I'll admit it -- I think raising the retirement age is a reasonable idea

I believe that the retirement age is already scheduled to increase gradually from 65 to 67. But I think it would be irresponsible to rule out further increases in the retirement age, particularly if the average life expectancy continues to rise.

Let's not forget that when social security was first enacted, the typical recipient only received retirement benefits for a few years before dying. That's no longer the case. As recipients live longer, they receive social security payments over a longer period of time, and the net effect is that the overall size of the benefit paid to social security beficiaries has gone up.

Personally, I wouldn't be outraged if the retirement age for full social security benefits were gradually increased to 70. (For the record, I'm 35.) People who retire at age 65 could still receive benefits, but the annual benefit going to these people should be reduced to reflect the fact that, on average, they'll be receiving benefits over a longer period of time than those who retire later. A separate formula could be designed for blue collar workers or workers falling into other readily definable categories whose average life expectancy is lower.

Another option would be to allow people over 65 to draw a reduced social security benefit while they continue to work (and pay payroll taxes). There may already be a provision in the law that allows this, but this could be liberalized.

And if you read my post, instead of simply the title, you'd see that I think there should be a separate formula for blue collar workers and other groups that have lower life expectancies.

disabling condition.

How about eliminating the caps on what high income earners like yourself pay in?

My salary has been flat for several years.

And for the record, I wouldn't have a problem raising the caps even further if there was a guarantee that the money would actually go to social security, instead of being diverted to fund other spending programs or income tax cuts.

I wish I were as wealthy as you apparently think I am. My gross salary looks pretty good, but roughly half my salary goes to federal, state, and local income taxes, as well as payroll taxes. I also live in New York City, which has the highest real estate prices in the national, and probably the highest sales tax as well.

ancy was much shorter. I think that raising the retirement age is quite reasonable, and actually is not even a 'change' because it is just keeping things the same, relative to life expectancy. And btw, i'm 39 and have been working physical jobs all my life (i'm currently a delivery driver), and frankly, i *intend* to keep working pretty much until the day i die. I intend to keep working *voluntarily,* i hope, and unless we make some common sense changes in SS,it may not be around much longer. You know if * has his way, it will not be here in 10 years, much less 50 or 100 years.

See if you change your mind as you get older.

You fail to address a fundamental fact -- people are living longer today compared with when social security was enacted. That, combined with reduced birth rates, beings that we have few and few workers supporting more and more social security recipients. Without adjusting the benefit formulas to reflect the fact that people are living longer, we'll end up asking a shrinking work force to shoulder an every larger share of the burden. The end result is a massive transfer of wealth from younger Americans to older Americans.

that concern is a strawman.

Some people age very well and could work until they're 80, perhaps. Many others can't.

P.S. How I wish I could be 35 again!

but it is probably easier to age well when the job involves physical labor that does not cause ailments and disabilities.

I would guess that those sitting on coporate boards tend to still work after 65 compared to those that work in factories.

Absolute baloney.

While trying to factor in so much in your theoretical model, what you failed to do was look at what is true actuarially. The two best sources of that will be the SS Trustees and the Congressional Budget Office. Neither of their projections validate your claims. Both rely on extremely conservative economic projections and even with those particular predicates, the situation is hardly as grave as you paint it.

The system can pay full benefits until 2052 WITHOUT doing anything. In 2052, WITHOUT doing anything, the system will still pay between 73% of promised benefits to individuals or 80%, depending on who you use. Tinkering slightly with the cap extends the system out to the limits of prudent financial forecasting, which is 75 years.

Relax. Don't let Bush panic you. Instead, fight these bastards over what they really want to do which is to destroy SS.

on edit: the 73% and 80% figure still both exceed current SS payments at 100% in actual dollars.

the same way they feel old and tired now. You'd especially feel old and tired today, if you have to work 40s a week. I don't think that has probally changed.

going downhill after the age of sixty five, physically is something the younguns cannot fathom. Arthritis, diabetes, circulatory problems, heart problems, prostate cancer, thinning of the bone, happen to some one else. :-)

The reason people are living longer is because of modern medical technology, but that is not saying they are in any shape whatsoever to work hard or long at jobs they did all of their working life.

and when I was 35, I could not have imagined how much less stamina I would have and how much more my joints would ache after age 50.

Literally everyone I know over the age of 50 has some degree of arthritis, and everyone over 40 has thrown their back out at least once.

I worked as an industrial temp when I was in my early thirties, and I know that I would be in agony by the late afternoon if I had to stand 8 hours a day doing assembly line work now.

And I'm speaking as one who exercises and tries to eat right.

My wife is 56.

When I was 35, I used to think that I wouldn't age like everyone else.

I have osteoarthritis and some days I can barely get out of bed now.

Living longer doesn't mean we should subject people to the torture. Should I just drop dead at retirement age so I don't burden the system?

Why not means testing and scrapping the FICA cap that currently exists if you earn over 90k?

a delivery driver, and have worked with quite a few drivers who are older than me.

when you are 55 and tell me how your arthritis is then..roflmao....you only "think" you know now!! hahahahaha/..you work till your 70 and leave my s.s. alone!!!!!!! you play the dumb sucker..i am not willing !!

People live longer now!!!! And btw, i take good care of myself, and have worked with drivers well into their 50's and 60's, so if they can do it why can't i? But *anyway* their are other things a person can do that don't require much physical labor. I'm graduating with a mine engineering degree this summer, but i plan to go back to delivery driving after i retire from that career, just so i can stay active.

pay s s as long as my hubby and i have or my parents have and my grandma died 2 months before her 100th birthday..see our grandparents paid the least into it and benefited the longest!!wrong analogy!!

fly

my dad died at 62 and never collected from ww2 ailments..so i really dont want to work until 70..i may never collect then!!

an average of $20,000. for their homes....so their homes were paid off...the average today , as you must admit by many isn't paid off by retirement age of peoples homes..

social security is solvent , and * is a lying sac of crap...and if anyone is foolish enough to fall for that crap..they get what they deserve...

