@okie,
Quote:There won't be enough money to support the promised benefits, so the programs will default.
Care to dig below the surface and figure out why this might happen?
How about immediately after WWII, in the midst of the biggest homecoming since Ulysses, people fucked like rabbits out of the pure joy of not being at war and produced, ta da!, the Baby Boom. During this time, marriage was exalted, in large part because reliable birth control was unavailable, either because it simply wasn't or because laws made the use of birth control an offense. So, brides marched down the aisle at 18 rather than in their mid-to-late 20s as girls in service or mill workers did.
Then, people began to show some sense and several more reliable methods
of birth control emerged. Women entered universities rather than domestic work which no longer existed because of appliances. Marriage could be put off. Child-bearing could be put off.
A side effect of having all these extra people -- women -- in the work force was to raise wages. There were other factors as well.
Technology changed and much work no longer existed.
Of course, the robber barons sent jobs overseas. Think of Oshkosh overalls and Hathaway shirts, good companies destroyed by greed.
But all of this analysis is just too much history, too much economics and too much reasoning for okie.
