Real vision: Dealing with the Boomers as they reach retirement

A reader writes with an observation about a major demographic trend that will start to manifest itself about halfway through this thirteen-year sales tax.

One thing I've not seen in the debate is a consideration of what is possibly the most important economic of event since the Industrial Revolution: The retiring of the Baby Boomers. That is just about to happen and as the Dodge commercial says: This changes everything.

Current labor projections are that with just 3% annual economic growth, by 2010 there will be the most sever labor shortages ever, especially skilled labor; and that is taking into consideration the jobs lost to India, China, etc. I think this makes even more doubtful the wisdom of buying jobs at the extremely expensive rate requested by Boeing.

There will be ever increasing demand on public facilities related an aging population; and there will be an increasing demand for facilities related to retirement. It appears that Tulsa's response will be to offer the retired tourist the joy of our four-foot deep muddy river -- i.e. lovely Zink Lake.

Maybe somebody would like to expand on this; somebody needs to. Something like: How do you think Oklahoma's world-famous nursing homes will do with the aging population after Oklahoma's two big population centers have shot their financial wad on some pie in the sky?

Question: What state is the only state to add TWO congressional seats in the last census?

Glen Hiemstra, the futurist who spoke at the Mayor's Vision Summit, also raised the coming boom in the ranks of senior citizens as a trend we need to deal with as we develop a vision for the future. In the end, despite some proposals that dealt with this issue, the "leadership" team ignored it, since it wasn't about their beloved Downtown Sports Arena.

More about this later.