* is trying to create a slush fund for the corporations of this country in the stock exchange...with the use of s.s. money...

go ahead risk your old age money...but dont dare touch mine...
its about time the youth of this country pay attention to what the ramifications of this will be...you will be no bettter off..you are only fooling yourself if you think you will be!
this would also be a way of covering up the total screw up by * of medicare/medicade....

just do a little research..when * bush says one thing..it means the opposite..just look it up..clean air act..allows way more polution, leave no child behind..leaves them all behind....come on people...
stealing from peter social security, will only be temporarialy pay paul!

want to keep s.s. solvent..stop paying it to all millionaires!! the ones who have been laughing at all of you by not paying taxes, and are buying and building all their mansion beachomes!! while you toil to pay the taxes they used to pay!

way since SS's inception. And, just because people are living longer, that doesn't mean that they are fit work 40 hour weeks. Also, age discriminatino DOES exist. There is no guarantee that seniors will be able to sustain a living wage even NOW until retirement age!

I've seen people who have worked hard all their lives, take early social security at 62, with lowered benefits just because they couldn't work 40 hours a week anymore.

That is stupid. Other countries have a lower retirement agefor their workers. Gees, in most of the world, you get TONS more vacation time too.

Why not just start working at AGE 5 years old AND WORK TILL 85?????

Are humans WORKHORSES??

although there are quite a few, especially in academic jobs, who do.

But most people don't want to work until they're 60, 50, or 40, either. It's only one side of the coin. It's a matter of whether people would rather pay more taxes when they're younger, or retire older, and that's far less open-and-shut.

Ala Dickens. The idea that Americans should work harder, longer and for less is something that the rich who don't have to work love to promote in every possible way. They won't have to suffer. Why any American would buy that it is beyond comprehension.

Maybe older Americans are healthier because they didn't have to work as hard. Anyone ever consider that? I know how I feel now after a hard day at work, competing to keep my job when there are hundreds of younger people chomping at the bit for fewer jobs and have more energy to compete. I don't feel like going to the gym, that's for sure.

Not only that, but older people who don't have the energy could contribute in other ways to society if they didn't have to drag themselves out of bed to do the nine to five routine. Work for another thirty years and then get back to us about how you want to continue for another 10-20.

The mantra from the media is it's "Amerikan" to work yourself from cradle to grave, that is unless you are one of the privileged class who sit back and profit from your labor.

over 45 or 50 support raising the retirement age, except, of course, people who have no need of Social Security retirement benefits.

Everyone deserves to retire and enjoy at least a few years while they're still mobile and not entirely senile. Two years is a long time, and a lot of deterioration in one's late 60's.

Next thing, they'll want us working while we're in a Retirement Home...or better yet, in the grave.

But the irony is, most companies find reasons to retire or fire middle-age employees so they can hire younger, more docile employees who won't have as many medical bills, or large pension payments.

Most middle-aged workers (let alone workers in their mid-60's) have a great deal of trouble even getting employed...let alone STAYING employed, due to age discrimination in the workplace.

to project ahead another 20-30 years? I mean, i am definitely not in the shape that i was 20 years ago, but even so, another 20-30 years will not leave me as an invalid, *unless* i have some catastrophic medical situation, which one would certainly hope would be covered by medicare or something, rather than SS. Seems to me that people who stay active and do the most physical activity stay in the best shape for the longest time; also even if you have physical limitations, many people can still work.

It is a process that has barely even begun for you, and one that will accelerate over time. In addition your statement that those who are physically active stay healthier longer than those who do not is true, but only up to a point. People who engage in strenuous physical activity at their job often find themselves at age 50 and above pushing themselves beyond their bodies lowered limitations, thus sustaining injuries or causing normal degeneration to become worse, all in an attempt to stay employed in a field that younger men handle much more easily.

than i did 20 years ago? Let me tell you, the process has begun, and no, it's not a straight line, but still, people have been getting old long enough for some reasonable predictions to be made.

Face it, the only job available to most people in their 60's are minimum wage jobs at Wal Mart or McDonalds, etc. And how many elderly have the stamina (or humility) for those?

This is tragic...that we're even CONSIDERING this possibility.

reasonable. I doubt many people would even miss it if they saw the same paycheck on the last week of the year as they got on the first week.


Edited to remove an insensitive comment. My apologies.

This mollycoddling of the rich has got to stop.

Except the age is 62. But if you retire at 62, you get less benefits than if you wait until 65 or 67 or whatever your required age under the current scheme.

But this is how they win. Chip away at us, bit by bit, until we're arguing amongst ourselves instead of hacking away at them.

They STOLE the FICA money and gave it away to the rich with the tax cuts. We wouldn't even be having this discussion if Bush hadn't done that. I want my money back. Period.

I think it's fine to raise MY retirement age, seeing as how I expect that the vast majority of my career will be in white collar employment. But for someone who spends their whole adult life as a construction worker, or a factory worker or a firefighter, by the time those folks reach 65 they are physically ready to retire. Their bodies are worn out. Any increase in the retirement age needs to take into account this fact of life for blue collar workers.

It can be done: for example, coal miners are allowed to retire at age 62 with full benefits. We could say that if you worked a blue collar profession for a certain number of years, you may retire with full benefits at age 65 (or 67, after the age is raised).

nt

Also, my latest social security statement showed that I have to wait until I'm 66 to get full benefits. I'm 53 now. So it's already edging up.

We're not supposed to have age discrimination, but in fact, I know 3 people over the age of sixty who have not been able to find jobs despite having good work records.

