I've got trouble following the debate on social security, and here's why...
I've been trying to get my head around the problems with Social Security for a while now, just about all of us can agree that we need to change the system to reflect changing demographics.
One of the pieces of the debate that I don't understand, is the reflex to ignore any discussion of raising the retirement age. Now, before I get my ass kicked for broaching the topic, I'm no troll and NOT a right-winger in disguise. But why is that discussion a big no no?
FDR created social security at a time when people didn't live as long as they do today. It was intended to be covering the last part of your life so you can rest and enjoy life outside the workplace after a long career, but when FDR created the system, people didn't live much longer than the retirement age and today we do. So there are fewer years in which to pay for the retirement years.
It at least makes sense to me that the system has issues if it has to pay for X more years, but we still only work the same amount of years. At the same time, I think it might also be fair that we raise the age at which people can retire, and use demographics to determine where to fluidly set the retirement age. Is it totally out of the question that we allow people to retire after they have lived, on average, 70% of their life?
Now, there really are certain jobs that should have an earlier retirement than others - coal miners come to mind these days, but there must be other manual labor jobs that are so intense that they wear down the people who do them more than a desk job does. And it's not fair to raise the eligibility age for a 60-year-old who may have been looking forward to his retirement for years already, so you have to find a gradual change of the system over many, many years.
But it sounds most fair to somehow make the retirement age be based on how long people tend to live, on average, and let those who want to retire earlier have to pay pay more into the fund - possibly subsidized by a tax on the industries that require the hardest labor.
What am I missing from the debate, since my viewpoint apparently belong more on the right wing than the left?