In 2011 The Baby Boomers Start To Turn 65: 16 Statistics About The Coming Retirement Crisis That Will Drop Your Jaw -

In 2011 The Baby Boomers Start To Turn 65: 16 Statistics About The Coming Retirement Crisis That Will Drop Your Jaw -

Do you hear that rumble in the distance?  That is the Baby Boomers – they are getting ready to retire.  On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turn 65.  Millions upon millions of them are rushing towards retirement age and they have been promised that the rest of us are going to take care of them.  Only there is a huge problem.  We don’t have the money.  It simply isn’t there.  But the millions of Baby Boomers getting ready to retire are counting on that money to be there.  This all comes at a really bad time for a federal government that is already flat broke and for a national economy that is already teetering on the brink of disaster.

So just who are the Baby Boomers?  Well, they are the most famous generation in American history.  The U.S. Census Bureau defines the Baby Boomers as those born between January 1st, 1946 and December 31st, 1964.  You see, after U.S. troops returned from World War II, they quickly settled down and everyone started having lots and lots of babies.  This gigantic generations has transformed America as they have passed through every stage of life. Now they are getting ready to retire.

If you add 65 years to January 1st, 1946 you get January 1st, 2011.

The moment when the first Baby Boomers reach retirement age has arrived.

The day of reckoning that so many have talked about for so many years is here.

Today, America’s elderly are living longer and the cost of health care is rising dramatically.  Those two factors are going to make it incredibly expensive to take care of all of these retiring Baby Boomers.

Meanwhile, the sad truth is that the vast majority of Baby Boomers have not adequately saved for retirement.  For many of them, their home equity was destroyed by the recent financial crisis.  For others, their 401ks were devastated when the stock market tanked.

Meanwhile, company pension plans across America are woefully underfunded.  Many state and local government pension programs are absolute disasters.  The federal government has already begun to pay out more in Social Security benefits than they are taking in, and the years ahead look downright apocalyptic for the Social Security program.

If we are not careful all of these Baby Boomers are going to push us into national bankruptcy.  We simply cannot afford all of the promises that we have made to them.  The following are 16 statistics about the coming retirement crisis that will drop your jaw…..

#1 Beginning January 1st, 2011 every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65.  That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.

#2 According to one recent survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.

#3 Most Baby Boomers do not have a traditional pension plan because they have been going out of style over the past 30 years.  Just consider the following quote from Time Magazine: The traditional pension plan is disappearing. In 1980, some 39 percent of private-sector workers had a pension that guaranteed a steady payout during retirement. Today that number stands closer to 15 percent, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C.

#4 Over 30 percent of U.S. investors currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k invested in equities.  So what happens if the stock market crashes again?

#5 35% of Americans already over the age of 65 rely almost entirely on Social Security payments alone.

#6 According to another recent survey, 24% of U.S. workers admit that they have postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the past year.

#7 Approximately 3 out of 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62.  Most are doing this out of necessity.  However, by claiming Social Security early they get locked in at a much lower amount than if they would have waited.

#8 Pension consultant Girard Miller recently told California’s Little Hoover Commission that state and local government bodies in the state of California have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities.  When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in California.

#9 According to a recent report from Stanford University, California’s three biggest pension funds are as much as $500 billion short of meeting future retiree benefit obligations.

#10 It has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.

#11 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states.  What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds.  That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars.  So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from?  Most of the states are already completely broke and on the verge of bankruptcy.

#12 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010.  That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.  Sadly, in the years ahead these “Social Security deficits” are scheduled to become absolutely horrific as hordes of Baby Boomers start to retire.

#13 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers.  In 2010, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 U.S. workers.  By 2025, it is projected that there will be approximately two U.S. workers for each retiree.  How in the world can the system possibly continue to function properly with numbers like that?

#14 According to a recent U.S. government report, soaring interest costs on the U.S. national debt plus rapidly escalating spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every single dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019.  That is before a single dollar is spent on anything else.