Their experiences have made me very glad that I'm self-employed.

good fuckin' luck. :(

I think I understand what you're getting at. In 1935 life expectancy was 61.7 yrs and today it is 77 yrs. I wonder if life expectancy was 77 in 1935, what age would they have started paying benefits.:shrug:

the age of 6 - not 65. This is another con job brought to us from our government. Medical science has only increased the age limit by 4 YEARS! The life expectancy in 1776 was 35. If everyone died at 35, why would they have the presidental age limit in the Constitution 45? It's all talk. Once you get past the age of 30, your chances of reaching 70 or 80 or 90 has not changed in 200 years.

Now as for raising the age limit, where are we suppose to get jobs? Lots of people over 50 can't get jobs. They have too much experience, they are not about to spend 100 hour a week working like some 20 year old does. There just aren't many jobs. However, if we bring back the draft and draft everyone 45 and under, then maybe there would be room for a 50+ year old work force.

So please come up with an idea for unemployed people who have to find a way to live for the 20 years you think they should wait.

And physically, just wait until you 55 and see how much hard work you can do every day as you start at the bottom of the corporate ladder,

<<Once you get past the age of 30, your chances of reaching 70 or 80 or 90 has not changed in 200 years.>>

You seem so certain of this, I'm sure you can readily back this up.

of people in their fifties not being able to find jobs? It really starts to be a problem when you're in your forties, and never gets any better. "You have too much experience" and "We can't pay you enough" are excuses for not hiring you, just as people in their twenties hear "You don't have any (or enough) experience."

Why are fifty-year-olds out of work? Because employers want to get rid of older workers, hoping to get out of paying for their pensions, increased medical expenses, etc. It's been happening all over for decades -- haven't you heard?

Guess what? If you die before you get to be 50, you aren't going to collect social security. So the only life expectancy that matters is how many additional years 50 year old can expect once they reach that age. That has risen, but not by a whole lot.

How about look at life expectancy assuming you live to age 50?(source 1986 Almanac)

Life expectance assuming you first make it to 50 years old (white males) –
1982 – 25.6
1960 – 23.22
1950 – 22.83
1940 – 21.96
1930 – 21.51
1920 – 22.22
1900 – 20.76
1890 – 20.72
1850 – 21.6

Another reason why age 70 is utterly assinine--haven't you noticed that since the beginning of the industrial age the trend is to making more and more stuff with fewer and fewer people? Whathehell is the point of asking 25 year olds to support fewer oldsters in exchange for jacking up their unemployment rates?

less than ages ago. However, a quick search on the internet producted the following:

http://www.bambooweb.com/articles/l/i/Life_Expectancy.html

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LifeExpectancy.html - I think this explains it in great detail - but I'm not a math expert.

http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/Life.html

http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/modules/social/life/ - here they call it life "expectency at birth".


http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa042000a.htm
Aging

Life expectancy changes as one gets older. By the time a child reaches their first year, their chances of living longer increase. By the time of late adulthood, ones chances of survival to a very old age are quite good. For example, although the life expectancy from birth for all people in the United States is 77.1 years, those who live to age 65 will have an average of 17.7 years left to live, making their life expectancy almost 83 years.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
Basic life expectancy numbers tend to exaggerate this growth, however. The low level of pre-modern life expectancy is distorted by the previous extremely high infant and childhood mortality. If a person did make it to the age of forty they had an average of another twenty years to live. Improvements in medicine, public health and nutrition have therefore mainly increased the numbers of people living beyond childhood, with less effect on overall average lifespan.


Anyway, you get the picture. More lies from the government. It really irks me when they say the life expectancy has gone up a lot since SS was introduced. Balderdash.

And as a last note, around 1910, the average amount of women who died in childbirth was 200,000 per year.

it seems like there are more 90 year olds than there used to be.

And all these btpass surgeries that every man is having isn't doing any good? We're all wasting an awful lot of money then avoiding heart attacks.

In the year 1900, there were no heart attacks in Eastern Massachusettes. Or pretty much anywhere else. There was no emphasema before WW2.

Life expectancy is the average age at which people die. It's been increased by lowering the number of deaths at young ages. The life span -- how long a person can live -- hasn't changed.

I don't see why I have to work 5 years more so that * can give the money that was being set aside for my social security to his rich friends.

Thanks in advance.

Many people aren't capable of working at that age. We'll just wind up shifting a lot of people from retirement to diability. As it is, I doubt my Mother will make it that far and still be able to work, few people on her side of the family even survive that long and at 48 her health is already in the toilet. (Edited to add: Another problem with your idea- Mom is a desk jockey now, but she's had very physical jobs in her younger years, is she a white collar worker or a blue collar woker for purposes of determining retirement age?)

There's already a mechanism to allow people who choose to work to 70 to draw a larger benefit when they retire and I wouldn't oppose a more favorable provision for those who choose to semi-retire and work part time. However, many people, especially the working class people who get sub-par health care and work physical jobs, really don't have the option of working much longer than the currently do.

Besides, we don't have enough jobs to go around as it is and older people face a lot of obstacles in finding work so as a practical matter forcing the elderly to sork a few moer years won't make life any easier for the young or the old.

I'm perfectly willing to consider different formulas for blue collar, as opposed to white collar, workers. But these formulas should reflect average life expectancy.

As it is, my mother pays into a social security system that she'll probably never benefit from. Both of her parents died of cancer before they were old enough to retire, she has hepatitis c. On the off chance that she manages to keep working until she's 65, she deserves to retire and enjoy her remaining years. They probably won't be many.

Even a worker who can expect a longer lifespan deserveds to retire with time to enjoy a few years off.

For that matter, the roads are scary enough. Do we really want to face a future where we try to commute with septugenatian Boomers and thier urban assult vehicles? We're always telling older people they need to pay attention to thier slowing reation times and know when to hang up thier keys. How the hell are they to do that when we expect them to work and most of the country has no sfae and reliable public transit?

collar worker, I can tell you it is an extremely unhealthy environment. As a programmer I sit in from of a computer 8-16 hours a day. Magnetic emmissions from the screen are suppose to be bad for you. And sitting that long is definately not good for you. The blue collars wear their body out and the white collars slowly kill themselves with inaction.

