re: #112 EmmmieG

SS was set up before the pill. I would like to think that if they had known that the population curve was going to taper off dramatically, they would have changed it somehow to not rely as much on having a really big worker base.

More than the pill, I think it’s that the whole reproductive history of the United States in the 20th century created a perfect storm. The birthrate was very low in the 1930s, rose somewhat in the 40s, and then the baby boom started, and the whole pig in the python profile was created. And THEN the baby boomers got birth control, women’s lib, and the smaller nuclear family.

We would have been in a better place if the post-war prosperity had not led to such a craze for big families, or if the boomers had not mostly opted for small ones—but those are the breaks.