Social Security or Why We're Screwed in our Old Age

I wrote this column a while ago and it just saw print in the paper. In order to get more mileage out of things I've already done, I think I'll put it here too. Because it was originally in newspaper column format the spacing will be a little weird.


I’m a part of Generation Y, what some people call the net-geners. We grew up with the internet an use it as a tool to facilitate communication with little regard for race, color, religion or international borders.
And yet despite our freedom of communication we remain a disparate mass in the political system. While senior citizens make all of the decisions we sit on our hands and do nothing.
We find most political agendas laughable because they have nothing that interests or affects us.
One issue that continues to pop up affects us more than any other group and yet still we do nothing.
The issue is social security, that grand entitlement set up to ensure fiscal solubility to the elderly in a decreasingly family centered culture.
But now many financial analysts are predicting the dissolution of social security by 2019.
Why 2019, you ask? Because by that time there will have been an influx of 78 million baby boomers to the ranks of the retired.
That, coupled with the extended life expectancy that modern medicine offers has is currently strangling a program that is so well intentioned.
If a fix is in order then there are essentially three options, raising taxes, lowering benefits, or the establishment of personal accounts.
Now of course, the older population tends to favor the first option and abhor the second.
Young people polled favor the third option, understanding that the first two would hurt them immediately and in the future.
Really, a personal account system seems to make the most logical sense. Just let everyone pay for themselves.
But the older portion of the population is worried that such a system would leave them with no support, since it was not in place for them to pay into.
But no politician in his right mind would ever call for any of the three plans, well aware that the backlash would likely knock him so far out of elected office that he’d be lucky to end up on the city council of Moosejaw, Alaska.
The fact is that we need some sort of plan. Having none leaves us with a system that will crumble and fold in just a few years.
Something new has to be tried. It may not be comfortable for any of us, but something is better than nothing.
Generation Y is chock full of non-voters, comedian Jon Stewart has quipped that “the only way to get young people to vote is to establish a draft.”
Quite simply we’re far too apathetic about government to get anything done even though we’re the largest segment of the population.
The net effect of this is that over the next 15 years social security will be 3.8 trillion dollars in debt leaving nothing for the younger generation.
Maybe it’s time to bring out that well used political line: “Think of the children!”
Or perhaps it’s time for the children to start thinking about themselves. If social security is going to hell in a handbasket then maybe we should let it.
The years between the Great Depression and now have seen the advent of many new kinds of personal savings plans such as IRA’s and company matching 401k plans. Instead of making the federal government take care of us in our old age maybe we should take personal responsibility for our lives.
I know that social security constitutes the the majority of income for some seniors, and I empathize with them. But, if you don’t want to see the collapse of the social security system then maybe it’s time to start thinking about comprimise.
As a personal note to seniors who are gracious enough to read my outlandish ideas. Maybe when social security goes belly up you can borrow some money from your kids, god knows they borrowed enough of it from you over the years.