If you’re in the Baby Boomer generation and not outraged about the state of Social Security, then you’re not paying attention. First, let’s define the Boomer years, a period of post-WWII prosperity beginning in 1946 and extending to about 1957. People born during this period may have experienced the 1967 ‘Summer of Love’ and the protests of the Vietnam War. You know who you are.
The Boomer term is also broadly applied to those born up to 1964, although this group shares demographic patterns closer to Generation X born from 1961 to 1981.
The Boomers streamed shoulder to shoulder into an optimistic world of expanding technology and consciousness. We dared to dream of a better way, redefining music as a vehicle for protesting man’s inhumanity to man. The seeds of social equality and environmentalism had been planted, and our political idealism and a heartfelt need for change blossomed into the Civil Rights Movement. The Boomers witnessed the advent of one technological marvel after another, culminating arguably in the space program that put U.S. astronauts on the moon. As the Cold War ended and the Berlin Wall came down, we Boomers exchanged knowing glances. It really could be a better world, if we all pulled together. The political advances made during this era will require vigilance to maintain, and there is another job that remains: fixing Social Security.
According to the 2006 Social Security Trustees Report, the Trust Funds will be exhausted in 2040. Our government has quietly transformed Social Security into a slush fund of staggering proportions, financing expenditures without return. The increasing political influence of the boomers will help address this problem. The Boomer generation will likely dominate the White House until 2021, the Supreme Court from 2010 until 2030, and Congress until 2015. Collectively, we’re tired of empty campaign promises and excuses for Social Security mismanagement. The current government approach to Social Security reform, privatization, is not economically sound and only serves to underscore the severity of the crisis. Call it what you will, it’s a case of too many hands in the till. The battle cry of the British rock band The Who was never more appropriate: We’re not going to take it anymore!
Feel the hackles of protest rising - there is a national dialogue to be engaged at http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ I refer the reader to the 2006 Trustees Report:
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pressoffice/pr/trustee06-pr.htm

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