How many times do you think it should be raised until you're ready to retire? Why stop at 70?

That would solve a great deal of problems.

Social Security is NOT welfare.

because anything that is given only to low-income people (food stamps, general assistance, whatever they call AFDC these days) is automatically stigmatized and vulnerable to demagoguing about "lazy welfare cheats."

Giving rich people Social Security (and taxing them on it) is a relatively small expense, and it keeps trust fund babies from complaining about "working hard all my life to support those lazy convenience store clerks who never had a dime in savings."

is extremely progressive.

The formula's payout bendpoints give the lower paid workers a much larger proportion of the benefit than the higher paid one.

Aperson making $ 60 k pays in three times more than a person making $ 20 k, but his payout will not be close to triple. It probably won't even be double.

Raising the retirement age even more is particularly hard for Americans who have to work for a living- particularly those that do manual labor. There is also age discrimination already against the elderly - they are more often laid off in favor of younger, more recently trained individuals. Sadly, increasing longevity doesn't often include both good mental and physical health and similar levels of energy. Raising the retirement age and uif we can really prevent age discrimination, will also likely increase unemployment rates for new workers.

Means test and/or remove the wage cap for paying social security taxes.

I acknowledge the fact that blue collar workers may be in a different position at age 65 than white collar workers, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to have different benefit formulas.

Some people may have spent 20+ years doing factory work. Their jobs go overseas. They can't retire yet, so they retrain and become white collar workers. They still deal with all the physical issues of somebody who has done manual labor for many years. You want them to work into their 70's too?

You seem to have this notion that a person will always be either white collar or blue collar and it just doesn't work that way.

I'd be happy if they just gave me the money that has been paid in to date by me and my employers and I at the same time absolved the Fed of any obligation to provide me benefits at retirement.
The amount there is now will cover the first five years of my retirement check. After that it's somebody else's money paying me. So in my scenario, the government will save in the neighborhood of $285,000 if they just give it to me now.

Learn how the system works before you make comments like that.

Only part of the payments have gone toward retirees. The system is not simply pay as you go, it is pay as you go "plus", which is precisely why the SS rate was raised in 1983. Now, it is true that surplus fund has been raided in various technical ways, but we still pay in far more than is needed for current beneficiaries. That is exactly the argument Greenspan and Reagan made when they sought to double the tax -- increase the tax to create a surplus for use for the boomers retirement. To assert it is entirely pay as you go (which is what it sounds like you are saying) is misleading. I defer to Krugman's expertise to confirm this idea, as he has written about in many columns over the past 4 years.

I also realize the state of the economy has an effect on this. In good economic times, we pay in substantially more, but in less great times, the surplus amount may be a lot less. It was too late to edit my prior post.

The life expectancy continues to rise, which means two things:
1) It makes more sense to let people work longer, and
2) It will WAY too costly to let the age remain at 65.

Plus, with the budget situation these days, it's going to b e impossible to save social security without raising the retirement age. So, I think this would be good policy.

Now, how do you think we'd get away with this politically? Seniors vote more than anyone else. And social security is the only way we get *any* of them to vote for us, because socially they're in general very conservative. For us to promote this would be political suicide. To tell you the truth, I hope the Republicans push this through while they have power, with Dems voting against it. That way, we still look good with the seniors, but we can save the program from bankruptcy.

And I also agree with what you said about blue collar workers. THEY should still be able to retire at 65.

bad their health is? That's crazy.

It now takes fewer people to do more work in less time.

The above is a simple fact that noone will dispute. This obviously equates to it being possible for people to retire earlier. And yet we keep EXTENDING the retirement date.


Something is wrong. I don't know the answer. But something is very amazingly clearly WRONG with the current system. And I don't want to support making it more wrong.

it's how many people pay into the system versus how many people draw out. Ideally there's a balance...

We already have a generation being suppressed economically by the baby boomer's hording all the jobs and money we don't need to make the situation worse. Let the old folks enjoy their twilight years and let the hungry young people have more opportunity.

From 65 to 62 back in the 70's by Gerald Ford, to encourage more people to retire during a severe recession.

I'm 53 right now. I started falling apart at around 42. I'm retired right now on occupational disability from Railroad Retirement for Severe Degenerative Joint Disease in my lower back.

Wait a few years and see how you feel then.

It's incredibly sad to see someone work their whole life at a job, retire, and die of a stroke or heart attack a few months later.

Isn't life expectancy for a guy about 74 years? I saw that in a 1999 chart.

Working for 50 years, and then having 4 years of retirement with benefits - part of that being hospitalized with heart attacky sorts of stuff and recovery seems cruel.

I think a better option is to stop stealing social security money to fund illegal wars.

Who retired at 65, and didn't live long enough to collect 1 check!

LOTS of people don't live to be 65. You notice that more as you get older.

black males. They are the group statistically most likely to die before age 65. Also the group that does some of the most difficult work on the body.

life expectancy is only 64.7

generation or the next, but the one after that. By including an inflation increase but not the other (it think it's a wage index or something) payments to retirees will be slightly smaller, but it's something and it makes the fund solvent for a long, long time. I think it's Warren Rudman's proposal. He also would like the wealthy to pay in but not collect, but he knows that is not politically acceptable. And he's a republican.

Because of the increased life expectancy.

Many seniors are working past 65, & many who retire are having many happy leisure years.

But I'd have to say that IF ages were raised, we'd have to do more about age discrimination in the workplace. Now that we move from job to job, unlike the lifetime employment with 1 company, it gets harder & harder for older folks to compete against younger people. Why hire a 60 year old person at his current salary, when you can hire a younger, cheaper employee with less health concerns. Remember, a lot of employers are discriminating on the basis of health care coverage.

