I'm not particularly sympathetic. Those baby-boomers just getting onto the retirement train had plenty of time to see to it that the retirement schemes were fully funded - they could have paid their own way - but they didn't; instead, they chose to free-ride off of the following generations in exactly the same way that idiot-boy FDR set up the original social security system - a ponzi scheme that must eventually fall apart.
Citizens in general aren't financial analysts. They rely on the systems in place, and believe the future will be somewhat predictable.
Many people DID save, invest BEYOND social security, in real estate and in stocks. But the values of such real estate and stocks fell off the table, with the Bush/Obama democrat-republican mismanagement debacle of our economy.
So I do have sympathy for these people. Their lives are turning out less financially wealthy as they had every reason to expect. They are contending with often working on well beyond retirement ages, earning less, and living on less.
The only ones escaping this are the government worker retirees. So far they are living high off the taxpayer hog.
They are in a class I'll call "beneficiaries of a windfall of timing" when government promised more than it should have.
The next step is for citizens to decide if they want to pay for it. And to see if our system of government allows them to break those foolish promises.
