Okay, the news is out. Plans are afoot (www.msn.com/...) to tackle the Social Security “solvency” issue. With speculation that Republicans may take the House or the Senate in the mid-terms, discussions are beginning with a group of Senators who are looking for another bipartisan win — “like the infrastructure bill.” Who are the Senators? Perhaps it doesn’t matter on the Republican side. But the Democrat side? Joe Manchin, Dick Durbin and Kyrsten Sinema. Yikes!
If you turned to full retirement age recently, you may have been a bit surprised to find your retirement wouldn’t start at 66 years of age. Depending on your birthdate, it will start at 66 years plus two months, or 66 years and four months. When this change was decided, you may or may not know, but I probably wasn’t the only one surprised. I do know that for years people have been noting that money has been taken out of Social Security funding that has not been put back in. The simplest first step, it would seem to me: Put the damn money back in.
From what I am reading, the inclination is to move to more payroll taxes for the well-to-do. But are we to assume this will come with a cut in benefits in general, or an extension of the retirement age? If so, should we begin to stop this now?
I have not seen any discussion of the following:
Extending retirement age seems racist. Life expectancy is not the same for white and non-white, male and female.
Health issues are not the same for white and non-white, male and female.
Life expectancy has gone down recently, not up. And what does it even matter anymore, since great groups of people by the age of 60 are already declining in health, affecting their ability to pursue work and sustenance. And given the shifting work force, they may be making much less than they did when they were younger.
Are we to assume that at some point we won’t be able to get full retirement until seventy-two, though many people have been unhealthy, essentially stapled together by doctors, since they were 66?
Then I read in the New Yorker that retirement age in China is 55 for women, 60 for men. Now I don’t know what that really means for them. But I hope they are enjoying themselves.