Get Your Hands Off My Retirement Piggybank
Some things never change. On November 27, 1994, I wrote an op-ed piece for a local newspaper entitled "A prescription for Social Security" in which I warned of the entitlement mentality and the crushing debt load soon to be foisted upon young people everywhere. According to the editor, my suggestions for funding reform were not well-received, as evidenced by a flood of letters with the same message. "Keep your hands off my federal piggybank" and let someone else pay the price. (Like many others, I am an advocate of phased-in privatization for those who prefer to save on their own.)
Recognition of big problems ahead is certainly not unique to me. In his 1993 book, Generational Accounting: Knowing Who Pays, and When, for What We Spend, Dr. Laurence J. Kotlikoff warns of the great divide between the young and old. In their 2005 book, The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America's Economic Future, Kotlikoff and co-author Scott Burns tell a grim tale of what has been chronicled many times before. A disproportionate number of persons are retiring from the work force, leaving those who remain to bear the staggering burden of a "pay as you go" system in the form of Social Security and Medicare.
Published last May, the 2006 Social Security Trustees Report states: "Over the 75-year period, the Trust Funds require additional revenue equivalent to $4.6 trillion in today's dollars to pay all scheduled benefits. This unfunded obligation is $600 billion higher than the amount estimated last year."
New York Times reporter Steven R. Weisman writes that Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke is worried too, asserting that "Recent positive trends on the budget were a 'calm before the storm,' to be undone by huge deficits in federal entitlement programs. In "Fed Chief Warns That Entitlement Growth Could Harm Economy" (January 19, 2007), Weisman describes Senate testimony that sounds downright gloomy. "The longer we wait, the more severe, the more draconian, the more difficult the adjustment is going to be."
Unfortunately, as we know too well, attempts at entitlement reform are political folly and so the problem festers with little hope of short-term remedy
There are plausible solutions (hard ones but they do exist) IF only people would give up the ghost of an actual retirement piggybank in Washington, emblazoned with their names. In this case, Virginia - there is no Santa Claus.
Sorry kiddo!
