70 Million Baby Boomers, Eh? Sounds Like Opportunity to Me!

Folks have been talking about the paradigm shift coming to the United States as the Baby Boomers grow older and retire. Social Security will soon collapse, it was scheduled for 2042, but it will occur a decade sooner. When social security was really working well, 17 people were working for every 1 person in retirement, good stuff, no problems. But in a less than a decade there will be one retired person and only 1.9 people for each still working. Obviously, that is not going to work out mathematically.

Many have talked about what is to come, and it has already happened in Japan with their post economic boom. With an aging population, the workforce is having trouble holding up the economic expansion and with zero growth, it is tough to supply the needs of the civilization. Europe is next and then the US after that. Brilliant minds like Ken Dychwald have been discussing this for years.

There is also an interesting book out now called; Futurecast" by Robert Shapiro, which is a remake of all the previous studies, research and works on this subject. Having read all the data on demographics and this coming shift, I do recommend the folks above, but would also like to recommend another economic book on this topic:

"Boom, Bust & Echo; How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift" By David K. Foot with Daniel Stoffman; Macfarlane, Walter & Ross, Toronto, Canada; 1996.

He discusses real estate crisis, investing issues, social security problems, retail sales, manufacturing problems, retirees younger longer and how our retirement cities will grow and be so much different than the past. He discusses the crisis in Health Care, which we are now seeing over a decade later, all great predictions, he did not miss any and there are a few more to come too.

He speaks to the Canadian problems that mimic the US population and what it means to our Northern neighbors. The appendix is a lot of data that will scare the bejesus out of any leader or economists trying to figure out how to fix the problem. You need to read this book, it's a quick one, only 210 pages, but it will blow you away.