Repeat after me - benefit. Ben-e-fit. Benefit. Social Security is a BENEFIT.

[customerserviceguy]

140. Thanks

Some here think it's ego, but because the baby boom lasted so long (1946-1964, by most demographers reckoning) and involves people who will mostly live for about seven or eight decades, it will have a most profound effect on American history in the life of a country that's only about three centuries long (including some of the most prosperous colonial era). Wars usually have a much smaller effect, in terms of timespan.

The only reason that we COULD have a Social Security System with Medicare added along the way is that there was such a large generation existing to be able to pay the benefits for a small Depression-era generation. That's over with now, and we're seeing the results. Yes, actuaries claim to have figured the whole thing out, but I have as much faith in them as I have in the captains of banking that managed to trash the whole financial system just a few years ago. When the herd starts to believe its own BS, no one dares to think outside that box, and the experts all go over the cliff together.

The only thing that will increase future generations is immigration. As time goes by and living gets more expensive, children become an expensive luxury in a manufacturing society, and especially in a service-oriented economy. "Be fruitful and multiply" was from a guidebook to adapt humans from a hunter-gatherer existence to an agricultural one, it's no longer feasible to practice that philosophy.