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Aging of Baby Boomers Yields Political Cowardice

The ensuing explosion of an aging baby boomer population has not become an issue in the current presidential sweepstakes. In one of the recent CNN/YouTube debates, the question of how the growing costs posed by legions of aging boomers should be dealt with was broached with Presidential candidate Bill Richardson. He responded that "The best solution is a bipartisan effort to fix it".

Actually, Bill Richardson was wrong. Bipartisan agreement has already been reached. Here it is: "Let's all be political cowards and just keep our mouths shut"!

In reality, as evasive as the candidates have been about the coming fiscal and societal age related crises looming ahead, the next administration will be forced to face the problems squarely if certain debacle is to be averted.

Under any circumstances, most of us would prefer to ignore aging. After all, we're incessantly exposed to a pop culture glorifying the young and proselytizing the rest of us to imitate youth. Why even think about the mounting costs and social dislocations posed by aging boomers in light of this sort of perceived mindset among the electorate?

Moreover, the campaigns and debates so far have shown that there are far more pressing domestic problems screaming for attention such as gay marriage, right to life and tax cuts. Any consideration of what to do about an aging population could only serve to deflect focus away from these kinds of voter rich political stepping stones.

Beyond that, the questions are almost too horrible for any politician to contemplate. The choices basically are to cut benefits or raise taxes or a combination of both. If nothing is done, in order to meet future obligations and deliver services, all defense and homeland security spending, among other things, would have to be eliminated. Some estimates postulate that tax increases between 30% and 50% would be required. Spending cuts would necessitate further increases in eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare, reduction or elimination of benefits to the wealthy or severe cuts in benefits across the board.

Patently, nothing contained in this unhappy outlook promises anything close to a prayer of rallying voter support. Instead, as baby boomers inflate the senior population, we can see no prospect for the sort of leadership and vision required to adjust to an escalating economic, societal, cultural and medical Armageddon.

Evasion, partisan, bipartisan or otherwise is nothing more than political cowardice, short and simple.

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Tags: age, Age Discrimination, aging population, Aging Process, Anti Aging, Baby Boomers, senior citizens, seniors