One of the more interesting ploys for professors of history or political science is to ask students how long things they take for granted have actually been part of the human experience.
Most are surprised to find out that we’ve organized ourselves into sovereign nation-states only since about the time of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Or that liberal democracy was only a theoretical construct in philosophers’ eyes until the American Revolution. And that our federal income tax goes back only a century, to the ratification of the 16th Amendment (at which time the highest marginal rate was just 7 percent, on those making more than $500,000).
The point is to reveal how much of what we assume about politics is relatively recent and therefore possibly ephemeral. Much of what is here today hasn’t been here for all that long, and much of it might not be around much longer.
And among those once firmly ingrained notions that might be passing is that we can look forward to enjoying a cushy retirement in our old age. Indeed, if certain trends continue along their present trajectory, we baby boomers might be the last generation to spend our “golden years” in idle leisure.
First among such trends is the extension of adolescence. Precisely because a huge (and mostly superfluous) percentage of every 18-year-old high school cohort now goes on to college of some sort, college degrees have become roughly as common and perform much the same marketplace function as high school diplomas 60 years ago.
And as undergraduate degrees become more plentiful, and therefore less valuable, a demand for additional educational credentials grows, with the result that young people now often delay entry into the full-time labor force (as well as marriage and children) until their mid- to late 20s,compared to the late teens in previous eras.
Combine this delayed labor market entry and marriage with declining fertility rates (fewer children) on the front end with longer life expectancy on the back and you get a society in which people spend ever-larger percentages of their lives outside the labor force, thereby putting greater financial pressure on those still in it.
But it all becomes more intriguing in a political (as well as psychological) sense when we understand that retirement itself is a fairly novel concept, one that didn’t really exist in any meaningful way in America until after World War II. In previous eras, the idea of spending huge chunks of one’s life not earning one’s keep would have been considered impossible, even incomprehensible.
Along these lines, we often hear that current Social Security recipients worked for 40 or more years and thus deserve to collect their benefits. But even a casual perusal of the numbers tells us that an 80-year old who’s been retired for 15 years has collected benefits that exceed contributions many times over (not to mention high draws on Medicaid and Medicare).
Social Security was originally designed to be a retirement supplement at a time when the average worker didn’t even make it to the retirement age. It wasn’t intended for an age when people retire at 60 and then live till 90. Sixty isn’t the new 50; it is more like the new 35. As columnist Mark Steyn recently noted, “When everyone’s a senior, nobody is.”
Then again, this is when we go back to basics and recover the understanding that until quite recently in historical terms you were expected to work as soon as you were physically able and continue to work until you physically couldn’t; and likely die shortly thereafter, if not before.
There is, ultimately, no way of shaking the fundamental truth that the world doesn’t and never will owe us a living or a comfy retirement in our dotage either; that there will always be something inherently unstable about solutions built around the idea that those who work will support those who don’t.
Social Security (and the broader notion of state-guaranteed retirement pensions) is at the very heart of the welfare-state model, but changes in labor markets and human life expectancy are casting increasing doubt on the sustainability of these centerpieces. The welfare state has also recast societal expectations in a way that inevitably damages both family structure and sense of familial obligation, including the idea that we take care of our children so that they will later take care of us.
While such informal welfare functions are inherently unreliable, it might be useful to ask how reliable formal government guarantees (“entitlements”) have become in an era when we can’t come close to being able to pay for them.
The welfare state hasn’t really provided for our retirement; it only appeared to do so for a couple of fortunate generations. More to the point, it hasn’t solved the fundamental human problem of how we survive when we grow too old to work and provide for ourselves.
Rather, it has simply and increasingly implausibly shifted the burden of our idleness from our children to strangers.
-
———◊-
———
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 12/09/2013