Also, I agree about the difference between manual labor & white collar workers. Many of these people have just worn themselves out, & I don't think it's fair to them to extend their retirement age.

But it seems that there are various ideas that could be implemented to keep Soc Sec sound & healthy, & I see no reason to privatize any part of the system.

White collar workers may have less repetitive stress injuries, less joint problems, but they're also less active on the job and could be prone to more heart attacks. (If I were going to grossly stereotype)

Aside from that, dementia and alzheimers sets in at some point. I've also seen that on the job - some people are working in their 80's and they are more on the ball than me, but others won't retire even though they clearly should, who knows why, maybe their spouse needs a break from them and is happy to have them out of the house, maybe they don't realize they are too senile to work, maybe they don't have enough savings and benefits to retire. What happens is the office staff has to become their babysitter, in effect. I haven't seen a lot of those cases, but 3 come to mind immediately. Senility happens to white collar people too.

Not that I didn't appreciate my senile assistant yanking down her pants and demanding that I look at the giant bruise on her senior citizen ass, mind you, but sometimes you need to be able to retire people when they get to that point, so their coworkers don't "accidentally" drop a xerox machine on their frail little bodies out of frustration.

1. Don't steal the social security funds
2. Don't force people out just because they hit a magic number, but don't make it impossible for those that need to leave because of age related issues to do so. (for the love of God!)
3. If the system has financial issues, quit paying out to millionaires that won't even feel a difference in their budget without it.
4. Instead of trying to justify making people work into their 70s, let's restore our previous tax rates.

......The age limit needs to be reduced NOT advanced!!!!!......The corporate evil festering w/in our healthcare system needs to be purged NOT enabled!!!!....The health of our fellow citizens is nothing more than a cash cow for the dark forces that manipulate our society.....The scientific advancement as well as the overall academic enlightment need to be focused on NOT the smokescreen of fiduciary detail......To HELL with those that deny advancement of the American dream!!!!....btw Best Wishes

Reduce the payroll tax and increase the benefit payout formula. Then we'd have a healthier, happier society.

Let's see . . . reduce the payroll tax. That means we'll have less money to fund social security benefits. Reduce the retirement age. That means we'll have even fewer workers for every retiree. Increase the benefit payout formula. That means will have to spend even more.

Oh yeah, we'd have a healthier, happier society -- for about fifteen years. But what do you plan to do when the system runs out of money?

Everything starts to hurt. You are in for one hell of a shock.

Things start to wear out. Your vision deteriorates. So does your hearing. Heart disease starts to appear. Mild failure doesn't mean your life is over, but it certainly makes it harder to do a day's work. Bones start to thin about the same time your balance starts to get a little off, making fractures and falls both more likely.

Imagine the world being only uphill. That's what it gets like. We're living longer, but our bodies still start to wear out at the same rate they always did.

Perhaps there should be different retirement ages for different types of work. Men who keep tidy manicures and wear nice suits and live their lives in climate controlled offices could wait until 75. Those of us who have to work hard enough to wear our bodies out could retire at the present 62-65.

So the country will end up with a lot of elderly, unemployed people who have no Soc. Sec. to fall back on....only their retirement accounts (if they have those).

The original poster should wait until s/he gets older, and the supervisors are young enough to be his children. He might notice that most of the new hires are the ages of the supervisors, that comments here and there (or jokes) are made about his age, that people the company finds to fire or "lay off" are disproportionately over 50.....

Even now companies force workers into what they call "early retirement," before they are the age they can get full Soc Sec benefits, but they can get partial benefits. Raising the full retirement age would only exacerbate that problem.

done no matter what happens to SS.

Bias: I am 64, was given an early retirement golden handshake at 62. I am back as a "part time" consultant, paid on a piece work basis at a Bangalore rate -- in Silicon Valley :( (with its still high living costs), no benefits (pay for my own health insurance).

My grand dad worked part time till he was 88 - "forced" to "retire" and died eight months later. My dad worked full time till he was 82, part time till he was 91, retired, and died seven months later.

1. I go along with E.J. Dionne and Paul Krugman, and Al Franken, and Ed Schultz. This Social Security Crisis is a manufactured crisis - just like Saddam and Osama being joined at the skull co-joined twins, or the WMD.

2. Bush's SS numbers are as phony as his Iraqi WMD's.

3. Bush's "effective rate of interest" calculations for comparing private investments to SS are fatally flawed -- cause he is not factoring in (out?) the cost of equivalent "Survivors" and "Disability" insurance -- remember OASDI is "insurance."

Generic straight life - starting at age 22 -- paid up at age 62 -- is a couple of bucks under $40.00/month for coverage equivalent to OASDI "Survivors."

Generic long term disability (payable to age 65, accident or illness, 6 month elimination, starting at age 22 - no inflation protection) was about $30.00.

Total them up -- $70.00/month - $80.00/month is a ball park estimate.

Yet Bush's spin meisters treat the whole FICA as buying government bonds

4. Bush is disregarding any kind of "Social Re-insurance" in the sense of FPBGC or FDIC, or FSLIC. Yet after the first repeat of the latest recession some kind of FPBGC or FDIC, or FSLIC type insurance will be demanded. That knocks another 1.25%-2.0% off of the stock yields.

5. "Individual Accounts" - gimme a break. The accounts will be commingled accounts. And any change from the plain vanilla "package" will result in a charge to the individual participant, and could result in either loss of the individual FPBGC or FDIC, or FSLIC insurance or (much more likely) an additional charge to the participant for the individual FPBGC or FDIC, or FSLIC insurance.

==================================

I would suggest

1. Extension of the age for full benefits to 70 (with some kind of medical provision for earlier full benefits, even below age 62, possibly tied in below some age with "disability").

2. Bust through the regressive salary cap at $88K -- "all income from whatever sources" even interest and dividends and capital gains.

