Latin America as Baby Boomer retirement home.(INSIDER REPORT)(Brief Article)

As the Baby Boomers prepare for retirement, the prospective costs to be exacted of the Social Security and Medicare programs may leave Americans feeling "like doing what the old urban myth says the Inuit do: Ship the old folks out on the ice floes," wrote Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a September 24 syndicated op-ed column. As a "warm and loving alternative" to this cold-hearted approach, Mead recommends the following: "Send the old people to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean."

The generation preceding the boomers had bone-deep memories of the Depression, attested by their austere economic habits. The boomers, by way of contrast, have a negligible household savings rate and a huge debt overhang. "Some boomers not only won't be able to afford the retirement they dream of," writes Mead, "many won't even be able to afford the retirement they fear."

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