Make 70 the new 65
Make 70 the new 65
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
It’s time for a 21st-century retirement age
If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn’t 70 be the new 65? The last time Washington politicians tinkered ever-so-gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X-ers were all in diapers. Since then, American life expectancy has increased by half a decade and continues to rise – while the “traditional” retirement age (established eight decades ago) has only recently begun phasing up to 67 and the official “early” retirement age (established four decades ago) remains stuck at 62.
There is simply no good reason 21st-century workers should operate under obsolete 1930s-era expectations and 1970s rules. We’re living longer, working longer, and in general, holding down jobs that are far less physically taxing than those of previous generations.
The reasons we should update these relics of our teetering federal entitlement programs are myriad. Demographic, actuarial, and fiscal realities demand it. As powerless blue-ribbon entitlement reform panels have warned for years, the number of younger workers supporting Social Security beneficiaries is dwindling. It’s a global phenomenon. The Economist magazine reports based on declining fertility rates “that by 2050 there will be just 2.6 American workers supporting each pensioner and the figures for France, Germany and Italy will be 1.9, 1.6 and 1.5 respectively.”
This amounts to a budget-busting wealth transfer scheme whose lousy “investments” cannot be sustained unless basic structural reforms are made. Shared sacrifice means that every able-bodied worker – including federal employees and elected officials – must get with the times. Americans can no longer feel entitled to some twenty to thirty years of subsidized retirement, often collected over the course of many more years than retirees actually spent paying into the system.
Raising the traditional and early retirement ages will mean extending workers’ taxable earning years, fueling economic growth, and putting a dent in our unfunded liabilities crisis by delaying payouts. Some senior citizens’ lobbying groups fret that today’s workforce wouldn’t be able to handle longer careers. Tell that to Betty White or Joan Rivers or Helen Mirren. More to the point, as domestic policy analyst Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute observes, “Perhaps the best evidence that future Americans can work longer is that past Americans did: Despite poorer health, shorter lives and more strenuous jobs, in 1950 the typical individual did not claim Social Security until age 68.5. In 1950, more than 20% of Americans worked in physically demanding jobs; today only about 8% do. While today’s technology-driven service economy places demands on older workers, it is hard to imagine that things were easier when Americans typically worked on farms or in factories.”
This week, after rejecting the austerity measures of his own blue-ribbon fiscal responsibility panel last fall and attacking serious GOP attempts to address the impending bankruptcy of both Social Security and Medicare, President Obama will unveil his entitlement reform package . Yep: Barry-come-lately and his teleprompter are ambling down the grim-rose path. The main feature of the president’s “bold” plan? Higher taxes on the nation’s top wealth producers and earners. Translation: Same old, same old class-warfare cowardice.
For their part, both Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Democrat House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, wary of incurring the wrath of senior voters, have tip-toed, pirouetted, and backtracked on updating the retirement age. They’ve promised to put “everything on the table” now – as long as everyone agrees later to kick the can down the road. Again.
As many entitlement reformers have noted, the very first American to benefit from Social Security, Ida May Fuller, collected nearly $23,000 in government pension benefits after paying in less than $25. At the rate we’re going now, my kids and the Obamas’ kids will never see a dime of what they are forced to put in. They’ll already be waist-deep in the red as they entire their prime earning years. A truly modern government pension plan would follow the private sector by moving from a defined benefits plan to a defined contributions system – and by injecting free-market competition to improve returns.
Instead, we are dooming a generation of reverse Ida May Fullers who have no choice on where best to “invest” their automatically confiscated payroll taxes. The dawdlers and demagogues in Washington aren’t “winning the future.” They’re robbing it.
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Outgunned by Sassquatch with a fat wallet. (sigh)
Heh. Sassquatch filtered like woookie.
My stilleto was confiscated by TSA.
Considering the life spans of the average American man is 75 and the average American woman is 82, the retireemnt age for Social Security would have to be 83 for partial payout, and 85 for full benefits.
Raising the SS retirement age to 70 years old is laughable.
It’s funny what words are censored.
PC Rules
Raising the retirement age is tinkering around the edges again. It does little to deal with the fact that the government should not be in the retirement business to begin with. It also says to those who are close to retirement…. “oh sorry… we are now going to change the rules of the game in the ninth inning for you.” It also assumes that employers are going to be willing to keep these folks employed until they reach that age… NOT!