But this Bush is so much Texas Bull crap -- he lies and smiles.

taking a dive...we can't count on the life expectancy figures anymore...anyway here from the world health org.:

http://www.who.int/countries/usa/en/



Total population: 291,038,000


GDP per capita (Intl $, 2001): 35,182


Life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 74.6/79.8


Healthy life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 67.2/71.3


Child mortality m/f (per 1000): 9/7


Adult mortality m/f (per 1000): 140/83


Total health expenditure per capita (Intl $, 2001): 4,887


Total health expenditure as % of GDP (2001): 13.9





on edit:
Also, consider by the time we reach our 60's (even 50's) the way things are now, we are earning less not more (due to company's closing or being forced out and having to take whatever employment we can find) and SS is based on what you made the previous 3 years, not your highest 3 years...therefore, even when we are able to start collecting, we will still have to work to suppliment it...

younger crowd. I for one plan on collecting at 62 I don't give a crap about a reduced benefit....my goal is to suck every penny I can back as soon as possible. It is not feasible for people to wait as one never can make up the difference...the government would want you to believe your getting something extra but do the math.

In a few months I'm planning on leaving my present job on a pension, while SS is a bit away I will not be paying into it, unless of course I get bored and try to find another job. The only reasonable solution is to raise the present cap for higher wages.

If anything, lower it.

But let's not even go there right now.

Take all caps off FICA. Make it a death penalty offense for any politician to use FICA funds for anything besides SS. (Just kidding about the death penalty, but you get my point.)

Then incentivize certain behaviors:

- Increased benefits for late retirments

- Partial benefits for seniors working part time

- Means test (but with sufficiently high means allowances so only the **truly** well off are affected)

- Tax incentives for voluntarily waiving SS benefits

- Suspend FICA payments for all wages earned after a certain age (age 65? age 70?)

I have researched NONE of these. I have no idea how much any one of them might impact the system, but collectively it seems reasonable they should keep SS viable forever.

Where'd you -- Oh, it's you... :P

Instead of falling for the repuke talking points people should start asking why CEOs now make 500 times more than the average worker. Also, why the the SS contributions level when someone reaches $78,000 year income.

People work their ass off in this country and deserve an early retirement. Right now Europeans work on average approx. 36 hours a week and get 6 weeks of vacation a year, not to mention full medical coverage. Before you start to fall back on more repuke talking points, UK medical system is very effective and their economy is alot stronger than the American corporate news media likes to let on.

I recommend you watch this C-Span Washington Journal episode discussing this very topic.

T.R.Reid "United States of Europe"
http://www.c-span.org/search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=united+states+of+europe&image1.x=23&image1.y=5&image1=Submit

We need to put a stop to it. Maybe we can turn Boca into a sweetshop, maybe that will satisfy Caligula?

Unseemly and they could use that energy for something productive.

:D

Some people actually actually work very hard and are ready to retire at 65. Why penalize them for those that have lived a cush live and have never done a hard day's work in their lives?

You have a lot of nerve asking old, tired workers who are not as fortunate as you are to now work longer to receive the promise they were made for years in order to help pay for your war.

Really!

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What is it you like about being a Democrat?

option with all that cash.

Truman's ninety percent top tax rate would add 2. 7 Trillion to the fed revenues.

With that you could sizably lower the retirement age and still pay the current ss, OR

you could keep the current 65 age, and up the ss to 108 000/yr for a couple.

RAising the age is a lot of claptrap. Just return to Truman's approach to filling up fed revenues. Pay the extra cash to oldsters out of General Revenue, and avoid the "Fund".

Current top tax rate is a pathetic third of Truman's healthy rate. Toss Reaganomics... wages now are lower than when it began... adjusted for inflation.

I like the idea that government can be a tool for improving people's lives in ways that they can't do by themselves.

I like the idea that policy decisions should be based on facts and reasoning, not blind adherence to some rigid ideology.

I like the idea that our approach to governing should adjust to changing realities.

I think that these views accurately reflect the progressive approach to governing taken by great Democrats like FDR and LBJ. However, many DU'ers apparently don't care very much for the second and third ideas.

I'm a balanced budget liberal. I believe that government can do good things, but must do so within a context of fiscal responsibility. A federal government that's broke can't do very much. And social programs that draw ever greater amounts from the taxpayer's pocketbook are politically unsustainable.

The fact is that, given the currently demographic trends, maintaining the current level of social security benefits (or rather, the steadily increasing level of social security benefits) will require ever higher levels of taxation on a shrinking workforce. That's not good for our economy, and it's not good for the long-term viability of social security either. Personally, I'd like social security to be around when I retire, and I think that's less likely if we refuse to find ways now to contain the costs of the program.

This will only work if there is a huge campaign to end age discrimination. I know whereof I speak.

I am 61, extremely, extremely healthy, not senile --proved by the fact that I earned a JD within the last ten years -- and have a great resume -- except for one thing. I graduated from college a long time ago, and I've been told that people will think I'm in my forties and not hire me if I don't leave that date on my resume.

I had a good job and was receiving great evaluations, but when the job market became more favorable to my last employer, he hired younger people to do my job. Before you know it, I didn't have any work. My boss told me to look for other work, and, predictably, lowered my evaluation. When I confronted him, he admitted that the problem was not the quality of my work but my age. He didn't think I had enough years left (whatever that means) to make it worth his while to give me on-the-job training and experience.

Of course, my boss's conduct was illegal, but that doesn't help me much. I love to work, and I want to work until I'm 70 (at least). But, it's hard to find a job. Employers, especially in my field, like to see a young face across the desk. I haven't been able to persuade a headhunter to waste his/her time trying to place me. The nonprofits here want Spanish speakers (I understand Spanish but can't speak it), so that is out. I'm volunteering, applying for temp jobs and government jobs (takes forever and the competition is tough -- so far I've never gotten an interview for a government job) and trying to develop a small business of my own, but building a client base will take time.

