Now that the first wave of 80-plus million Baby Boomers are beginning to glimpse the great age of 60, their potential impact on the Social Security system moves from conjecture to reality. This and other social programs all begin to kick in within two to five years of that birthday, and remember – a flood of Boomers will cross that line every year for the next twenty.

While this doesn’t encompass all the problems Social Security faces, it ranks high – if not, highest – on its list of challenges. That’s understandable considering the original economic premise: Social Security was designed three-quarters of a century ago when it could easily be argued that the relatively small number of people over the age of 65 could be financially supported by the entirety of the active working population. The young and/or able could provide for the aging and infirm. Sort of an imposed, extended one-big-happy-family.

No one projected the post-World War II Baby Boom. No one foresaw the fact that both new medical technology and the biotech revolution would collude to give these same Boomers another ten-twenty-thirty years of active life.

And if you don’t have the data, you can’t do the math.

To tell you the truth, much of the the math at this point presumes that the Boomers will reach 65 and do absolutely nothing until it’s time to go. That would be about 20-30-40 years of doing nothing. But the Baby Boomers aren’t going to stop working.

Even they wanted to, many can’t afford to stop working. Not only do they benefit from the prospect of an extended life, they were the first generation – through the technologies of the pill and the like – to have their children much, much, much later, and many of these offspring are still in school. And that’s not all.

Let’s not forget that Baby Boomers adopted “Ms” in favor of “Miss,” “he or she” instead of just “he,” and “Chair” in place of “Chairman.” They came of age in the workplace right along with Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity, and they’re an independent crowd, first ever to enthusiastically adopt consumer electronics and the Internet.

Everything the Baby Boomers have ever done, they’ve done differently, and with life now offering on a much longer path, they will live their “golden years” like no generation before. Which is why I find these worries about the fiscal soundness of Social Security to be real, but the current crop of fixes potentially flawed.

While great minds are attempting to create an innovative solution so brilliant, we will make future generations study it in civics class, we might consider this: Sixty-five has become a very unlikely candidate as an appropriate retirement age. The joke going around is that 64 is the new 44. Boomers are looking at 60-year careers instead of 40-year careers, their priorities are changing, and they’re not slowing down.

So once the Boomers reach 65, give them the Social Security they’ve expected all their lives \and watch them work as little or as much as they want or are able, When they do work, they will be putting far more into the Social Security System than it’s paying them, and don’t be surprised if the great mass of Baby Boomers continue to work into the foreseeable future.

And the math? The not so young but still extremely able may actually provide for its own aging and infirm, leaving the original vision remarkably intact.

And perhaps the system can become simple once again. As in the early days, when my grandmother had the same Social Security number as my grandfather.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.