The Flood Begins
By Lea Abdnor
YIPPEE! OPEN THE GATES! Earlier today the first Baby boomer applied to begin receiving a Social Security benefit check. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a retired Maryland teacher who was born at 12:00:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1946, applied this afternoon for early retirement benefits. She'll become eligible to receive benefits in January when she turns 62. Personally, as a baby boomer who has “contributed” more than $200,000 to Social Security and Medicare while working for over 38 years, I look forward to the day that I’ll finally get something back.
More important, is that the opening of the gates is a very big deal. Why? The answer is that the retirement of the baby boom generation is a VERY big deal, a 50 trillion dollar issue, to quote GAO head David Walker. And, it starts now, not in some far off time decades away as some would like us to believe. However, I predict that the “back burner” politicians (H. Clinton recently said that Social Security was not a front burner issue) will downplay today’s event. To admit that it is a big problem coming sooner than later would require politicians to actually take a position on how they would fix it! Most politicians are risk averse and prefer to let the problem get bigger before taking it on.
The retirement of the baby boom generation will change our country in countless ways. Some of the changes we can predict, such as how much we boomers will cost the taxpayers. So, taxpayers, here we come…Hang on to your wallets!
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