I have worked for over 20 years paying SS and I really don't expect that it will be around by the time that I reach retirement.
I understand that baby boomers want to get back what they've paid in to SS for 40+ years. I want to ensure that I can provide for my family, allow them to prosper, and have a decent nest egg for when I retire also. My father's goals and my goals are going to come into conflict. Why?
After 1971, the total fertility rate (TFR) in the U.S. fell below the replacement fertility rate (RFR) of 2.1 births per woman. From 1972 to 1989 (ironically the main reproductive years of the baby boomers), the TFR never rose above 2.0. Therefore, the baby boomers became the first generation that didn't produce enough offspring to replace their own numbers.
The second factor is increasing life expectancy. The baby boomers can expect to live, on average, probably around 81 years. Their parents will have lived, on average, around 75 years. So, the baby boomers will receive about 5 more years, per recipient, of SS benefits than did their parents. The rising life expenctancy is mainly due to improvements in medical technology and health care. It is ironic that while incidences of cancer, heart disease, type II diabetes and other generally age-related diseases are rising, those stricken with them are living longer and more active lives due to those medical improvements.
It is estimated that the baby boomers have a much higher incidence of obesity, high-blood pressure and diabetes and a more sedentary lifestyle than did their parents. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that they will have many more health problems in their late years than did their parents. This is why the attempts at more and more government subsidization of prescription medication and healthcare is another point of concern for the generations that follow the boomers. We will also have to pay for that. It is quite macabre to say that possibly the only hope for the post-boomers is if, as some forecast, the life expectancy actually decreases in the next few years.
The boomers, I believe, are the schizophrenic generation. They came into adulthood as the idealists, fighting for those less fortunate and carrying the entreaty of Kennedy ("Ask not what your country can do for you... ask what you can do for your country") like the vision of St. Francis of Assisi. They are going into retirement seeing just how much they can get out of the rest of us while they still have political power. So much for Kennedy's call against selfishness.
I told my father that it is a good thing that he raised me on a farm and taught me how to live from the land, because if the continued rate of taking from the younger to give to the older continues, that may be the only way that his grandchildren will be able to eat. It is very likely that the following generations will not live at the same standard of living that the baby boomers did, because in the last years of their lives, they will suck the life from those that came after. Either we will end up paying half of our salaries in taxes, or we will continue to increase the debt so that it eventually eats our children alive.
