Something is wrong.

“All I want to do is work,” said Skidmore, of Finksburg, Md., who was an insurance claims adjuster for 37 years before his company downsized and closed his office last year. “And nobody will hire me.”

It is one of the most striking fallouts from the bad economy: Social Security is facing a rare shortfall this year as a wave of people like Skidmore opt to collect payments before their full retirement age. Adding to the strain on the trust are reduced tax collections sapped by the country’s historic unemployment — still at 9.5 percent.

I know several people who have filed for SSI benefits in the last two years. In each case it wasn’t a matter of their choice as they wanted to continue to work, rather it was the only option.

We talk about all kind of isms but the one ism we don’t talk too much about is ageism and as our society skews younger and younger people are forced to make tough decisions in an employment marketplace that is less than forgiving.

Here too the big problem is the government while well intentioned does not set up the proper framework for businesses to make it advantageous for them to hire older workers. I clearly remember the talk during the Reagan presidency of our economy shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service economy but the problem was this decision hadn’t anticipated factors like the internet which made the world a much, much smaller place so ultimately service jobs went overseas with the lure of cheaper workers.

This is a big problem and I’m not saying it out of self interest because we have an aging population in this country and the truth of the matter is the government spends far too much money. There is a very real prospect of the standard of living in this country changing dramatically over the next decade and the problem here is that our leadership has failed us.

And the biggest way it has failed us is in not looking for ways to bring manufacturing jobs back to our country. We are not seeing job creation because the environment right now is anti business and while some quarters would say that’s good for the nation, I’m not talking about the Fortune 50 or Fortune 500 companies. I know far too many small business owners who find the current climate hostile due to high taxes. This is a delicate balancing act but the problem here is that on the local, state and federal level we are not dealing with visionaries but rather bureaucrats who are more interested in increasing the size of the bureaucracy and making their lives more secure.