The Social Security Trust Fund has not been 'looted'.

[customerserviceguy]

112. Ah, so you think my definition of the baby boom generation

doesn't meet your test of what a bubble is?

OK, then think of it as a series of bubbles. When that generation needed to be educated, there was a school-building bubble, that burst when they all graduated (or dropped out, whatever). We had crumbling schools that had to be closed down, and the staff therein needed to be either let go, or absorbed somehow by the surviving schools.

All throughout the life cycle of the baby boom, they've created bubbles that have popped as they left the ages at which things connected with those ages occurred. There was a crime bubble, a housing bubble, and now we face a retirement crisis bubble. When they went to work and started consuming from their own earnings (rather than their parents') they pumped money into the Social Security System, and taxes rose from the piddling levels they had been for thirty years (check out Social Security history for the wage caps and FICA percentages) to something that could really sustain the higher benefits (partly from COLAs) that people who had really worked (and contributed) their whole lives would be entitled to.

Now, the piper must be paid, and the cupboard is nearly bare. $2.5 trillion dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund sounds like a lot of money, but divided among at least 50 million baby boomers, it only works out to $50K per boomer. At an average monthly benefit of $1,230.00 ( http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/13/~/average-monthly-social-security-benefit-for-a-retired-worker ) that's only about ten years of benefits, and those folks will probably survive about twenty years. Yes, there will be money flowing in from current payers of FICA taxes, but add in some inflation (chained CPI or not) and you see that we face a very serious problem. In fact, the total estimated obligation (they take pains to avoid calling it a liability, that implies a "contract&quot is over $15 trillion dollars.

Just like the rest of the Federal government, Social Security is finally putting more out than it is taking in, and that's why there will be an entitlement reform panel, or committee, or whatever.