Paul Ryan has the right idea. People over 55 will remain on the existing system and those younger get transitioned to a more self-financed system, the way it was originally supposed to be.
The paradigm has to change for those under 55 (or whatever the threshold is), so they have something that is solvent and that THEY have control over. Raising the retirement age is just another form of “kick the can down the road” until that no longer works. Before long, we’ll have retirement age up to 150.
It makes about as much sense as some of the other budget idiocy I see in D.C. these days.
I retired at 56 from my job as an operator and an instructor in a nuclear power plant. There are very few people who could do what I was doing and do it well, until they are 70.
If you have a job you really enjoy and it’s relatively stress free then, yeah, working to 70 might be fine.
Unfortunately, most people aren’t in the job they really love, they are in a job that, hopefully, pays enough for them to have a decent living. The job isn’t their big enjoyment in life, but the money it provides allows them to do some of the things they do enjoy. Working that job until they are 70 would severely limit the “enjoyment” time of their lives, and I don’t think moving the goalpost after the game is almost over is fair for a whole lot of people.
Rather than raising the retirement age, and since libs love progressive taxes like crackheads like their fix, why not provide a progressive tax BREAK for those who want to work longer.
If the current retirement age is 65, give them an extra percent or two or three off their taxes for each year they keep working.
Many retire because there is no additional benefit to continue working, so they bail out to enjoy what life they have left.
I thought “make them work until they die” was a Democrat position; my mistake.
Sorry, it is just that my father retired at 70 then died of cancer at 72.
I 100% agree. I have said for fifteen years that I am willing to sign on any line they provide, at any time, and never ask for any SS benefits, IF, I quit paying in on that day.
What kind of enjoyment do you think the younger generations are going to have paying for a 4 to 1 ratio of retirees to workers? Maybe a couple of extra years of work might not be so bad huh? Might even be a little “fair”, in your words, since most of the people making the idiotic decisions that put us here are about their age and those same people that need their “enjoyment”, again your word, had a great part in putting them in those positions.
The government doesn’t set the retirement age. We do. Or our employers might have a mandatory retirement age. All the government does is set the age we qualify for full social security benefits. We can retire anytime we want to if we can afford it.
Those who planned their lives expecting to fund most of their retirements on social security benefits made a very poor decision from the very beginning. Apparently, that includes something like 80% of my baby boomer generation.
My parents generation (WWII generation) didn’t have our sense of entitlement regarding social security benefits. Before the arrival of 401(k) and 403(b) plans, people either had an employer-funded pension or saved for retirement.
My parents generation saved. Mine didn’t. We declared ourselves to be the “moral” generation that wouldn’t work past 50 years old. We got what we deserved. Now we find that we have created the Even Greater Depression without the skills that guided our parents coming out of the last one.
God loves irony.
Irony is so ironic.
We should have a political commercial similar to the FRAM Oil filter commercial. A politician stands in front of a family holding out a sack labeled “Debt Reduction.”
He holds out the bag to the adults and says, “Pay me now.”
Then kneels down so he can get eye level with the kids. He holds out the bag again and says, “Or pay me later.”
That would get the message across.
My point is that many retire when they qualify since they think they can make it on what they may have saved in addition to SS. I agree…if you bank on SS as your only income, prepare for the breadline.
If you qualify for SS at 65, at some point there is little benefit to continue working. Some who collect SS and continue working anyway can only work so many hours before their SS is impacted, or their taxes are such that they are working for free.
Nobody wants to work for free.
If the tax code were changed to allow more of a benefit to someone who wants to keep working than just retiring and drawing full SS, you would likely have many more people working longer.
That’s almost certainly going to happen. We may currently have high unemployment but the number of baby boomers retiring will soon grow so large that there will be a shortage of workers, especially skilled and experience workers.
The social security problem is not the worst problem by far. It just requires tweeking and raising the qualifying age for full benefits and having people pay in longer would almost certainly solve the problem. But as you can see, the resistance to even these relatively minor and sensible changes is substantial even among “fiscal conservatives”.
We all have a sense of entitlement. Wait until the mortgage interest deduction is phased out, as it should be. All it does is artificially raise housing prices.
