Editorials

At the end of the Day: Baby boomers and perfect storm March 29, 2007 - | Editor/Publisher

Attention fellow Baby Boomers. Now that you have finally got around to figuring out that you will retire in a few years, you might want to consider putting aside some extra funds or working a couple more years. You are being set up once again.

The generation born shortly after World War II ended and the Greatest Generation came home will be retiring in droves in few years. Beginning next year, and for 20 years thereafter, 78 million Americans will become pensioners and medical dependents of the U.S. taxpayer. The number of workers paying into the system will decrease while the number of pensioners drawing from public coffers increases dramatically.

Here is what David Walker, comptroller general of the U.S. government’s General Accounting Office had to say on 60 Minutes about the effect these massive numbers of retirees will have on our financial system.

“The first baby boomer will reach 62 and be eligible for early retirement of Social Security January 1, 2008. They’ll be eligible for Medicare just three years later. And when those boomers start retiring in mass, then that will be a tsunami of spending that could swamp our ship of state if we don’t get serious.”

I think we all agree, as 60 Minutes points out, Walker is no wild-eyed zealot of gloom-and-doom. He is a government bureaucrat preaching gloom-and-doom. Why? Because he can’t get the politicians in Washington to do anything about the trillions in unfunded liabilities we are handing off to our children and grandchildren.

Walker told 60 minutes our health care problem is much more significant than Social Security, in fact five times greater because people keep living longer and medical costs are rising at twice the rate of inflation.

The problem is that instead of facing these mounting deficits, the Bush Administration keeps saying unemployment is low and our deficits are manageable, both of which are true right now.

The old saying is that anyone can make you a promise as long as they reserve the right to renege. When us Baby Boomers first started paying into the Social Security system, we were told we could draw the full amount at 65. The government later came in and changed that 65 to a 66 for some of those born after 1937. If a private pension company did that to you you could sue them for breach of contract.

Lets you and I not live in a world of delusion. Politicians will not face up to the problem. They will fight like heck to get re-elected and hope the deficits go away.

But for us on the front lines with retirement years looming ahead, it is pretty safe to assume the feds will use the oldest trick in the book. And it works time after time.

You will get the dollars the government intends for you to get, but the buying power will be inflated away by government printing presses.

At the end of the day, as Nashville’s “Sewing Machine” Allen used to say: “Come in lemon and be squeezed.”

I invite your comments ...

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