Latin America as Baby Boomer retirement home.

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."

"Don't underestimate the economic wisdom of migration," Mead advises. "An income that can barely cover a double-wide in Florida can swing a condo south of the border," he notes. The federal government "should smooth the path for seniors looking to retire abroad," by expanding Medicare coverage to include foreign healthcare providers, creating retirement agreements with neighboring countries, and otherwise knitting our entitlement system with that of Mexico and other Latin American countries, argues Mead.

"This is not a Democratic or a Republican program," he concludes, implicitly invoking the CFR's familiar role of custodian of the "bipartisan consensus." Whatever label is affixed to the program, it envisions the accelerating merger of our nation with Mexico and Latin America, fueled by taxpayer-subsidized entitlement programs.