Baby boomers and the impending social security crisis
I am a policy debater. And as such, I like to have evidence. So in this article, I’ve done some research that will hopefully shed a little light on one of the big hot topics of today: Social security and our society.
Social security ties in to something many people don’t even realize. It all goes back about thirty-three years, to 1973. As many of us know, that was the year Roe v. Wade was decided in the United States Supreme Court, after being argued first in 1971, reargued in 1972 and finally settled on January 22nd, 1973. The legalization of abortion in America has had far more negative impacts than almost any other decision the Supreme Court has ever made.
After World War II, the soldiers returning from war began thinking of starting families. And so they did. All of them. And as a result, huge numbers of children were born within close proximity of each other as far as age. This sudden growth became known as the Baby Boom. Between the years of 1946 and 1964, the number of children born into families skyrocketed. The following information states that quite clearly:
By the end of the decade (1946-56) about 32 million babies had been born, compared with 24 million in the lean 30s. In 1954, annual births first topped four million and did not drop below that figure until 1965, when four out of ten Americans were under the age of twenty.
This change clearly symbolized that America was ready to grow. But now, these baby boomers are getting ready to retire.
Everyone knows that in order to have a fully functioning society, the young generation must help support the older generation. That’s the case today, in America. There must be a balance between the workers and the retirees-especially in a social security system like we have now. In about twenty-five years, the baby boomers will be more than ready to retire, and of course, there will be the expected workers who are entering the most productive time of their life. These workers will be in their late twenties to mid thirties...just getting excited about their jobs, families and their lives in general. They will fill the workforce perfectly, and the money they pay in taxes will help people living on social security.
This should be the case, and indeed, it would be. But as many major news organizations and leaders have pointed out, we will soon be facing an extreme shortage of workers. As stated in the Washington Post:
Social Security's fundamental difficulty is a demographic one: As time passes, there will be more retirees demanding benefits and fewer workers paying the taxes that fund the program. Currently there are more than three workers for every retiree; by 2040, that ratio will drop to 2 to 1. Moreover, increasing life expectancy will place additional demands on the program, a cost amplified by the fact that higher earners, who collect bigger Social Security checks, tend to live longer.
Right now, the worker: retiree ratio is 3:1. This is working for the moment. However, it is known for certain that the number will soon drop from 3:1 to 2:1. This means increased stress on taxpayers/workers, as Thomas Donohue states clearly.
Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue, at a news conference outlining business prospects in 2006, said the country is ill-prepared to deal with the impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers.
"We have yet to secure an adequate supply of working taxpayers to run a growing economy and support an explosion of retirees," he said in his organization's report on the state of U.S. business.
As we can see, workers in the prime of life are going to be needed to pay taxes for the retiring baby boomers.
But consider this simple math problem: If someone is born in the 1970’s, how old will they be now? If you guessed between thirty and twenty, you’re right.
In 1973, Roe v. Wade was decided. Immediately following, abortions became more and more common, with the participants being told that the beings within them were not humans (“See, it looks just like a fish.”) or were not alive until a certain point in time-both of these being gross lies (but that’s a different article). Between 1973 and 2000, more than 39 million people were murdered in cold blood by abortion. And we are surely feeling the results of those abortions.
If said fetus was not a human at the time, then why are the workers that we need so badly right now missing? Thirty-nine million is a lot. It’s roughly the number that we will need as people continue to age and retire. And the workers we need are not available because they died before they ever had a chance to live. How many times can I say that?!? We killed our future generation. This is now negatively affecting the people who are retiring, which will in turn affect the workers/taxpayers in the future. It isn’t just a fetus. It’s a baby. And it becomes a human at the moment of conception. Life is one thing humans cannot duplicate, try as they might. It’s one of our most precious commodities, and every day, with the legalized form of murder we now call abortion, we are killing our future generations. If we keep this up, we will soon be extinct.
So in summary, 77 million baby boomers will be retiring soon. 39 million workers who would be in the prime of life right now are missing due to the legalization of abortion in 1973.
Our commitment-free, easy-living “freedom” is going to kill us. Why can we never see the potential consequences of our actions before we charge ahead?
God help America. And no, I won’t take that back.
Source citations
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Abortion statistics between 1973 and 2000
From 1973 through 2000, more than 39 million legal abortions occurred.
Found at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904509.html
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Worker-retiree necessary and actual ratios
Social Security's fundamental difficulty is a demographic one: As time passes, there will be more retirees demanding benefits and fewer workers paying the taxes that fund the program. Currently there are more than three workers for every retiree; by 2040, that ratio will drop to 2 to 1. Moreover, increasing life expectancy will place additional demands on the program, a cost amplified by the fact that higher earners, who collect bigger Social Security checks, tend to live longer.
Found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52771-2005Jan31.html
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Missing workers
Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue, at a news conference outlining business prospects in 2006, said the country is ill-prepared to deal with the impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers.
"We have yet to secure an adequate supply of working taxpayers to run a growing economy and support an explosion of retirees," he said in his organization's report on the state of U.S. business.
Found at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1551847/posts
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Baby boomers
By the end of the decade (1946-56) about 32 million babies had been born, compared with 24 million in the lean 30s. In 1954, annual births first topped four million and did not drop below that figure until 1965, when four out of ten Americans were under the age of twenty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-World_War_II_baby_boom
