Social Security is one of the hot topics of debate today. Many Americans depend on Social Security for disability or retirement; also, as a life insurance, if the working spouse deceases. However, the Social Security is likely to dry up in the future due to the large number of baby boomers heading into retirement. "When the baby boomer generation - a large percentage of Americans, born between 1946 and 1964 - reaches retirement age, their large numbers and longer life expectancies may place too great a demand on the system, forcing today's young people to pay ever more into a system that may be bankrupt by the time they retire" (Chapter 18, 715). The article I chose is about how Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wants to develop a new plan for social security; he is also concern about the baby boomers retirements. He suggests "trimming benefits, raising the retirement age or other ideas before raising the payroll tax paid by employers and employees because that tax increase would be a disincentive to hiring new workers". .
A large number of baby boomers believe that they will not receive Social Security benefits, due to all the payments being given to the disabled, survivors of deceased worker, and the elderly retirees. And most young people today, believe there will be no Social Security at all. The article also mentions that President Bush is "campaigning on a program to partially privatize Social Security by allowing young workers to divert part of their Social Security taxes to private accounts holding stocks and other investments". This might or may not be good, because the risk of a stock market can be so large that the investor can loose it all and be put in poverty. It might be good if we can invest in an IRA or bank CD, because we would be in control of our own retirement money and we will not be gambling our money.
Whatever the government decides to do, they need to just guarantee Americans of some type of pension or retirement plan, because that is all we have.
