Social security scare

I have been having a reocurring nightmare lately. I am several years older, living in perfect domestic bliss with my wife and kids -- and maybe even a couple golden retrievers. One day, as we sit down for a nice meatloaf dinner, the doorbell rings. I open it to find my elderly parents standing on my doorstep -- with suitcases. \nThey're moving in! I wake up screaming. But what does it all mean? Unfortunately, I am starting to wonder if this may be a disturbingly accurate premonition. \nLike a lot of people their age, my parents have planned their retirement around getting a Social Security check. It's not a lot of money, and they have other sources of income, but to them, like most middle-class retirees, it's still significant. They will soon count on it for the necessities of life -- like housing. \nWe've heard it all before and our eyes start to glaze over when we hear about lock boxes and deficits. Why worry about Social Security? Because our generation is quietly getting screwed. \nWhen Social Security was designed, they expected current workers would pay for the current retirees. But there are two problems right now. First, more people are retiring than are joining the workforce. Secondly, our spry old folks are living a lot longer than their sickly Depression-era counterparts. \nIf we want to make Social Security work like it's supposed to, so people like my parents don't need to move in with their kids. We need to be saving up -- putting away more money than we spend right now so we have enough cash on hand when millions of old folks start asking for their checks. We're not. Right when we should be putting money in the bank, we are maxing out our credit card with the largest deficits in the history of our country. \nRight now, the federal government has a debt of around $6.9 trillion and is spending about $374 billion more than it takes in. President Bush likes to talk about cutting the deficit, which is politician-talk for going into debt a bit more slowly. To make a long story short, Social Security is in big trouble, and our parents might just be out of luck.\nBut it might be a bad deal for us, too. For every summer job waiting tables or lugging around golf clubs, or even once we start our professional careers, a chunk of cash is taken out of our checks, which is supposed to go toward supporting Social Security. (It's 6.25% of your earnings up to $87,500 -- in case you were wondering). Right now, because our government is running a deficit, this money is going toward covering its expenses instead of being saved for the coming retirement boom. If this continues, Social Security may fail, and we could never see this money again. What do you call money you give the government to pay its operating costs you never ever see again? Sounds a lot like a tax to me. \nBut as if that wasn't bad enough -- even with all of our "retirement" money the government is spending, it's still coming up short, and borrowing. Our generation certainly didn't make this mess, but we are going to be asked to fix it. When we are in our prime earning years, we can expect much higher taxes to pay for the previous generation's carelessness. \nSome might say people have been panicked about Social Security for a long time -- and it's still around. It may last longer than we think, but math is going to catch up to it, sooner or later. If it's later… maybe it will be me on the porch with the suitcase.