{"id":45,"date":"2007-10-17T08:28:41","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T16:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2young2retire.com\/wp\/?p=45"},"modified":"2008-02-05T05:39:30","modified_gmt":"2008-02-05T13:39:30","slug":"social-security-a-surmountable-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2young2retire.com\/wp\/social-security-a-surmountable-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Security: A Surmountable Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’ve heard of artificial deadlines? Hmmm…retirement at 65 (or whenever) comes to mind. Well, how about an artificial milestone created for sensational headlines, contrived to bring attention to a non-existent crisis? Case in point: this week, retired school teacher, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling<\/a>, became the first boomer to apply for Social Security benefits. It was a field day for the school of chicken little reporting as phrases like looming bankruptcy<\/em>, financial implosion<\/em>, fiscal<\/em> meltdown<\/em>, Boomsday is Nigh<\/em> (SF Chronicle), and even the suggestion that Ms. Kirschling was Public Enemy No. 1<\/a>, made their way into print and broadcast. The Times (London) weighed in with its own: From boom to bust: the silver generation that could leave Uncle Sam broke<\/em>. Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue, who orchestrated the media event, set the tone with his term for the ‘crisis’: America’s Silver Tsunami.<\/p>\n

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Kudos to the Kansas City Star<\/a> for its focus on the fix, of which there are quite a few, not to mention that we have 34 years (that’s four 8-year presidential terms) to implement them. Everyone is in agreement that we have a problem, although it pales in comparison to Medicare funding and rising health care costs. The version we prefer comes from the Social Security Board of Trustees Report<\/a> itself: “The financial difficulties facing Social Security and Medicare pose enormous, but not insurmountable, challenges.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

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Fixes that have both supporters and detractors include:<\/p>\n