The social security system worked well for many years to give Americans financial assurance when they retire. Now, discrepancies between the number of Americans in the workforce and those retiring has threatened this systems practicality. The baby boomer generation is far larger than any other generation living in America today. As these citizens reach retirement age and are looking to collect their promised social security checks, they look to younger generations who are currently paying in. This is precisely where the problem lies: there are not enough people paying in to keep the system running as efficiently as before. This poses the question, “How much longer can the social security system be sustained, and what will happen to younger generations who will not reap the benefits of the what they are paying into?”. 

Young people on campus are surprisingly uneducated on this topic. When mentioned to a room of employed college students, hint: they pay into social security, many of them did not know much about the system or how they are affected by it. The initial reaction is the same, “I want my money back”. It is difficult to hear that more money is getting drained from your already measly paycheck to pay for something you did not sign up for. After understanding the problem, the students realize that there is no other way to take care of millions of retirees who were promised a check. 

The protest now is not against the system, but rather the concern of how our generation will fare in our retirement years. “I wonder how many other people didn’t know much about this. Who’s looking out for them?” As long as citizens are made aware of the loss of this security net, they will have time to adjust their working and saving years. “I feel like this is something that is really important to plan for but we don’t talk about it. This should be taught more in schools.” Planning for the future is scary enough, but doing it with no support is even more daunting. 

Perhaps it is the responsibility of the government to help people plan, the way they did with social security. A new plan to replace social security that could aid citizens in the regulation of their savings would help people who do not know how to do it alone. With increased life expectancy, American’s will need to plan for more retirement years than ever before, making a retirement plan that much more necessary. If we fail to support our aging population now, we will struggle to support them in the future.