immigration doesn't plug the hole: 200,000 million euros on pensions

With a litre of diesel that a forum user predicts will approach two euros, the question no government answers out loud returns: who will pay pensions in twenty years? An economist argues that immigration won't save us. The thesis isn't new. Every time a public spending figure lands, the fight reopens with more noise.

And it's not a minor fight. It mixes pensions, birth rates, benefits, public employment and an uncomfortable question: how much population can this country really support.

Pensions versus education: the picture of public spending

A calculation circulating on the forum puts pension spending at almost 200,000 million euros, against 63,000 million for education. The proportion doesn't need much interpretation: for every euro spent training the next generation, more than three go to paying the previous one.

The figure serves as a sign of structural imbalance. It's not about whether older people deserve to receive what was agreed; it's about the fact that, with fewer and fewer people working for each retiree, the math breaks on its own. And pensions are not discretionary spending: they are an obligation that eats up any room for manoeuvre before political negotiation even begins.

Does immigration add or subtract from public finances?

Here there is total disagreement. A study on the Netherlands concludes that non-Western immigration does not generate a net benefit for European economies and puts the negative impact attributed to each African immigrant at 315,000 euros.

On the other side is the methodological objection: if the calculation only adds what is paid out in benefits and subtracts what is collected in taxes and contributions —without counting consumption, the employment that sustains that worker or the effect on prices and services— the result comes out negative almost by construction. The full breakdown, item by item and with its assumptions, is enough to argue over for an entire afternoon.

The benefit that grows and those who grit their teeth

More than 2.5 million people receive some kind of benefit in Spain, and the Ingreso Mínimo Vital (Spain's minimum income scheme) hit a record above two million recipients in a single month. It's the figure that raises the question: how many of those payments support someone who works and how many support someone who doesn't.

Add to that the public sector. According to one circulating calculation, there are around ten million pensioners and nearly four million public employees, many of them sustained by the same budgets.

Birth rates won't be fixed with baby bonuses

One argument repeated in the thread is that birth rates were never an economic problem. A forum user recalls that households with fewer resources are the ones with the most children and that in the 1980s —with housing dirt cheap— fertility had already fallen below replacement level. A tax incentive doesn't reverse that.

Another line, defended by another forum user, points to the pension system itself. The moment the State takes on guaranteeing a dignified old age, having children stops being an investment for old age and becomes a pure cost. People go from four children to one, or none, without anyone consciously deciding anything.

And there is a third reading, more cultural, pointing to the mass incorporation of women into the labour market. This point is the most uncomfortable, and the one most quickly dispatched in both directions.

How many inhabitants is Spain designed for?

The estimates forum users are working with don't match. One speaks of productive capacity for 34 million people. Another sets the ceiling at 27 million maximum. A third lowers it to 26 million, recalling the 1940 census and a subsistence agriculture that no longer exists. And a fourth argues that the economic structure can hold 38 million and that the rest is superfluous.

Twelve million difference between the highest and lowest estimate. None comes with a budget behind it.

Where the analysis gets stuck

The problem isn't a lack of theories. It's that none holds up without a political decision no one wants to make: raise contributions, cut pensions, import workers or accept a smaller population with fewer services. Every option has an electoral cost.

Meanwhile, the system holds up on the current flow and with no cushion. No one has put a defensible figure for sustainable population in front of a real budget. That's where the analysis stops.