The Generation Gap
The portion of Americans who hold at least a bachelor's degree has risen from 17 percent three decades ago to 28 percent. But those graduates who are completing college are finding that a degree isn't an automatic ticket to financial stability. While more people are attending college, they're leaving school saddled with an average debt of nearly $19,000. Recent college graduates owe 85 percent more in student loans than did their counterparts of a decade ago, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. What's more, their annual earnings may be higher than those of high school graduates, but they aren't rising faster than inflation.
The president might want to pull up on privatizing Social Security, too. That won't help the program. Means-testing will, and a bunch of us who don't need Social Security would understand giving up a little for our fellow citizens. And younger Americans may need more help than we older folks do. The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimates that under the proposal to change the indexation formula for benefits, an average worker now in his or her early 20s would receive $152,000 less than the currently scheduled benefits.
Instead of wasting time figuring out how future generations will support the baby boomers, it just might be we boomers who end up supporting America's youth. Now I reckon that's what we'd call a real retirement crisis.
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