Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Looming US Deficit, Are Baby Boomers to Blame?

Baby boomers are known to have spend their younger years living in prosperity, and enjoyed these lucrative years until the great recession occurs. Now that all of them are in their retirement years, the US government is providing them with health, long-term care and retirement benefits, which eats up most of the national, federal and state budget.

The country is living with more debt, and federal debt is currently in the highest level. The country's debt was not expected to increase sharply, until recently, when boomers start retiring and rely on their social security and government funded health and long-term care programs. Medicare and medicaid are already strained programs and are considered bankrupt. With all these facts, are the baby boomers to be blame for the country's huge financial deficit? This is the same arguments posted in USNews, and suggested that boomers should be responsible in fixing the debt.
Photo credit: www.cbsnews.com

Considered as the "pig in the phyton", baby boomers poses a big threat to the country's economy. A lot of younger generation feels that they are deprived from enjoying a better career and better pay because more and more boomers are still in the workforce. For them to be able to climb one step higher in the ladder of their career, baby boomers need to retire, and that is not really happening since boomers are living longer. In addition, baby boomers are also considered as a big threat to the social security system. They are expected to take our more money than what they have contributed. This is one of the retirement benefits the boomers are enjoying and legislators do not have the will to remove or reduce their benefits and entitlement because the boomers represent a large percentage of voters.

This may however sound true, but there should not be a generalization among the baby boomers generation. The rational that boomers caused the country too much debt should not cut across all boomers as a whole, no matter how bad the financial legacy they leave behind.

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