#15 After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government is facing a “fiscal gap” of $202 trillion dollars.  A big chunk of that is made up of future obligations to Social Security and Medicare recipients.

#16 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop”.

Companies all over America have been dropping their pension plans in anticipation of the time when the Baby Boomers would retire.  401k programs were supposed to be part of the answer, but if the stock market crashes again, it is absolutely going to devastate the Baby Boomers.

State and local governments are scrambling to find ways to pay out all the benefits that they have been promising.  Many state and local governments will be forced into some very hard choices by the hordes of Baby Boomers that will now be retiring.

Of course whenever a big financial crisis comes along these days everyone looks to the federal government to fix the problem.  But the truth is that after fixing crisis after crisis the federal government is flat broke.

At our current pace, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government public debt will hit 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.

But our politicians just keep spending money.  In order to pay the Baby Boomers what they are owed the federal government may indeed go into even more debt and have the Federal Reserve print up a bunch more money.

So in the end, Baby Boomers may get most of what they are owed.  Of course it may be with radically devalued dollars.  Already we are watching those on fixed incomes being devastated by the rising cost of food, gas, heat and health care.

What is going to happen one day when prices have risen so much that the checks that our seniors are getting are not enough to heat their homes?

What are we going to do when those on fixed incomes are buying dog food because it is all that they can afford?

We are rapidly reaching a tipping point.  As the first Baby Boomers retire the system is going to do okay.  But as millions start pouring into the system it is going to start breaking down.

No, there is not much that we can do about it now.  We should have been planning for all of this all along.  Americans should have been saving for retirement and governments should have been setting money aside.

But it didn’t happen.

Now we pay the price.

Read more - http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/in-2011-the-baby-boomers-start-to-turn-65-16-statistics-about-the-coming-retirement-crisis-that-will-drop-your-jaw

17 National Debt Statistics Which Prove That We Have Sold Our Children And Grandchildren Into Perpetual Debt Slavery -

17 National Debt Statistics Which Prove That We Have Sold Our Children And Grandchildren Into Perpetual Debt Slavery -

What we have done to future generations over the past 30 years is absolutely criminal.  30 years ago the U.S. national debt was a bit under one trillion dollars, and at that time it was considered a huge national crisis.  Today, the national debt is 14 times larger and the years ahead look absolutely apocalyptic at this point.  We have literally sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery.  We have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and our children and our grandchildren will be burdened with it for the rest of their lives.  All of our politicians keep talking about how it is vitally important that we do something about all of this debt “soon”, but they just can’t seem to stop wildly spending our money.  They keep telling us that now is not the time for deficit reduction because it would harm “the economic recovery”, but the “right time” for deficit reduction never seems to come along.  The national debt statistics in this article are meant to shock you.  Hopefully they will shock you enough to actually take action.  Up to this point, the vast majority of Americans have been extremely apathetic about the horrific crime that we are committing against future generations.

How would you feel if you found out one day that your parents had run up a million dollars in debt that now you were obligated to pay off?

Would you be absolutely furious?

Of course you would be, and rightly so.

So how do you think future generations will feel about us?

We were once the wealthiest nation on the planet, but we have taken that great inheritance and we have squandered it.

Now we are handing our children and our grandchildren the largest debt the world has ever seen.

How in the world can we do that?

How can we consign our descendants to perpetual debt slavery and still feel good about ourselves?

The America that we have all been enjoying so much today is going to be wiped out by all of this debt.

We have literally stolen the future.

We just had to keep spending more and more and more and more.

The greed of this generation will be remembered for a very, very long time.

The truth is that both political parties are responsible.  Both of them have voted over and over and over to keep running up these huge budget deficits.

If you have voted for big spending Democrats at any point over the past 30 years then you have contributed to the problem.  If you have voted for big spending Republicans at any point over the past 30 years then you have contributed to the problem.

