A new budget by a large and influential group of House Republicans calls for raising the Social Security retirement age for future retirees and restructuring Medicare.
For Social Security, the budget endorses “modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy.” It calls for lowering benefits for the highest-earning beneficiaries. And it emphasizes that those ideas are not designed to take effect immediately: “The RSC Budget does not cut or delay retirement benefits for any senior in or near retirement.”
Biden has blasted Republican proposals for the retirement programs, promising that he will not cut benefits and instead proposing in his recent White House budget to cover the future shortfall by raising taxes on upper earners.
That only seemed plausible back when we were starting to live longer and stay healthier.
That train left the US quite a while back.
The problem with this is that living longer isn’t really the same as “has extra productive years of labor”. Not dying of cancer at age 75 is living longer, but you’re still old. Even desk jockeys are slowing down in their 60s, let alone people performing physical labor. They’ve given their best years to the economy and deserve to have a little time to enjoy their life before they’re too infirm to do anything.
Hence the part where I also said and healthier. I’ve seen some 70 year olds with a lot of strength and energy left to burn. I’ve seen others that look like they might need a breather after walking 20 feet.
There have always been a lucky few who seem vital late into life. It’s irrelevant to when retirement age should be, because that limit is applying to people who haven’t had that good fortune (and/or top notch preventative care throughout their lives). Even if your argument is that there are more of those lucky elderly, that’s far from a universal gain.
We’ve had 40-some years of productivity growth disconnected from wage growth that all of them (and us) have fed into. The wealth exists, it’s just been sucked away by their employers all these years. They deserve to benefit from it and have some time to spend with their grandchildren or finally take the vacation they never had the time for earlier. The economy doesn’t need hale and hearty 75 year old workers waiting to get unsteady enough that their job finally kills them.