My story is not unique. Three of my four siblings have experienced age discrimination. The fourth has enough money to live without working. Extending the retirement age is only feasible if older people can get (and keep) jobs. Until we can, your idea won't help.

Andrea said so. That's very different from people who are doing repetitive and manual labor as part of their jobs. 65 does not mean the same thing to all people.

:evilgrin:


I mean, TWO HOURS???!!!

I've been haunted by the picture ever since I read about it.

but he's secretly restaging the battle of the Coral Sea in there.

My sister died in August, age was 42 - paid into SS for 24 years.

My cousin died in November, age was 53 - paid into SS for 35 years.

None of them collected a dime.

Seems an awful lot of people are dying at very young ages everywhere I have noticed.

Why must we continue to lower the bar? Is that really the best we can do?

along with the WWII generation.

It seems if anything SS should be strengthened for those that have worked hard for many years and fully qualify to receive it. That includes the disabled as well as the elderly - an often forgotten populace.

The SS age should have remained at 62. Too bad Kucinich didn't make it for president - he wanted to roll it back to 62 for all.

I cannot tell you how many I know of that have died long before they ever collected a single cent from SS.

:kick:

how many workers will make it to 67 or 70? If they live for 77 years, typically they have paid in for 49-50 years, while receiving benefits for only ten. Reduce the retirement age and they will pay in for 52-53 years but only receive benefits for seven.

Making workers pay in for longer periods of time just for a shorter retirement defeats the objective of Social Security.

You know, I got out of college the very year that Reagan doubled the social security tax. The whole rationale was, if we do this, there will be plenty of money and if we don't, SS will be broke when you retire. So we all went along with it, bit the bullet, paid the double tax, saw the retirement age go up, etc.

We all know what happened there. They just used the extra money on their own pet projects, laughing at what fools we boomers were for buying their story about what they were going to do with our extra SS money and how it was going to secure our future.

Now it's the same song and dance aimed again at the people just getting out of college, and the same rationales, and basically the same damn people making the arguments (since most of the Reaganites are back in the Bush White house and Greenspan is still around).

Take a lesson from us folks. They lied to us then. They are lying to you now. It's no different, just a different scam, aimed at a different bunch of people, with new twist on the hype, by the same damn bunch of liars. They fooled us in 1983; don't let them fool you in 2005. And worse, it's deliberately pitting the parents against the kids. (BTW, the real beneficiary will be Wall Street, who will make a fortune in fees in managing the private accounts.)

As for working at the ages you're talking about, a lot of people are simply incapable of working at that age, especially if they did manual labor for very long. Why not just work till you drop dead. That'll take care of any retirement issues. (Obviously NOT!)

was they didn't remove it out of congress's reach. If they would have put the extra in bank cd's the money would currently be there. By letting congress touch it, everyone should have known it would get looted.

Every month currently more surplus comes in, and it is immediately spent because missiles are expensive, and many on DU say there's no problem because there's a trillion dollar surplus to be tapped.

They should have put the money away in tangible assets like real estate etc.

But like Krugman says, the fund isn't a fiction, it is supported b t-bills. If we say the fund is just a "fiction", we also have to admit that Greenspan, Reagan, and all the people in Congress in 1982 and 83 lied to the American public when they sold the trust fund idea as a reason to double the SS tax. But I sure understand it's an asset they've converted into an asset with a corresponding liability.

The key is, if the surplus is just a fiction, they lied to us then.
If it isn't a fiction (which I believe), then they are lying to us now.

As an aside, I recently learned that the reason they invest in t-bills (which are an asset to SS and a liability to the federal govt) instead of things like real properties is that it was said that the govt investing in tangible stuff like real property would be a form of socialism. Isn't that rich?

The real reason we have a problem is politicians can't resist finding a way to access a huge pile of money just sitting there. And that won't change if they create private accounts. Creative politicians will always find a way to get their hands on the money, it's just too big a temptation. They get in a bind on the budget and see an asset that belongs to the people and decide to "temporarily" raid it and just never get around to putting the money back. It certainly was real when it came out of my paycheck.

70, is like asking me to work right up until I die. Can I enjoy a few years of retirement before I kick the bucket? After paying into SS for 50 years, I think that's a very bad trade off.

obviously you are a person who has never done heavy, hard physical labor over an extended period of time for your daily bread.

talking about forcing men and women who have reached 65 to work for a couple of more years when they have given up their bodies in factories and other places where the work just wears them out is the most disgusting post i have seen on this site.

it is profoundly ignorant and so fucking blind to the realities and vissicitudes of what the working class has to endure in this country.

my father worked for 42 years in a car factory. from the month he mustered out of the army after the korean war in '52 he worked 50 plus hour weeks doing brute physical labor on a factory floor where i watched it sap his strength day by day. and a snot-nosed post thinks its okay to tell men like that to work 2-5 years more after the age of 65. and to compound it, a throw-away line about tailoring the program to actuary tables?

completely disgusting.

I have worked many jobs, some much harder than others and trust me on this, my favorites were not the ones with the hardest physical labor. Doing those gigs over a lifetime would be utterly debilitating, energy sapping, and spirit breaking. I don't know what this guy does or how old he is but I know this ... I am almost 52 and planning to retire as soon as they will let me ... 62.

To paint this as a simple demographic issue is as heartless a thing as I have heard. The system isn't even in trouble, much less in a place that demands such radical measures. And the hard truth is that none of us knows how long we have and I damned well want a few years to kick back and enjoy. I don't give a drizzly shit what actuarial tables show ... our personal lives are not about mega-numbers. Our lives are the only ones we get and when the "life span" increases, it is still a statistic and when looking at your own life, statistics are a thin gruel to depend upon. Very fucking thin.

You actually come off as someone so detached from this issue that it's scary to think how many more people like you are out there.

BTW, What do you do for a living? How long have you actually been in the work force? What do you expect to be doing to earn a living by the age of 65?