Count me among the protestors if……. it is singualrly taken away. No deductions. The government should not be social engineering.
I believe retirement for book authors and politicians should be at 70. However, a roofer, a construction laborer, a house painter, and other difficult manual labor jobs should be at 65 or earlier. This thought that one size fits all is stupid.
Point of order – WE’RE not going to see a dime out of SocSecurity on its present trajectory. It’s going to be officially bankrupt before we hit 62 (and that’s assuming the Treasury manages to fully-monetize the “trust fund”).
Your opening makes me laugh. Here in Moscow at the US Embasy, whenever someone has a birthday, and they complain about “being old” (normally done by upstart 30-somethings), we tell them that “35 is the new 25, unless you live in Moscow, then it is the new 45.”
Doh! Embassy vice Embasy. Damn.
I’m 51 and I’m never going to see a dime of what I’ve paid in. My kid, Michelle’s kids and The Usurper’s kids don’t have a prayer of getting anything back. The US will be bankrupt long before they get to that age (whatever age that may be by then)
The only way out is a non-corrupt second partyu, but people have an aversion to not holding their noses when voting.
VP…I wouldn’t worry about the usurpers kids…somehow I think they’re gonna be A-OK. It’s the other 311,999,998 people that we need to worry about.
I can’t believe I haven’t made a comment on this particular thread!! Here goes…
I am 68 and didn’t really want to work all my adult life. But I had to, so I made the best of it and greatly looked forward to my retirement years. I earned them and by golly, I NEED them. For me, work was not the all-encompasing, all-satisfying thing that it is for some folks. I also was the oldest person in my company when I retired. I felt a bit out of place and out of touch with the younger, and mostly liberal “kids”. I had one or two friends at work who shared my values. That was it.
So, my husband and I took careful stock of our savings, which we had worked hard to accumulate. We decided we could retire at age 64, and we did. You have no idea how much fun I have been having in the 4 years since leaving behind the work life.
No more dragging out of bed, scrapping off my car in winter, begging for time off for appointments, rationing my time off, spending money on work clothes, always feeling like there wasn’t enough time.
Now, I wear the same blue jeans all week, if I want. I drop everything and go play with my grandkids. I cook and bake…and love it, instead of throwing meals together as a chore.
Yes, I know many of you still work and some may even love it. But at my age, I feel like I have EARNED my retirement years. I know I don’t have more than 20 years, maybe less of enjoyable life left. Who knows what tomorrow brings? I already have arthritis in my hands. I am slower in my gait. I see age creeping up. If I thought I had to work until 70, I believe I would be a very different person today.
Not everyone shares this view. But for me, it was the right thing for my peace of mind and enjoyment of life to leave the workforce. We are very comfortable because we saved and invested.
If others save and invest like we did, they don’t have to work until retirement age, just to collect SS. In fact, we do collect SS, just a bit less than if we had worked until age 66.
Sorry for the long winded post…but I am making up for lost time in my posting, just as I am in my life!
I totally agree! Look at football players. They retire in their 30′s. Except for Brett Favre, of course!
Two more things I now have time for…
Going to the cast-iron frying pan range to practice my swing.
Scrapbooking for hours and hours and hours and…
Yes, I am a HAPPY SCRAPPER!:grin:
oops
Pasadena Phil is living under the delusion that enough illegal immigrants and H1B workers won’t be imported to kick anyone over 50 to the curb. I’m in the IT industry and it doesn’t matter what your skills are, there’s someone just off the plane from Bangalore who will work for less money and doesn’t have medical issues. 50 is the new 70 when it comes to working.
Let me understand this:
Social Security retirement age is to be raised from 65 to 70 after paying in for a lifetime along with your employer matching your contributions.
Yet public union employee retirement age is 20 or 25 years service and out at 50 or 55 with full pay and benefits thereafter and, the public employee barely having ever contributed a cent?
The is really messed up…
___‹^›__‹(•¿•)›__‹^›___
Are you people still talking?
Shouldn’t you be at work?
I Loathe My Country: How would you possibly know what “at work” means.
I wonder what people have done since people were people on this earth?
That’s right: they all worked until they died.
Why does ‘work’ evoke such a negative in people?
