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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Social Security: To shore it up, raise the retirement age

    Our view on Social Security: To shore it up, raise the retirement age

    In this era of intense partisanship, it often seems as if Republicans and Democrats wouldn't be able to agree on the religion of the pope or the direction of the sunrise.

    OPPOSING VIEW: Raise, don't cut, benefits

    So it's notable that inklings of a bipartisan consensus are forming about one highly contentious issue — the age at which workers should be able to collect Social Security benefits.

    House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, supports gradually raising the retirement age for full benefits to 70 from the current 66. A number of key Democrats, most notably House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., have miffed liberals in their party by saying that some unspecified increase should be on the table.

    Good for them. Perhaps a presidential commission studying how to tame the national debt can build on this emerging consensus when it releases its ideas in December. Fixing Social Security is an obvious place to start. It would not only instill confidence in today's young workers that the program would be there for them, it would contribute to a healthier overall federal budget.

    The main reason the retirement program is in trouble is that people are living longer, and therefore collecting benefits for longer. When Social Security was created in 1935, average life expectancy in the U.S. was 60. Now it's 78.

    Raising the age for full benefits to 70 would solve as much as two-thirds of Social Security's long-term shortfall, depending on how quickly the increase is phased in. The current age for full benefits is already slowly rising to 67, in accordance with a law passed in 1983 that shored up Social Security for a generation. Workers can also take early retirement at 62, with a reduction in benefits, and more than half do so.

    Bumping up the age (or penalty) for early retirement is, if anything, more important than raising the age for full benefits. Retirement at 62 was not an option until 1956 for women and 1961 for men, so the average age at which people collect their first Social Security check has dropped even as life spans have increased.

    There is, to be sure, one major problem associated with raising the retirement age, particularly the age for early benefits: the roughly 30% of the workforce employed in manual labor. Many of these workers would have difficulty working longer, particularly if they have health issues.

    Promising ideas for dealing with those with blue-collar jobs include expanding disability coverage; creating a new tier of benefits for people who move into lesser-paying jobs that are not as physically demanding; and tweaking benefits to reward people who start work earlier in life and tend to be the ones engaged in manual labor. Another concept is to scrap the idea of full benefits and simply offer a sliding scale of retirement ages and benefits.

    The difficulty of dealing with the problem shouldn't be an excuse not to raise the retirement age for able-bodied workers.

    All of this is painful, but some form of pain is unavoidable. Having long run a surplus as Baby Boomers reached their peak earning years, Social Security is now running a deficit as a result of the recession and Boomers retiring. It is projected to be in the red permanently beginning in 2015. When the Boomers are fully retired, there will be only two workers to support every retiree, half as many as in 1980.

    The longer policymakers wait to shore up the program, the more distasteful the choices will be. If Republicans and Democrats can come together to do it sooner rather than later, who knows what else they might be able to accomplish?

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... 1_ST_N.htm
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  2. #2
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Opposing view: Raise, don't cut, benefits

    By Ross Eisenbrey

    Americans are scared about their retirement, and with good reason. The retirement income deficit is about $6.6 trillion. That's how far behind American households already are in saving enough to maintain their standard of living after they retire, even assuming they sell their homes in reverse mortgages and live off the income. Cutting the one source of income people can rely on — Social Security benefits — will only make matters worse.

    OUR VIEW: To shore it up, raise the retirement age

    And that is exactly what raising the retirement age would do: cut every future retiree's benefits. The last increase in the retirement age, from 65 to 67, which is still phasing in, cut benefits for an age 65 retiree by 13%. That change and others Congress enacted will reduce the average replacement rate from 39% of pre-retirement income to 28%. Remember, the average benefit now is a very modest $14,000 a year — less than the minimum wage.

    And given the disappearance of traditional pensions, the failure of 401(k) plans to weather stock market crashes and recessions, and the fact that only half of full-time workers have any employer-provided retirement plan at all, we should be raising benefits, not cutting them!

    According to Social Security Chief Actuary Stephen Goss, the decline in the worker-to-beneficiary ratio is driven primarily by a drop in birthrates, not rising life expectancy. Life expectancy has risen faster among working-age adults than among retirees, and improvements have also been concentrated among high-income workers. The life expectancy of lower-income women has actually declined in recent years.

