1.   Early retirement had also long been advocated as a means of cutting unemployment and of encouraging the promotion of younger workers.

2.   Mature workers have a breadth of experience lacking in younger workers.

3.   The system is overwhelmed by too many retirees and not enough younger workers to pay for their benefits.

4.   There is an underlying assumption that younger workers are easier to train.

5.   Younger workers tend to be at an advantage when applying for jobs.

6.   Younger workers, observing this, have turned elsewhere in order to be part of a more enlightened and progressive industry.

7.   While their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers concentrated hard upon the work at hand, some younger workers now ask questions about the point of working hard.

8.   To a younger worker who had not yet specialised and could more easily be re-employed without seriously losing status, the threat might be less serious.

9.   Allowing for some individual investment control of their tax money will at least give younger workers a fighting chance to make up this lost ground.

10.   And the Bush plan gives younger workers a choice to invest a small part of their Social Security in sound investments they control for higher returns.