One thing I try to stress to folks who are moving toward retirement is that their dream of increased independence is a noble one that I can appreciate, but the grim reality for many who retire is precisely the opposite. They become more and more dependent on others. Without earned income, retirees depend on three primary sources of financial support. First, of course, is the taxpayer whose earned income provides the money for Social Security, Medicare, and other retirement-related government programs. Second is the consumer whose willingness to pay a high price for a retiree's asset (stock, real estate, gold, whatever) determines how much the retiree gets when he or she decides to sell or must sell. Third are the workers whose productivity is essential to the health of private pension programs. This is not independence; it is dependence.

Most of us have no problem in providing support to children as dependents. They cannot be expected to support themselves and become the adults we want and need them to be. Most of us have no problem in providing support to the elderly or disabled, those who can no longer be productive, as dependents. But the day will come when we feel forced to treat too many intellectually and physically competent adults as dependents. It will not be a happy day.

The US Census Bureau estimates that at mid-year, 2009, there are 40,788,105 adult Americans between the ages of 50 and 59. Some of them have retired already and most of the rest have begun serious planning to that end. That is 13% of the total population right there and does not include those 60 and older who are not yet retired, but expect to do so and soon.

Twenty years ago in 1989, the 50-59 age group numbered 21,747,092. While the total population of the US rose 24% between 1989 and 2009; those in their 50's nearly doubled.

That is a lot of new dependents for the rest of us to support. Supporting them for twenty, thirty, or forty years is ridiculous.

This is not just a US challenge. The situation is very similar, usually worse, in other nations that experienced a baby boom following World War Two: Canada, all of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and China. I need to stress that the Retirement Bubble is definitely not an American phenomenon, nearly half the globe's population is affected directly and the rest will feel indirect effects.

I have corresponded and/or met face-to-face with a few thousand retirees and would-be retirees over the last eleven years. Not one of them, not one, has ever expressed a desire to be a dependent. On the contrary, they dream of finally being independent. I admire that goal, but I do not expect the majority to make it. If so, the consequences of their failure will mark us all.

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