Government payouts -- including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance -- make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement...
The economist [Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs] gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said...
Only this year has the first round of baby boomers begun collecting Medicare benefits—and here comes 78 million more.
Social welfare benefits have increased by $514 billion over the last two years...