    The fact that Social Security won't be able to pay full benefits in 2037 if revenues aren't raised is no reason to cut benefits now. The answer is to make high-income workers and their employers pay the Social Security tax on more of their salary, or even all of it, as they do for Medicare.

    CEOs making $1 million pay Social Security taxes on about 10% of their salaries; secretaries pay on 100%. That's not fair, and it has led to underfunding of this vital program. Social Security can pay 100% of promised benefits for more than two decades even without this added revenue. With it, Social Security will be sound forever, without raising the retirement age or making other benefit cuts.

    Ross Eisenbrey is vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... _ST1_N.htm
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  3. #3
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    We need to close the door to FOREIGN RETIREES. The people who have never worked here, yet can come in and get the SSI benefit plus state programs. Let's not get into a confused argument about whether it impacts the Soc. Sec. Trust-----Everything impacts it, when the government borrows money from it on a regular basis. This is another Ted Kennedy leak we have to fix. Just like his leaky car.
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    France paralyzed by strikes over raising retirement to 62

    Updated 48m ago
    By Jenny Barchfield, Associated Press Writer

    PARIS — Tens of thousands of French workers took to the streets Thursday for the second day of nationwide strikes this month to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age to 62. Union walkouts crippled planes, trains and schools across the country.

    The strikes are seen as a test for the conservative Sarkozy and are being watched elsewhere in Europe, as governments struggle to rein in costs with unpopular austerity measures after the Greek debt crisis sapped confidence in the entire 16-nation euro currency.

    Protesters brandishing flags, balloons and signs gathered at Paris' Place de la Bastille, iconic site of the French Revolution and starting point for the French capital's demonstration, which was snaking through eastern Paris to the Left Bank.

    Turnout at 232 demonstrations nationwide was key to Thursday's showdown between unions and the unpopular Sarkozy. Labor leaders urged people to march in even greater numbers than during the last round of protests Sept. 7, which brought at least 1.1 million people into the streets.

    It's no surprise that estimates of protesters varied wildly.

    In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police put turnout at 22,000, while organizers said it was ten times higher. Paris police said 65,000 people turned out for the capital's march, compared with 80,000 earlier this month. Organizers put turnout at the Sept 7. Paris march at 270,000, but haven't yet released an estimate for Thursday's demonstration.

    Sarkozy has indicated he is willing to make marginal concessions but remains firm on the central pillar: increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62 and pushing back the age from 65 to 67 for those who want full retirement benefits.

    As baby boomers reach retirement age and life expectancy increases in France, the conservative government insists it must raise the retirement age so the money-losing pension system can break even by 2018.

    Sarkozy's reform passed a vote in the National Assembly lower house of Parliament but still faces other hurdles — including an upcoming debate in the Senate — before becoming law.

    "This is not over yet," said Bernard Thibault, who heads the CGT labor union. "We are getting closer. And the best answer ... is to gather again several million workers who are on strike and take it to the streets."

    The leftist opposition sees retirement at 60 as a sacred symbol of France's social welfare system. They say Sarkozy's reform won't fix the problem and have also insisted any changes must make more exceptions for certain categories of workers.

    "An increasing number of French people understand that the reforms the president is trying to impose will not solve the pensions issue," Martine Aubry, the head of the opposition Socialist party, told journalists at the Paris march. "Pensioners will pay the price for it. And tomorrow, young people will not benefit from government-funded pensions — the only system that is fair and shows solidarity between generations."

    A poll in the left-leaning Liberation daily suggested that 63% of respondents supported the strikers, while just 29% of those polled supported the government. Almost 60% opposed the plan to raise retirement age, with 37% in favor, according to the poll, conducted by the Viavoice agency on Sept. 16 and 17 with 1,002 respondents.

    A demonstrator in the northern city of Lille, 48-year-old teacher Odile Deverne, said she found the pension reform "unfair."

    "Those who will cope are those who will be able to save some money. The others will retire with nothing but having worked much more than before," she said.

    Walkouts disrupted travel and commutes across France, and post offices and even opera houses were hit too.

