Denmark is gradually raising its retirement age to 70. It could have been done painlessly here, going up one month every year starting in about 1984, putting us at 68.5 next year, but everyone would have seen it coming. Not a rug pull. Could have saved a bundle, with just a bit more grumbling.
Except it wouldn't, because every time politicians needed votes they would declare an economic crisis and not raise it that year. And whenever it was annouced how much we had "saved," they would want to spend that four times. Remember the Peace Dividend? The Danes did it right, tying it to life expectancy 20 years ago. That can still be gamed, but it would be harder.
4 comments:
Are you forgetting that we did do that back in 1983? While you can still collect Social Security at 62, anybody born after 1960 doesn't get 100% of their calculated Social Security benefit until they reach 67 and there was a similar phase in period for those born before 1960. You are correct that it hasn't saved squat since Social Security benefits have always been paid out of Social Security tax receipts with any excess money collected funnelled into current spending via special Social Security bonds.
I guess I only focused on the early part. So yeah, it didn't save anything
I didn't mean to sound too intemperate as I was mostly wondering if you were suggesting that we should have raised it to 70 right then.
I'm not sure I get the desire to index retirement age to life expectancy. I understand the appeal of it from a money-saving aspect but it seems to me to be a very regressive way of doing it. It would tend to penalize people with less access to health care and more physically demanding jobs during their working lives by forcing them to work longer for a total payout that would likely be a lesser percentage of their pay-in due to early death. Means-testing Social Security benefits would seem to be more equitable.
No, you sounded fine, I was merely chagrined
Post a Comment