With the on going retirement of 78 million baby boomers we cn no longer conduct business as usual. State business must be conducted with an eye on the future and how it will effect our children.
78 million Baby Boomers began retiring this year. The largest generation in the history of this nation began moving into their senior years. What causes concern is the fact that this generation failed to reproduce itself. The Baby Boom Generation had a fertility rate of 1.7 children per family. The children of the Baby Boomers are not doing much better when it comes to replacing themselves. The worker shortage we are experiencing will grow even more acute as Boomers continue to leave the job market at a rate of 8,000 per day.
The United States Census Bureau estimates that by the year 2031, it will take 2.1 workers to support each retiree. That means that each day from now and for the next twenty-five years, the burden placed on taxpayers will be increasing on a daily basis. What we do in government today, must be weighed against our children's ability to pay tommorrow. Pay-as-you-go, a concept foreign to government, must become standard operating procedure.
|
