Posted on 09/29/2008 7:15:06 PM PDT by kabar
Think $700 billion to bail out Wall Street is expensive? Just wait. The mortgage meltdown is cheap compared with the coming fiscal firestorm fanned by unfunded Social Security and Medicare costs.
Together, these programs hold unfunded obligations totaling $41 trillion - 60 times larger than the proposed Wall Street bailout. And even this understates the difference, because $41 trillion is the current net value of the unfunded obligations over 75 years. The actual cumulative yearly deficits these programs face over the next 75 years are several magnitudes larger than $41 trillion.
[Snip]
The entitlement problem is simple to understand. In the 1960s, five workers paid the taxes for each retiree's Social Security and Medicare benefits. Today that ratio is just 3-to-1. The coming retirement of 77 million Baby Boomers will drive that ratio down to 2-to-1 by 2030. That means every two children born this year and who marry in 2030 will have to support themselves, their children - and the Social Security and Medicare benefits of their very own retiree. The cost will be staggering.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Why, yes. I believe you are. It is my personal belief that there will be a Special Representative assigned to each of us old folks who will personally escort us through the Looking Glass. Once on the other side, after refreshments, of course, we will be shown where to find the large pot of money and other valuables that will have been set aside in our name.
Next question?
i saw it. Pissed me off royal! These politicians never learn! our countries finances are tanking and its still politics as usual.
Not everyone will have the option to continue working. And with immigration, legal and illegal, many Americans won't have jobs.
Social Security paid benefits of $585 billion in calendar year 2007. There were almost 50 million beneficiaries at the end of the calendar year.
Anyone want to chip in and buy an island somewhere and start our own country? I’m not joking. We can call it Freeper Island. We’ll be self-reliant.
Sort of like Mutiny on the Bounty.
I love it!
Sorry, I forgot the sarcasm tag...
Great graphic.
That one was in the Economist.
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