Since I ranch, I work everyday.
I also teach HS. I work there for 182 days/yr.
I may be able to retire from teaching, but I will still be working on the ranch.
Til I die, am crippled up too much to ride my horse, or the kids want to take over.
Either way, I’m working til I can’t any longer.
WTH is wrong with that?
If some of you are so damned miserable in your jobs that all you can think of doing is retiring someday, maybe it’s time to go out on a limb & do something else.
I agree with Michelle 99.5% of the time with this being a rare exception. I am 59 years old and have worked in a system since 1970 that says I can retire at a set age. As a prior poster pointed out, this is changing the rules in the 9th inning for those my age.
There is a chance I may work till I’m 70 out of necessity, but I want it to be my choice.
Correct. Authors need never retire as long as they have stories to write and people want to read. Ideally, politicians should never “retire” because politics should never be considered a career. I see no reason why any of them get to collect a dime from taxpayers to fund their “retirement” from being a politician.
The physical demands of some jobs usually means an earlier retirement age due to wear and tear on the body. There are always alternatives for those unable to continue on in some trades and want to keep working, and there are exceptions sometimes.
There was a story in our paper a few years back about a 93 year old housepainter still on the job. He said as long as he was healthy, fit and loved the job, although he was slowing down a bit, why retire. He also said he probably would consider retiring after he turned 95.
..and this one time at band camp..!
Some of us are steamed at having the government rob us all these years for “retirement benefits” when they are really spending the money on the 47% who don’t pay taxes and their friends on Wall Street.
FIFY
Probably only allowed a soft plastic spoon. Least hazardous.
..sure I’d love to lick the beaters, but this time could you turn off the mixer, Ma?
Hey Badger…some of us had to work to support our families. And we couldn’t afford to go to college, so our jobs were not professional high-paying jobs. While I was not miserable, I was longing for retirement so I could do what I wanted to do with my life. I worked until age 64. I made the best of it, even enjoyed some of my jobs. But all the while, I planned, saved, and worked toward the day of retirement. I am now there. And I haven’t stopped working either. I just work hard at what I want to do.
I’m with you all the way, Scrapper.
I’m totally self made. I started working at 16. I worked 2 jobs when I needed to.I stuffed money in bank accounts. I put myself through college and paid every penny, at a time when others were getting affirmative action stuff. I had gov jobs and private sector jobs. I taught myself how to make costumes and teach others how to make them. I too work hard at what I want to do and will continue to do so until I can’t. My retirement plan is a long walk off a short pier. The gov can stuff it!
Gee Badger40,
Maybe some of us can’t afford a ranch. Maybe we’re not public employees who have our pensions and Cadillac health plans paid by others.
I have it on good authority he uses a spork
I am late to the party here, and I may be covering ground that has already been carpeted, but what makes you believe that your average janitor or school teacher *can* work until 70? This change would make all kinds of sense for desk schmoes like me, and certainly for more affluent white collar workers. But for those Americans who actually do the jobs that George W. Bush says Americans won’t do, how can they physically make it to that age?
Cheers y’all.
Social Security retirement is becoming a “Zeno’s Paradox”. The retirement age will always be greater than your age.
I say freeze the Tax and Benefits at current level. Close it to new beneficiaries and declared no benefits for anyone under 50. As beneficiaries expire, you reduce the tax rate to zero over time. It should be put in the waste bin like the payments to “Widows of the Civil War”.
Everyone under 50 know that they will not get any thing from Social Security and it is time for this truth to be put into the open.
BINGO! And now, on to other treads. This one looks like it is petering out!
Same reason coal miners keep digging until they drop. You do what you have to, to provide for your family.
Really? I thought it was because they sold their soul to the company sto’.
If you’re retiring upon your own dime, then I could really care less what you do.
Considering that the ranch was not ‘bought’ but inherited-my husband is a 4 generation rancher-& we are in hock up to our eyeballs struggling every day to keep it going by working two jobs each-I would say you are in error with that statement.
As for my retirement in the state of ND as a teacher being paid by other, I pay my half, the school district pays the other half as a benefit for working here (right to work state).
And I’ll have you know I contacted my state senator & asked him to vote NO to have the taxpayers of ND makeup for any shortfalls in my pension.
