People have been talking about retirement at work a lot lately and somebody objected to increasing the retirement age and I though, "what a stupid fucking position."

Look at it this way, when Social Security was enacted in 1935 the life expectancy at birth was 61.7 years.  That means that more than 50% of people didn't live to be of retirement age in the first place back then.  Now, more than 50% of people will be expected to draw from Social Security for at least 15 YEARS EACH!

Now, if everyone retires at 65 and works approximately 45 years in that time, that means they will spend 35 years not contributing work but still consuming resources.  When the life expectancy gets to 90, we're talking about people spending fully half of their lives developing or in retirement. 

That's just crazy talk.  We just have to move the retirement age back as people live longer and longer.  After all, the idea of a retirement age was to give those no longer to work because of age the ability to survive, not to give everybody a 20 year vacation*. 

I propose we lock the retirement age to our best estimate of life expectancy or perhaps a bit lower than that.  After all, due to the way that is calculated, most people that make it past 25 also make it past the average life expectancy due to the diminishing effect of people dying at an extremely young age. 

Look, Social Security is the red right now and this is just the tip of the iceburg.  Either we raise the retirement age soon to something we can live with or, due to societal bankruptcy, it will be raised FOR us to a billionty. 

Fin.

* - Great if you can afford one but certainly not a government responsibility.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 03:58 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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