Originally Posted by slapass

You are missing something.

We used to have an age pyramid like India - http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/pop...ramid-2014.gif

Then we had 7 workers for every retire. The baby boomers aged and we are heading for 2 workers per retire.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/char...14/chart36.gif

We are never going to have the participation rate we had. it is not possible. It is going to get worse.
Obama made it worse due to the recession and early retirement or people pushed out who could not get back in etc. But this is a huge trend that is not really fixable by the President. Some countries are asking people to make more kids. Japan, South Korea and China have done this. Not working so well but it is doable.

Here is our current age pyramid. - http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/pop...ramid-2016.gif

We can argue short term flucuations but long term this is a mess.