The retirement age for social security should be indexed to average life expectancy.

Edit: By "life expectancy" we will assume an increasing period of high quality life, physically and mentally. We assume that with medical advances, being 70 today may be equivalent to being 60 twenty years from now in physical, mental, and psycholgical terms (for example).

...in your edit, which almost let me vote "yes" is "before onset of senescence."

However, even if something like SENS were to decrease senescence, I think retirement (not of course disability) should be based on the premise that there's a point at which a human should have contributed enough to society that they have built into it the equivalent improvements to the resources needed to perpetually provide them with minimal income.

And if the SS system can't do that we have to ask a few questions:

1A) How does an investment like the money paid into SS over decades manage to gain such a poor return,

1B) Who is stealing the return that should be there?

1C) Why does the much vaunted engine of economic growth never seem to work for the little guy?

(many have already asked and answered these questions.)

THERE IS NO "SOCIAL SECURITY" PROBLEM. IT is only a priority of spending problem.

if the democrats and republicans in congress would quit spending trillions on wars and welfare for the military industrial complex and mega corporations there would be no social security problem.

ss is an agreement between people who pay in and the government who pays out. used to be the government's side of the agreement was a certain age, then the government changed the terms of the deal, defrauding people who paid in under the original agreement.

changing the age is continual fraud.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

toward hiring older workers need to change. There are lots of people over 50 who would like to change careers, get promotions or just get a job in their present area of employment, but they get passed over because they are "too old" to fit in.

There are laws against it. LOL.

But, they don't.

physical labor a person has to do. A body that does physical labor wears out faster than one who sits in an office, and as one who is there, 65 is the proper age to be able to retire because the body is just plain tired. Naps are even needed from time to time.

Thus at age 50, it is made easier to be ruled "Disabled" then younger people. At age 50, if you can ONLY do work of a Sedentary nature AND you have NEVER done that type of work, you can be ruled disabled for Social Security Purposes. At age 55, it is the inability to do "light" Work (Unless you have done it in the previous 15 years) that makes you "disabled". People who do Office work just have to wait till they turn 65 or 67 (if born after 1960), people who can still do "medium" work also have to weight till they turn 65. On the other hand people who did heavy or medium work, and no longer could do that type of work, can be ruled disabled at 55 (or 50 if all the work such people can do is limited to Sedentary Work).

don't forget those who work with their hands or whole bodies... they need to retire around 65, simply because they are physically unable to do their jobs any longer.

So we have a crappy economy with not enough jobs... people in their 50s have difficulty finding good-paying jobs (if they can find a job at all)... and someone wants to raise the retirement age? What part of "bad idea" do you not get?

Those who depend on SSI the most are more likely to be poor. The poor have worse long term health prospects due to the strain of poverty. The poor tend to work more labor intensive jobs. It would make more sense to remove caps on FICA wages.

"remove caps on FICA wages"

The rich pay less than the rest of us as a percentage of wages into the system and they still get to take out the same as we do...

If you were born 1960 or afterward Social Security Retirement age is 67 NOT 65. Early retirement at 62 is also set to change, for example if you were born after 1960 if you retire at age 62, you have to take a 30$ CUT in monthly pay. This is the result of Reagan's Social Security Reforms. Bush and company want ot increase it even further, to age 70 and phase out early retirement.

For more see:
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/retire2/agereduction.htm

The "retirement age" is over 66 for us...

Year.................Age........................Age 62...........Spouse
....................................................Percentage......Percentage
....................................................Drop..............Drop, if retired at age 62
pre-1937...........65.........................20.00%..........25.00%
1938................65 and 2 months.....20.83%..........25.83%
1939................65 and 4 months.....21.67%..........26.67%
1940................65 and 6 months.....22.50%..........27.50%
1941................65 and 8 months.....23.33%..........28.33%
1942................65 and 10 months....24.17%.........29.17%
1943-1954........66.........................25.00%..........30.00%
1955................66 and 2 months.....25.83%..........30.83%
1956................66 and 4 months.....26.67%..........31.67%
1957................66 and 6 months.....27.50%..........32.50%
1958................66 and 8 months.....28.33%..........33.33%
1959................66 and 10 months....29.17%..........34.17%
1960 and later...67.........................30.00%..........35.00%

Modified from the SSA Website:

Yes, I'm a translator, and I can and almost certainly will keep working as long as my brain holds up.

