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POLITICS & COMMUNITY Have to Die Before I Get Old: Generation X Faces Old Age April 4, 1996 Past columns by Ted Rall

Kurt Cobain was on the right track. When the angst-soaked singer shot off his head in a 1994 smack fit, he evaded critical snipes at his band's lame last album, In Utero. He avoided Vegas reunion gigs, alimony payments to Courtney Love and, worst of all, worrying about his retirement. Unless things change radically -- and so far during my 32 years on the planet they haven't -- Americans born after 1960 may also find themselves sucking on the business end of a 12-gauge when they hit 65. Those without the courage to commit suicide will merely starve to death. Most young adults understand that the Social Security system is in deep trouble. What they don't know is that a few years ago, around the time Cobain died, the Social Security Administration sneakily increased the system's minimum retirement age from 62 to 68, effective the year 2028. In other words, if you're currently younger than 36, you've just lost six years of benefits, a pretty significant chunk of the 13 years an average person lives after retiring at 65. Don't be surprised if the minimum age slides higher as Baby Boomers start to retire-right past the average life expectancy of 78. Traditional retirement plans -- the monthly checks our parents and grandparents got from Conglomcorp after they hit 65 -- have been totally trashed since the 1980s. Reagan-era deregulation encouraged companies to steal their employees' pension funds. Often they went bankrupt in failed leveraged buyouts, taking their workers' pensions along with their jobs. These days, younger workers find that pensions are history; fewer than 25 percent of corporate employees work at places that offer them. Many places don't offer any post-employment benefits whatsoever. Among those that do, the "retirement plan" of choice is the 401(k), in which the company withholds a percentage of your paycheck and invests it with a money manager of its choosing. First, there's nothing to prevent your boss from looting your money, and it happens all the time. Second, no one monitors the skill or goodwill of the manager. Third, the withheld funds are tax-deferred, not tax-exempt. You don't pay income tax on this amount, but you do when you retire or quit. If the income tax rate happens to drop by then, you'll reap big savings. Right. No one stays at the same company long enough to retire on a 401(k). In reality, people use their 401(k) checks, which usually don't amount to much, as extra spending money each time they leave a job. Big companies like AT&T; are shedding millions of jobs and openly telling workers not to expect long-term employment. As the gold watch fades in our national consciousness, employer-based retirement plans make less and less sense. Self-employed workers are the fastest-growing segment of the workforce -- they make up roughly a third of all Americans, most of them under 40 -- and none of these people pay into 401(k)s or even the failing Social Security system. That leaves personal savings and investments. We all know Americans have a pathetic savings rate -- about 3 percent-compared to people in other countries. Consumerism is only partly to blame-the real culprits are stagnating incomes and corporate downsizing. Most Americans are living hand-to-mouth to maintain the illusion of membership in the middle-class. Asking them to save more is absurd. Former college students who attended school after 1981 have been hobbled by student loan payments. Savings? Ha! In the past, retirees who failed to save enough money could sell their homes, but, for the first time since World War II, home ownership is out of reach of Americans in their 20s and 30s. Boomer-driven real estate speculation, coupled with the demise of government mortgage financing, has killed this indirect form of retirement savings. The first Generation Xers, a demographic group characterized by underemployment, poverty and diminished expectations, will turn 65 in 30 years. These 40 million Americans will retire without savings, Social Security or medical care. Even if they're physically able to work themselves to death, it's unlikely that there will be any jobs for them after three more decades of downsizing. In social and political policy terms, this might as well be next week, but no one has a clue what to do to save tens of millions of future senior citizens from abject poverty. The Government is run by a bunch of old guys who will have taken their dirtnaps long before then. Xers don't have the social or political clout to get anyone else to care. Baby Boomers run the White House, but these selfish, self-involved and self-referential people are too busy pillaging what's left of the economy. I'm not afraid to admit it -- I'm scared shitless. At 32, I know that I'll never be able to retire. When I get old, I'll have to keep working. If I ever get sick or can't find work, I'll leave the dumpster-diving to others. I'll shoplift a bottle of vodka, toast Kurt and end it. I just hope they don't enact gun control. Ted Rall, 32, is a syndicated editorial cartoonist, freelance writer and contributing editor of Might magazine.. © 1996 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.