A question about retirement age?

[kentuck]

There is always discussion about raising the present retirement age to 68 or 70 years old. To me, that sounds like a terribly out-of-touch idea. A lot of people have a difficult time making it to 65 or 66 years. And many are retiring at the age of 62 with slightly less benefits.

The question is: Would it be better to raise the low end for retirement to 63 or 64 and keep the high end where it is presently or maybe reduce it to 65 years of age??

Personally, I would prefer that they leave it alone and fix it some other way but just a thought.

[JaneyVee]

1. The sooner people retire the sooner more jobs will open up to fill retiree positions.

[still_one]

2. They should pay back the money they stole from it. Everything else is a distraction

[Recursion]

3. Depends on what your goal is

I think a temporary lowering to 55 would be about the best stimulus we could come up with.

[fleur-de-lisa]

5. ^^ This ! ^^

[onehandle]

4. What's retirement? nt

[stopbush]

6. Lift the cap on income subject to FICA tax and the whole SS funding problem goes away.

That's the simple solution.

The bigger problem is the cost of health insurance.

Raising the retirement age simply shifts a huge monetary burden onto seniors in the form of their having to continue on expensive private insurance for an additional year or two. What happens if you retire at 65 and lose your employer-provided insurance? Do you go into the open market at age 65 to purchase a private plan until you turn 67 and Medicare kicks in? What would that cost? $20,000 a year? Who knows? You're in the highest-risk, most-expensive-to-insure group on earth. Gotta be expensive.

Medicare is a godsend to most seniors. I know people who opted out of their company insurance at age 61-63, rolling the dice that they won't get sick before Medicare kicks in. They use the bit they're saving by not making an employee contribution to their health insurance to build what nest egg they have.

Not everyone is being paid like a Congressman. Not everyone has a pension like a Congressman.

[kentuck]

7. Very true.

Washington is totally out of touch with real people with real problems.

[customerserviceguy]

11. How do you propose we handle the problem

of the maximum SS benefit being tied to the maximum amount that can be paid in taxes per year? Are you ready for baby boomer CEO's paying FICA tax for a few more years on their massive earnings, then getting tens of thousand dollars a year in SS benefits, because "they paid in" for a small period of time? I'm not.

[stopbush]

14. I find that to be a specious argument.

There are hundreds of thousands of average Americans who pay into SS for decades and never see a dime of benefits - they die before they reach retirement age. There are hundreds of thousands of others who see very limited benefits - they die shortly after reaching retirement age.

Are their decades of FICA contributions returned to their surviving families? No. Their contributions stay in the trust fund. They have over paid into the system by upwards of 100%.

There is no minimum benefit paid out to these people. If we're not going to worry about people never receiving a dime from SS, then why should we fret about the rich overpaying into the system? There are plenty of people overpaying into the system right now who are poor and lower middle class.

With wages subject to FICA tax currently capped at $110,000 per year in income, most Americans are paying FICA tax on 100% of their earnings. The person earning $1MM per year is paying FICA tax on a mere 10% of their earnings. How is that fair?

Studies have shown that the gain in lifespan has redounded almost entirely to the wealthy. They are - in fact - the people who will be the biggest drag on SS over the long haul, because they will live the longest and draw the most in benefits. Looked at from this reality, the rich should be paying more into the system, not to draw a larger benefit "per year," but to draw benefits over the extended years/decades that most other people won't.

The cap on yearly benefits paid out should continue to be calculated from a number that takes these various factors into consideration. Arbitrarily, I'd be OK with it being based on $125,000 per year. That gives the rich people a little more per year while keeping them from getting some ridiculous amount per year. And, it accounts for the fact that they'll be drawing benefits for a much longer period than the Average Joe.

[denverbill]

8. It doesn't cost the government more if you retire at 62 because your benefits are reduced.

So if the government raised the minimum age to 63, it wouldn't save any money. That's why you get less if you retire earlier.

[raging moderate]

9. What IS a sedentary job?

I notice that many people severely underestimate the physical demands of various jobs. I have recently retired from a 35-year career as an itinerant public-school speech/language pathologist. Many people assume that I just sat around playing games with kids. But this career demanded that I run up and down stairs carrying several bags heavy with therapy materials, RUN across parking lots, speedwalk around schools collecting small groups of children, and sit on the floor in hallways. I RUSHED through my days from 7:30 to 3:30, and then spent 4 - 8 more hours doing paperwork, computer work, and sorting, cleaning, and making therapy materials.
I have seen waitress, teaching, sales, housekeeping, childcare, and secretarial work labeled as sedentary. I have also worked at all of these jobs in my time, and they were NOT really sedentary either.
Al Gore won my permanent loyalty when I heard him declare that he would stand firm against raising the retirement age. He had actually noticed how hard life is for waitresses, construction workers, and factory workers. He said, "I won't do that to them." That man was our real President. If we hadn't let the Bushies steal that election, our nation would have been so much better off, in every way. We have to refuse to give up. We must keep working to preserve our government of the people, by the people, and for the people. All of the people. Oh, by the way, next time you say that Pledge of Allegiance, make sure you emphasize the word "All." I notice many times it is actually left out.

[customerserviceguy]

12. I've got one

I sit at a desk all day. The most dangerous piece of equipment I operate is my stapler.

Yes, people made bad assumptions about your job, but let's face it, you (and certainly I) don't work as hard as someone in demanding physical labor, where you stand on your feet for most of eight hours a day. Let them have full benefits at 65, while I wait until 70, and maybe you wait until 68 or 69.

Having us all wait until 67 (present law) just doesn't seem fair to me.

[customerserviceguy]

10. Here's an idea I've floated before

Rank all jobs into quintiles using worker's comp data, and let the folks who have the hardest ones retire at 65 with full benefits. Pencil-pushing (actually keyboard-pushing) people like me have the least stressful jobs, make 70 our retirement age, and arrange everyone else in between. Yes, there are going to some mistakes, but will they be more than a year difference?

As we go from a grunt-work society into an information society, we naturally raise the average age that folks can collect full Social Security benefits, while retaining some justice for the hardest-working Americans, who now face 67 as their retirement age, if they're 55 or below in age.

You would still keep 62 as the early retirement age for those who have planned well, or are simply too tired to keep on going for another three years. The adjustment of benefits for early retirement would depend on one's full retirement age, thus the hotel maid would not suffer as much as the CEO who knocks off work early.

[Yo_Mama]

13. The idea of raising the early retirement age was rejected decades ago

because it would cost more than it saved. You see, if people can't retire early, many more of them will have to go on disability, which pays as if you had worked until your full retirement age. Plus you would get earlier Medicare.

However retiring at 62 is no longer "slightly less money". If you are one of those whose full retirement age is 67, and you would have gotten an SS monthly check of $1,000, if you retire at 62 you will only get $700. So don't count on early retirement. Early retirement for the next generation will be 65.