A good part of Clinton's State of the Union Address in January, 1998, emphasized the need to address Social Security reform:

"Tonight I propose that we reserve 100 percent of the surplus, that is every penny of any surplus, until we have taken all the necessary measures to strengthen the Social Security system for the 21st century. Let us say, let us say to all Americans watching tonight, whether you are 70 or 50 or whether you just started paying into the system, Social Security will be there when you need it. Let us make this commitment: Social Security first. Let's do that together."

On April 7, 1998, at the first National Forum on Social Security at Penn Valley Community College, Kansas City, Missouri, the President said: "this sunlit moment is not a time to rest. Instead, it is a rare opportunity to prepare our nation for the challenges and the opportunities of the 21st century - or in the words of the old saying, to fix the roof while the sun is shining...Today the system is sound, but the demographic crisis looming is clear. The baby boomers - 76 million of us - are now looking ahead to their retirement."

The Fourth Estate immediately picked up on the 76 million baby-boomer figure and broadcast it everywhere and continuously (see samples) often quoting the wrong number as the mathematically challenged often do.

For years, the general public has lived with this frightening number as though it is unusual, often taking it to mean that the baby-boomers are a generation of births 76 million above normal.

As we will see, the baby-boomer myth asks us to believe that a part is greater than the whole. An absolute impossibility.

Let's take it step by step.

First of all, the cause of the baby boomer generation is related to 16 million service men and women returning from theaters of World War II in 1945 and for the next twenty years (1946 through 1965), the child bearing years for these people, causing an unusually high number of childrn to be born. At least, that's part of the myth.

As you can see in the table above, the percentage of population increase during the Fifties is certainly higher than the decades preceeding and following it, but how many people does that really account for? And the Twenties, a decade after another World War, was higher than the Forties. The Great Depression years are the most significant difference.

We can't easily deal with 20 year mid-decade periods without making estimates, so let's look to 30 year periods to see what kind of figures we get:

First of all, it deals with a 30 year period from more modern times and also includes the 2000 census where nose counting was different. Congress wanted to physically count everyone without dealing in statistical sampling, but settled for a much larger sample than normal. Hence, the figures are scewed from previous census.

Also remember that these tables include immigrants who are mostly adults. We have not yet begun to admit runaways into the country without their parents.

Let's look at another thirty year period:

Although it's never mentioned, the boomer myth implies that there were 76 million births above normal between 1946 and 1965. If we can't even find them as normal, how can they be above normal?

There are baby-boomers. There were births above normal during this period. That's obvious from the 18.48 percent increase in the 1970 census. But they were not more than seven or eight million at best. Play with the numbers all you want, but don't forget the immigrants.

Why would our government perpetrate such a hoax, you might ask. Well, let's not ignore the fact that they've raised the age of full retirement and they've increased the cap on payroll taxes. Both actions increase the bounty for the bandits to steal.

I will not belabor the obvious at this point. The entire Uncle-Scam.com web site is devoted to the Pay-It-Again Sam scam.

If you want something else to look at in terms of the census, consider the following:

Take a look at the drop in population growth during the Great Depression years, 1930 to 1940. No matter how you look at it, during the depression years population growth dropped more than in half compared to the decade preceeding and following. All the real seven million baby-boomers did was to help bring things back to a more normal growth pattern.

For instance, if you had a barrel that once contained 60 apples and now holds 94 apples, the Census figures would show only an increase of 34 apples. But it is also possible that 50 of the original apples were rotten and had to be thrown out (deaths) leaving only ten apples. In that case, 84 apples were new to the barrel. And supposing eight of these did not recently come off trees but were older healthy apples that came from other barrels (the difference between immigration and emigration) we would then be left with 76 new apples (births).

This made sense and sent me on a long and tedious compilation of births vs. death rates taken from historical insurance data and worked into the Census data, all to come to the same conclusion. There truly are only 7 to 8 million births above normal to be concerned about in the baby-boomer period.

Without going into detail, let me try to explain this another way.

We all work roughly 40 years of our lives paying payroll taxes all the way. Of course, there are differences depending on how long we stay in school, part time jobs, early retirement, some who still work after reaching retirement age, and so forth, but you can figure prime earning periods somewhere around 40 years as an average. And Social Security depends upon a constantly increasing work force always outnumbering the living retired drawing benefits.

Like any insurance, the actuaries of the Social Security Administration work hard to know how many contributors they have, how long people live, how many die accidentally or in wars, how many die of cancer, and so forth, all to determine how much your insurance must cost. And the Social Security Administration, housed in Baltimore, sets the standard for most private sector insurance companies. You can get lost in this actuarial data.

However, we have a current work force of about 147 million with, unfortunately, about 8 million currently unemployed. We have been very fortunate not to have had a war on our home shores since the Civil War where we lost people on both sides and the number of youngsters lost in wars abroad is really not as statistically significant as you might imagine. Also, the number of people living longer is a very slow increase not nearly as significant as the spin stories lead you to believe.

The point is that every 20 years you can count on just about half of the work force retiring. In other words, with a work force of 147 million, there is nothing unusual about more than 70 million people retiring every 20 years. Put that against the "76 million baby-boomer" myth, and what do you get?

On top of all that, a great many people do not survive to reach retirement age.

Here's a final table you might find interesting: (added in 2004)