When FDR decided it was a really good idea for some sort of retirement safety net, life expectancy was 62. There wasn’t a whole lot of risk involved when most people were statistically dead.
Over the past 75 years, we’ve managed to add another 17 years to our life expectancy without raising the retirement age, something that wasn’t considered as we were working our way out of the Great Depression.
We’ve got to do something about this. Everyone knows it, but nobody wants to say it. We need to work longer. Over the years, we’ve come to believe we earn our retirement. We don’t. We don’t come close to paying for it, and we don’t pay long enough for the benefits received.
If we add five years to our working lives, we would cut our social security cost by $300 billion and maybe we could save it. Our politicians know this, but are afraid to alienate their only reliable voting block. What a bunch of chickens.
Amen. I plan on working until 70 then I'm going to be a burden on society. Turn about's fair play.
ReplyDeleteTom re Politicians, perhaps they are really not chickens and there 'is a method to their madness'. If they had an extra 300 billion $ booty (butin) they would have no excuse to raise TAXES? (Just a theory of mine.)
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