    Traffic was snarled in France's cities, with fewer than half of the Paris Metro's lines working normally, according to the RATP public transit network, and about half of France's long-distance trains canceled, according to the SNCF state-run rail system.

    Security was higher than usual at some Metro stations, where soldiers armed with machine guns were on patrol. In recent days, top officials have warned that the risk of a terrorist attack on French soil was at a record high.

    The Eurostar undersea train service to London was not expected to be affected and the Thalys train from Belgium was only slightly disrupted, with nine in 10 trains running.

    While the French capital's bus lines were running almost normally, commuters on some Metro lines had to queue up just to get on the platforms.

    Some commuters opted out of public transit, taking their cars or using Velib, Paris' rent-a-bike network, including Paris commuter Xavier Roth.

    "Even the scooters struggle to ride between cars, and walking takes a long time, so for me a bicycle is the ideal compromise," he said.

    The main teachers' union said over 50% of teachers were expected to strike, though the Education Ministry put the figure at just over 25%.

    At the SNCF national railway, about 38% of employees heeded the call to strike, according to the management. Some SNCF unions have already called for new strikes beyond Thursday.

    Even at 62, France would have one of the lowest retirement ages in Europe. Neighboring Germany has decided to bump the retirement age from 65 to 67.

    The U.S. Social Security system is also gradually raising its retirement age to 67.

    http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/201 ... ment_N.htm
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  5. #5
    Senior Member redpony353's Avatar
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    Everyone should be able to retire at 65 with full bennies. That was the original promise and that is what should happen. People with health problems could qualify to retire earlier...but not most people. It is bs that they want to keep raising the retirement age. When they do this, they are breaking their promise to give retirement to everyone. Dont forget that we are forced into SS and forced to pay for it. It is not something we can opt out of. So after forcing us into it and to pay for it all of our lives....then when it comes time to hold up their end of the deal they are sleazy enough to deny some of the benefits. By raising the retirement age they are reducing benefits. They made promises and they should keep those promises.
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  6. #6
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Life expectancy in the U.S. is now 77.9 years.
    When S.S. was started it was much lower than now
    so you have to adjust the retirement age to make it work.
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  7. #7
    Senior Member redpony353's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JohnDoe2
    Life expectancy in the U.S. is now 77.9 years.
    When S.S. was started it was much lower than now
    so you have to adjust the retirement age to make it work.
    Yes they keep saying the life expentancy was "much lower" than now. But it was not much lower. The life expectancy numbers are misleading. Those numbers are the AVERAGE life expectancy. These numbers include infant mortality. Back when SS was started, there was a much higher infant mortality rate. So it is not so much that people did not live as long...but that many more died at the beginning of their life. Furthermore, they now collect tax on SS which they did not do in the beginning, which creates funds that were not available in the beginning. So really, there is no reason to raise the retirement age....all things considered.
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  8. #8
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Life Expectancy for Social Security

    Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was indeed only 58 for men and 62 for women, . . .
    that there were already 7.8 million Americans age 65 or older in 1935 . . .
    www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html
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  9. #9
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Americans Age 65 or Older 1880-2000

    1880 - 1.7 million
    1890 - 2.4
    1900 - 3.0
    1910 - 3.9
    1920 - 4.9
    1930 - 6.7
    1940 - 9.0
    1950 - 12.7
    1960 - 17.2
    1970 - 20.9
    1980 - 26.1
    1990 - 31.9
    2000 - 34.9
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  10. #10
    Senior Member redpony353's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JohnDoe2
    Americans Age 65 or Older 1880-2000

    1880 - 1.7 million
    1890 - 2.4
    1900 - 3.0
    1910 - 3.9
    1920 - 4.9
    1930 - 6.7
    1940 - 9.0
    1950 - 12.7
    1960 - 17.2
    1970 - 20.9
    1980 - 26.1
    1990 - 31.9
    2000 - 34.9
    Of course there are more older people...there are more people. There are also more people paying into SS from their paycheck every month because there simply are more people. The truth is, there is no reason to deny or reduce these bennies...none whatsoever. This is just one more smoke and mirrors campaign from our not so honest government. People were promised they could retire on it at age 65 with full bennies. They were also promised it would never be taxed. So our government has already encroached on the original agreement. Now they seek to further erode what little remains.
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