But what about someone who has been doing hard physical labor, like a hotel maid or someone who loads trucks at UPS?

The difference is on of what is the normal load such a person does. Medium Work requires you to pick up 20 pounds frequently, and 50 pounds occasionally. The classic Medium job is a cashier in a Supermarket. Heavy work requires someone to lift OVER 50 pounds, the classic job is a Nursing aide (and often done as part of a team, i.e. two aides moving a body in a nursing home for example).

See my thread above about how SS regulations reflect the aging process.

be doing in my late sixties.

Thus if you are age 55, and can NOT do "Medium" type work anymore (Hotel Worker) and that is the type of work you have done for 15 years, you are eligible for Social Security Disability (Or Supplemental Security Income, SSI, if the amount of Social Security Disability or SSD, you are entailed to is less than the SSI amount).

Note: SSI is reduced by whatever other income you receive (for example SSDI, Social Security Disability Income, technically the "Correct" name is Retirement, Survivors, and Disable Income or RSDI). This reduction is a dollar for dollar basis. If the amount of RSDI is more than the SSI amount. you only ger RSDI.

Another form of SSI reduction is if you are a couple, the pair only gets 1 1/2 times the SSI amount for a Single Person.

The reason for this is that RSDI is paid out of Social Security Taxes (and has been since the early 1950s), when SSI was adopted in 1974, while it uses the same test for disability as RSDI and is administrated by Social Security Administration (SSA) it is funded from NON-Social Security taxes (i.e General Funds). Thus SSI is NOT based on your work history, but to help people who can no longer work. SSI is a form of Welfare, but not called Welfare to make it more Politically popular.

Carrying heavy loads of laundry, pushing vaccuum cleaners, dealing with toxic materials take their toll. And just about nobody talks about the near-constant exposure to all sorts of bacteria and viruses. Things have improved since I did office cleaning, and I never did bathrooms,but many people have very poor hygiene to say the least, and I emptied my share of cigarette butts in my day. Add low wages and lack of consistent medical care and coverage for the poorest of the working poor, and a lower retirement age should be justified.

I would do a few things differently: stepladder retirement age depending upon kind of work. I would also give people opportunities for a second career in something less physically demanding. I would make working and getting Social Security/Medicare together easier by raising the threshold of deductions to the Social Security check to paid earnings over $50,000 annually, and unpaid assets to over $100,000 annually.

levied on all income, so that trust fund babies pay their share and the working poor get a break.

I forget what the current threshold for FICA assessments to kick in is, but it's a very low figure per quarter, so much so, that when my church in Portland hired two teenage sisters to run the nursery during services (3 hours every Sunday morning), we had to pay FICA.

I'd give the working poor a real tax cut by exempting the first $10,000 of earnings, removing the upper limit, and levying it on all income, earned and unearned.

This would probably generate enough not only to keep Social Security solvent indefinitely but also save Medicare and allow us to fund health care for everyone else...or at least go a long way toward doing so.

Unlike Income tax which has a tax free limit.

it was $50 per quarter.

At least that's what I was told.

We should not move the retirement age for people alive and working today who expect to retire at a certain age, that would be unfair.

the cut off limit for deduction on High Incomes.
Change Cap at which FICA stops.

Example. No natter how much money you make or have
you only pay on the first 93,000. Regan said Only
Middle Class people care about these entitlements
let them pay for them.

I disagree and believe if they want to raise age
for receiving SS, then raise the cap.

Eliminate it altogether, and everyone can pay a lower rate.

:headbang:
rocknation

Keep working until your eighty. Go ahead. The people who will consequently have to wait until they are fifty before being given any meaningful work to do will drift further and further away from you, your system, and your ideals.