Now we have reached a point where a horrific financial meltdown is basically inevitable.  We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and it is only a matter of time until it bursts.

The following are 17 national debt statistics which prove that we have sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery….

#1 As of December 28th, the U.S. national debt was $13,877,230,355,933.00.

#2 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#3 If the federal government began repaying the national debt at a rate of $10 million dollars a day it would take approximately 3,800 years to pay off the national debt.

#4 Today, the U.S. national debt is increasing by roughly 4 billion dollars every single day.

#5 The U.S. government is borrowing approximately 2.63 million more dollars every single minute.

#6 On September 30th, 1980 the U.S. national debt was 907 billion dollars.  Just thirty years later, the U.S. national debt is over 14 times larger.

#7 According to a recent U.S. Treasury report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will reach 19.6 trillion dollars in 2015.

#8 It is being projected that the U.S. government will be paying 900 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt by the year 2019.

#9 A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globemore than 380 times.  That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

#10 The U.S. Congress has raised the federal debt ceiling six times in just the past three years.

#11 The 111th Congress added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

#12 The 111th Congress got us into so much new debt that it breaks down to $10,429.64 for each of the 308,745,538 people counted by the 2010 U.S. census.

#13 The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.

#14 When you break down the debt that the U.S. government owes to China alone it comes to over $10,000 for every single American family.

#15 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.  Almost unbelievably, the U.S. government will accumulate well over a trillion dollars more debt in 2011.

#16 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#17 The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.

But the American people don’t want to hear that we have spent decades creating a horrific debt crisis that is not going to be easy to fix.  They just want someone to “tweak” a few things and get us back to being the greatest economy on earth.  Unfortunately, it is simply not that easy.

Just check out the chart posted below.  Our debt is exploding at an almost exponential rate….

But what do you tell a nation that is completely addicted to debt?

On an individual level, it can be a lot of fun to wildly run up credit card debt, but at some point you have to stop and start paying down that debt.

Unfortunately, on a national level we can’t even get our politicians to slow down the rate at which our debt is increasing.

Sadly, the chart above does not tell the real story.  It is based on fraudulent government accounting.  If the government used GAAP accounting (like all public companies on Wall Street must), the numbers would look much worse.

John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics says that if the federal government would have used GAAP accounting standards to calculate the federal budget deficit for 2009, it would have been approximately 8.8 trillion dollars and that there is simply no way out of all this debt….

The government’s finances not only are out of control, but the actual deficit is not containable.  Put into perspective, if the government were to raise taxes so as to seize 100% of all wages, salaries and corporate profits, it still would be showing an annual deficit using GAAP accounting on a consistent basis. In like manner, given current revenues, if it stopped spending every penny (including defense and homeland security) other than for Social Security and Medicare obligations, the government still would be showing an annual deficit. Further, the U.S. has no potential way to grow out of this shortfall.

The U.S. government is essentially bankrupt at this point.  It is just a matter of playing out the hand.

The rest of the world is starting to realize this, and confidence in the U.S. dollar is beginning to significantly decline.

Things did not have to turn out this way, but Americans did not listen to the warnings and so now this is where we are at as a nation.

The next time you see a small child, look into the hopeful eyes of that child and just think about what we have done to the future of all of our children.

We have obliterated the financial future of this nation.  Someone should be put into prison for all this.  But instead the mainstream media treats prominent politicians from both political parties like rock stars.

The mainstream media continues to perpetuate the myth that the U.S. economy is on the road to a grand recovery and that eventually we can get a handle on all this debt and that somehow everything is going to be okay.

Well, everything is not going to be okay.

All that is on the horizon is great financial pain, and the sad thing is that it could have all been avoided.

But now the game is over and the day of reckoning is coming soon.

We are going to reap what we have sown.

Read more - http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/17-national-debt-statistics-which-prove-that-we-have-sold-our-children-and-grandchildren-into-perpetual-debt-slavery