BOOM!!

I’m among the first of the “Baby Boomers”…..children born during or immediately after WWII.

As a child I mostly attended new schools which were being constructed to accommodate the huge group of “Boomers” which follow me. Ditto for college. New classrooms, new laboratories, new dorms and new libraries and cafeterias were constructed just as I began my college years.

Most of the planning for the huge surge of population was done on the local and state level. The federal government may have watched and probably ran countless studies. But most of all, Uncle Sam was wallowing in the expected increase in taxable income.

That money was spent with reckless abandon. While other world countries still count dollars in millions, we’ve spurted past that to make “trillion” a normal word.

Now that we “Boomers” are reaching retirement age, our incomes stabilize or even decrease, Uncle Sam is wringing his hands trying to figure out how to fund those programs it pushed on the country while plenty of money was available.

Yes, Medicare is one of them. Seniors are not given a choice. At age 65 you must be covered by Medicare and pay for it. It doesn’t matter that we have been taxed all these years for Medicare via payroll deduction.

But, Uncle Sam thinks he may have made a mistake and would like to make changes to the program by reducing coverage. Hey isn’t that about the same as a price hike? You have to pay for medical care either from Medicare or out of your pocket. Usually it takes both sources.

Consider Social Security. Due to the surge of covered population, it appears the funds may be inadequate to fund the program past a certain date.

My goodness, we “Boomers” have been “Boomers” for 65 years. Why is the federal government suddenly recognizing that there are a lot of us old farts out here and plenty more to come?