Perhaps the most ominous news of this week was when the first baby boomer applied for Social Security benefits. The press is calling the upcoming retirement of 80 million baby boomers the "silver tsunami."
Social Security has always been an intergenerational transfer of wealth that has only paid for itself as long as more people paid into the system than drew out of it. By 2017, that may no longer be the case--according to projections anyway. One culprit is medical science and the healthier lifestyles that allow retirees to live longer than they did when the program was established.
The retirement age has not been pushed back to compensate for this so people can draw from the program as many year as they paid into it.
It's worth noting that the applicant is retiring early.
