Death will not be taking a holiday

Time to panic again about Social Security in order to give moneygrubbers hope that they will be able to get their dirty mitts on the rest of our retirement dough.

Privatize! Privatize!

Dear Worried Gen-Xers,

Contrary to their expectations, Baby Boomers are not going to live forever.  By 2037 when the system supposedly will run out of money, millions of Boomers will have done their bit to save the system by dying.

Also contrary to apparent beliefs, the Boomers reproduced.  Their kids are just beginning to enter the workforce.  And there are more of them than there are of you.  And you aren't going to live forever either.  Things will work out.  Provided...

There are jobs for the Boomers' kids and and there continue to be jobs for the still working Boomers and you Gen Xers for the next 20 years.

The biggest boom in the Baby Boom occurred between 1955 and 1957, the Boom continued until 1964.  (Please don't tell President Obama he's a Boomer.)  The great majority of Baby Boomers are not retiring or about to retire now, not if they have a say in it, because they are in their late 40s to mid 50s.  But guess who's getting laid off and who's having the most trouble finding new jobs?

The problem isn't with Social Security.  The problem is with an economic system that seems geared to putting us all out of work or bagging groceries over the next decade.

__________

There are some problems with Social Security, but as Robert Reich explains, those problems are tiny and easily fixed compared to the problems with Medicare.

Comments

[actor212]

If the Obama administration can properly fix healthcare, the Social Security crisis will practically disappear, because despite Medicare, most old people spend more of their money on healthcare (and will spend more in the future) fixing problems that could and should have been prevented.

[Linkmeister]

I remember doing payroll for a company which suddenly late in the year had several people asking "did I get a raise?" because they'd gone over the (then) $96K ceiling on FICA and thus had more take-home pay. I think that ceiling has since gone over $100K. Eliminate the ceiling or make it $200K; Hey Presto! Problem Solved!

[Linkmeister]

Fred Clark at Slacktivist shows the foolishness of the Henny Penny argument in words even Pete Peterson might understand, were it not for his blinkered eyes.

[Batocchio]

Spot on, Lance.

[Ralph H.]

Your reassurance would be a lot more reassuring if I hadn't sat through a briefing given by Peter Schwartz to a bunch of us government bureaucrats some years ago in which he predicted that most of the people in the room (late 20s to late 40s, I think) would live to be 100 years old.

[Lance]

Ralph, Not me. I'm planning on doing my bit to save the system. I'll put in my biblically allotted three score and ten but then I'm out of here!