A quick check of the history of the program, however, reminds us that we used to have quite different ideas about what was possible in America. When Franklin Roosevelt launched Social Security the nation was deep in the Great Depression, our worst economic crisis ever. Roosevelt didn't look at the sorry state of the economy, at an unemployment rate of 25 percent, and say we cannot afford to create a program to provide security for the elderly. He didn't promise that we would take action some day in the future, after workers had all accumulated large returns in on private accounts invested in the stock market (which might have sounded a bit silly, anyway, in the 1930s). He just did it. Indeed it was the market collapse and the subsequent drop in employment and national income that taught him and people in general that some sort of social insurance program was a necessary safety net for most workers.

The effects of the Depression lingered when, in 1941, the United States became involved in the greatest war in history. But Social Security's promises were not abandoned because of the overwhelming demands of World War II, financial and otherwise. In fact, the program was expanded.

And through all the following decades, Democratic and Republican presidents supported Social Security through other wars and frequent recessions. Payroll contributions were increased twelve times; coverage was expanded even more often. And indeed, after the worst recession since the Great Depression, which occurred during Ronald Reagan's first term, Reagan instituted an effort to make Social Security even more secure.

While all this was happening the percentage of Americans over 65 was more than doubling, a bigger increase than that anticipated for the next 50 years.

Why is it then that for many the aging of the boomers is a nearly insurmountable problem clouding America's future? The boomers, after all, probably had a bigger impact on the nation when they were kids. The sheer size of the generation once overloaded local schools systems and spurred tremendous costs in building schools, training teachers, and, later, providing college loans and grants. Between 1952 and 1970, elementary-secondary schools expenditures increased more than 275 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. In fact, the shift in GDP that paid for school costs and expansion for boomer kids—from 1.4 percent to 4.1 percent—is larger than that required to keep Social Security at current levels for the next century.

As children, boomers comprised over 40 percent of the population; in 2000, they were less than 28 percent; in retirement they'll drop below 25 percent. And, by the 2040s, when the projected shortfalls will occur in Social Security, most of the boomers will be—not to put too fine a point on it—dead.

So what has happened to make Social Security unaffordable? The problem can't be the simple ratio of workers to non-workers. When one calculates the total number of people per worker—including children and the elderly—it turns out the ratio was greater in the 1960s than it is today. Yet I don't think the sixties are generally thought of as a time of economic deprivation. Looking into the future, the ratio of workers to non-workers hardly changes: from a total of 170 people who today depend on the output of every 100 workers, the number is projected to rise no higher than 178 at the peak of baby boomer retirement. Is this what we cannot afford? Furthermore, average incomes which have more than doubled in inflation adjusted dollars since 1960 are expected to grow by another 50 percent by mid-century.

Finally, consider the fact that while the boomers came into the world with nothing, they will leave a great deal behind. Besides the obvious trillions in inheritances, they have built, invented, and contributed vast amounts to the national economy. We are a richer people than we were in Franklin Roosevelt's time, and richer, too, than we were during the childhood of the boomers.

The question then is not whether we can afford to keep Social Security in the future; it is whether we still believe in the idea that Americans, boomers included, have the right to a dignified old age.

Richard C. Leone is president of The Century Foundation.