Tax rates will need to roughly double by 2050 in order to pay for benefit promises now on the books. Yet less than one-fifth of working Americans in that year will have voted in 2008. The youngest worker in 2050 to have voted in the 2008 elections will be 60 years old.
In the 2008 elections, voters under 30 slightly outnumbered those over 65. But population aging means that there will probably never again be an American election where there are more youth than elderly at the polls. Even if the very high youth voter participation rates seen in 2008 are sustained into the future, by 2040 there would be almost twice as many elderly as youth voters.
The world’s largest interest group, with 38 million members, is AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons. AARP says it represents the children and grandchildren of its age 50-plus membership. But it has been a leading voice in establishing and defending our unsustainable entitlements. If AARP maintains its current market share, an aging population will push its membership past 60 million by the 2040s.
Tax rates will need to roughly double by 2050 in order to pay for benefit promises now on the books. Yet less than one-fifth of working Americans in that year will have voted in 2008. The youngest worker in 2050 to have voted in the 2008 elections will be 60 years old.
In the 2008 elections, voters under 30 slightly outnumbered those over 65. But population aging means that there will probably never again be an American election where there are more youth than elderly at the polls. Even if the very high youth voter participation rates seen in 2008 are sustained into the future, by 2040 there would be almost twice as many elderly as youth voters.
The world’s largest interest group, with 38 million members, is AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons. AARP says it represents the children and grandchildren of its age 50-plus membership. But it has been a leading voice in establishing and defending our unsustainable entitlements. If AARP maintains its current market share, an aging population will push its membership past 60 million by the 2040s.