These are very simple questions and I would appreciate answers. Thanks

and I certainly don't appreciate the condescending tone.

But since you asked . . . I'm an attorney. I've been out of law school for 11 years, but I've been working different jobs (and paying into social security) for over twenty years.

I have no idea what I'll be doing at age 65, but I expect to be working. I'd go crazy if I didn't have a job to keep me busy. Besides, even though my job pays well, close to half my salary is eaten up by taxes, and about a third of what's left over get's eaten up by the exorbitant real estate prices in New York City. So I'll never be independently wealthy.

If you think I'm detached, then perhaps it's you who has lost touch with the real world. I'm reminded of social security ever damn time I look at my pay stub. My dad's 66, and he's still working and probably isn't going to retire any time soon. Same for my mom, who's 62. They both like to keep busy. I'm no different.

My position is unchanged -- if we have gap between social security funding and social security benefits that needs to be closed, I'd rather close it by raising the retirement age than by raising payroll taxes. I think payroll taxes are high enough as it is.

make that completely detached. It's funny how you mention taxes and the high cost of real estate all in the same sentence. You see, average everyday people chose an area to live based on affordabilty and realize going into the game of life what taxes they are expected to pay. They in turn expect those taxes to be used for the common good of the nation. They certainly aren't expecting $1 Billion a day being spent on a criminal war while at the same time having programs for children, Medicare, Social Security and Education cut. Considering we are the richest country in the world the citizenry shouldn't expect anything less.

Instead of putting added burdens on the frail elderly who have given their life to this country, you should be speaking out against the CEO's that have conveniently pumped their salary to well over 500 times the average worker.

People like you only start to understand issues like this when you are faced with it on a personal basis. The second you are faced with anything that resembles a bump in the road you will the first to be crying help.

You are cushioned from the real pain of others. Outa site outa mind is your philosophy. Actually, I have known many from another political party with identical beliefs. Nuff said!

social security retirement check. Try telling construction workers that they should be on the job until they are seventy.

I'm 47. I will have to be 661/2 years to be "granted" full benefits.

I could accept benefits at a lower rate when I'm 65 but it's not worth it. I would rather accept full benefits at age 65 than 70 as I have been paying into the system since I started taking summer jobs at 14.

While on this subject, I don't think it's fair to receive a death benefit of only $255.00 if a parent or spouse dies from SSA. My mother paid into it all her life, and that's what I was only able to get when she died at age 45.

you propose they are supposed to work?
:spank:

Not that I had any doubts but now I really know I'm against it- just frosting on the cake.

Just think, if people like Bush, Lieberman, Blair and their supporters hadn't gotten us into this war, we wouldn't even need to discuss saving a few pennies on the backs of senior citizens. Do you still think Blair is a hero?

Where o where are your priorities Dolstein? Where is your heart?

First the war. Now this.

One that has a great quality of life for its citizens, or one that has a rat poor one? Dumping the elderly into the cinder box doesn't sound like a great American ideal does it? Working citizens from cradle to grave -- is that what the "greatest nation on earth" (as the media and politic ans market it) stands for?

Why do young people not see that all this marketing of working harder, longer and for less reward constitutes a poorer quality of life for all Americans-- unless they are in the top 10% financially. Furthermore this social policy is not only diametrically the opposite of what the country has always stood for, it is morally wrong. Bluntly, to use the operative word at present, it's "socialized" torture -- cruel and unusual punishment and a degradation of our society.

i understand it has to deal with people earning more paying less percentage but how does it work

setting a limit on how much of your earnings you have to pay SS on.

You pay SS on all earnings up to about 80K (that amount creeps up over time). After 80K, your earnings are exempt from SS tax.

So if you make 200,000, you pay SS on 80K and not on 120K. If you make a million dollars, you pay SS on 80K and not on 920K. So a millionaire CEO might only pay 1% of his annual million earnings into SS, while the average joe making 45K or 80K pays in about 7.5% (assuming their not self employed, because then they pay in about double that amount). You look at how much the person made and then compute the percentage, which will slide down as the person makes $ beyond the cap.

with minorities retiring earlier than white people? If you want to use the "life expectancy" to determine retirement age, then black men will definitely get to retire earlier. Of course, it's going to suck for women to keep working until they are 75(white women that is. Black women will, of course, get to retire at 70), but you men will make out like bandits. After all, women's life expectancy is much higher than a men's. A black man's life expectancy isn't even 70 years. (http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/whusa02/Page_26.htm)

Just because you don't mind working until 70 doesn't mean that we should legislate that, and it sure as HELL doesn't mean that the rest of us don't have a problem with it. I miss my family NOW and have no desire to spend the rest of my natural life working. I look forward to the day that I get to be at home with my husband and just spend time together without having to work. I already have to wait until I'm 67 for full benefits. I hope that my diabetes doesn't kill me before then, because otherwise, I will get to work until I die. Now THAT sounds like fun.

:thumbsup:

So though folks are required to still work, fewer employers offer health insurance, and health needs increase as the body deteriorates - but since they are still required to work ... it is unlikely the repubs would agree to "subsidize" their health care via medicare.

Personally, the caps on how much income can be taxed, which shelters those in careers that are less likely to have the bodily wear and tear as others, is the place to do the tinkering. But heck, that wouldn't be popular with those who can also afford to give substantially to political campaigns - who are the same who often can influence other entitities that give money to campaign - much easier to target the lower wage earners as the problem - and thus "solution".

as you approach fifty.

And how exactly would you means test the blue collar provision in your plan? What if I was a white collar worker for ten years, then lost my job and became a blue collar worker for the last ten? Or visa-versa? How would the actuaries determine my life span, and how would they determine my benefits?

I didn't want to see this discussion die so soon.

You're 35 now. In 10 years, you'll have a hard time getting past an interview. Your qualifications won't matter. You're too old. Ofcourse they don't say that; they just don't hire you.