November 26, 2007

Don’t you expect those in office, those running for office, and ninety percent of the Fourth Estate to have some smarts, to at least be fairly intelligent? Well, it doesn’t look like any of them have a lick of common sense.

Now you know that can’t possibly be true or they would not have been able to raise the money to run for office and they would never have been given jobs working for such places as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or CNN. Yet, something crazy is afoot.

How many times have you heard about “76 million baby-boomers” that are about to wreck havoc on our supplemental retirement system, Social Security? In our lives, this story plays over and over and over again. Sometimes they get the number wrong, but these “boomers” are always people born between 1946 and 1965 that supposedly produced this horde primarily due to sixteen million, shall we say lusty, service people returning home after the Second World War.

The government usually puts out a lot of propaganda and fear stories, but most of it is somewhat believable or at least within the realm of possibilities. This one is ludicrous, unreasonable, and out of the question. How gullible do they think we are? If it were true it would be a miracle.

The truth is that roughly half of the population never makes it to full retirement age. Take a look at the graph below.

Notice that by age 65 about half the people have passed away. If we accept their propaganda, this means that when the so-called “baby boomers” reach full retirement age there will be only about 38 million of them. What’s more, future generations will look pretty much like the above chart except for people living longer. You can quote the Census Bureau, the Social Security Administration, the White House and the Associated Press on this information.

If you want to look into other, but more complicated, fallacies about “boomers” go to The Baby Boomer Myth.

Also remember that the spinmeisters never said that the 76 million represents births above normal, but they certainly implied it. They carefully avoid clarifying this and the larger number is much more frightening.

I estimate there would have been roughly 69 million people born between 1946 and 1965 if there had never been a World War II. Using the “76 million” fantasy figure would mean there were about 7 million births above normal – the true baby boomers.

What’s more, I think Bill Clinton missed the decimal point his speech writers put in when they wrote his “fix the roof while the sun shines” speech on Social Security.

Do you realize what a monstrous conspiracy this must be to get so many to endorse this 76 million story and no one mentioning the obvious?

Send a message to your elected representatives. Click here to start. Be sure to send a copy to Ed Henry.

Your comments welcome!

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