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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> Oh wow! I hadn't ever factored in the problem that people aren't having as
> many children as they used to.
> 

It's not as much a matter of people having fewer children as it is that 
geezers live so long now.  My great grandmother was 65 the year that SS 
benefits 
started.  My parents tell the story that there was a very big birthday party 
with all her relatives and acquaintences in attendance because then living to 
be 
65 was noteworthy.  She gave a long speech as to how that would probably be 
the last time most of them would see her as she was getting so close to her 
alloted three score and ten.  She lived 40 more years.   

During the time SS was designed war, accident, and disease took out so many 
people before they reached retirement age, the whizened population was a much 
smaller percent than it is now.  And even at that, people qualified for 
benefits for a very few years.

To put SS back the way it was then, we'd have to check the actuarial tables 
each year and set the age to begin benefits at the average age of death -5 
years.

James