I understand that the social security conversation is political poison. But I’m not running for office so I don’t care about that. Taking huge chunks out of the paychecks of young working Americans in order to pay for the retirements of older Americans who have a net worth several times higher, all to prop up a system that everyone knows likely won’t be there when those younger people are retirement age themselves, is morally abhorrent and economically insane. Everyone knows it, too, but we’re held hostage by elderly politicians who refuse to surrender power, and older voters who, as a group (with exceptions, obviously), simply don’t care all that much about the financial and cultural future their grandchildren will inherit.
When I was born in 1993 our debt was 4 trillion. The boomers have increased it to 40 trillion in 33 years. There wasn’t a war they didn’t vote for or tax dollars they didn’t want to send to foreign countries. History will say boomers were the most corrosive generation in American history.