A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

by Bruce Cannon Gibney

At the time it was conceived in the 1930s, Social Security was a program for the relatively small number of very old retirees. The official name of the legislation was the “Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Act,” which hinted at the rather limited category of people that legislators expected would collect. Life expectancy in the 1930s was just over sixty-five years and benefits kicked in, perhaps not coincidentally, around the same time.*,16 The demographic data meant that old age benefits were originally designed for the catastrophe of extreme age, rather than nearly universal assistance to cushion years and then decades of retirement. Those who did collect were often in severe need, as elderly populations in prior decades were particularly prone to poverty (a situation that no longer applies today, when elderly poverty is quite low while youth poverty remains quite high).