And BTW-I never said any of you didn’t work hard.
But IMHO it is a queer notion that people somehow think they have the right to retire.
You have the luxury of retirement if you save for it.
And I’m just curious, do you consider all teachers somehow worthless & leeches off of the taxpayer?
Bcs you’d be gravely wrong.
I don’t think I need any more pay & I do work.
Teachers have it easy, but I’ll have you know, that is NOT why I decided to be one.
It allows me to work on the ranch, since we cannot employ someone to do the work for us.
My father’s retirement program.
At 74/75 years of age, he developed colon cancer. He continued to lay brick, his only medication for the steadily increasing pain being Bayer aspirin and cigarettes. One day he didn’t feel up to going to work. My mother showed me the bloody stool in his pants.
We took him to the hospital.
Two weeks later he was dead.
That was his retirement.
There were blizzards locally at that time. We made arrangements for his cremation because that’s all I could afford. My mother and I couldn’t attend his funeral because of the blizzard. A WWII vet, he never got taps, and now his ashes sit in a box in the safe I inherited from him.
On the way home from retrieving his ashes (after waiting for the weather to lift), I saw a old beggar who was a perennial occupant of a street corner near my parents’ home. One of our workers knew him, and told us he had a new Cadillac and all kinds of money from begging.
My mother’s shout is all that kept me from cementing him to the overpass wall with my father’s car. I called the police on him when I got home, and found out that all they could do is require him to have his mendicant’s license on display.
That’s the day I became the heartless monster you all deride.
December 11, 2000.
Bear something in mind; what I said above is no indictment of our society or system.
The system didn’t fail him. I failed him. It was the job of my siblings and myself to see that he didn’t have to work until he died, to see that he got the medical attention he needed in his old age. Not strangers from across the country.
I have to live with that. Out of respect for what he tried to teach me, I won’t soothe my conscience by projecting my failed responsibilities on the society at large.
Badger40,
You’re getting painted with the same brush as your fellows. It is human nature to label people according to groups. Germans were derided as “Nazis”, even those who didn’t belong to the Nazi party, or who only joined to stay alive.
So many teachers are worthless bureaucrats, or worse, indoctrinators, that it is a safe policy to assume anyone who is a teacher is a worthless waste of taxpayer money, the same way it’s a safe policy to assume anyone in Congress is a liar.
I am sorry about your father. What a tragedy.
For the record, I happen to like some liberals, though not many. Bcs the ones I do like are more center of the road.
I can’t paint them all with the same brush.
Not at all. However, the perpetual “pity our poor underpaid, overworked teachers” lobby doesn’t exactly endear the profession to me.
Yes, they do, but instead of being appreciative, they paint themselves as poor martyrs at the altar of our children’s future.
I would love to have 50% of my retirement taken care of. My company contributed up to 0.5%, but they had to stop even that because we’re not making any money off of our Medicare and Medicaid customers.
So please understand why I might be a little hostile toward the notion of contributing to your pension.
“Barry come lately”
LOL
Sorry you’re so unhappy about your working situation.
Clearly you are to say:
I do not think it useful to brand all of us public school teachers this way.
As a state employee, it’s obvious that tax payers pay my salary. WhoTH else would?
I’m not going to apologize to anyway for choosing to be a science teacher.
I do the best job I can & that is that.
And BTW-as a geologist, I could very well go get a job here in ND that makes a lot more $$$.
I choose not to bcs of the reasons I stated above.
Maybe you ought to give some of us teachers a chance.
There are a lot more conservative public school teachers out there than you might think.
And many of us do not think the world/taxpayers owes us a living.
I’m not unhappy with my work situation, I’m unhappy with the mismanagement of the economy.
My point in mentioning that was to highlight the difference between public and private sector and how we are not all suffering equally.
I don’t begrudge anyone an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.
70 would be a great retirement age…
If there were jobs for Americans to retire FROM.
Priorities people. Stop the marxists from destroying the middle class.
First, get rid of the outsourcing of jobs thanks to H1B/L1 visas that our government with the help of the marxists and assistant marxists BOTH voted in.
Hiraghm… brother, don’t be so hard on yourself – in all honesty your Dad’s story inspires me… hopefully I and most other Americans will accept the new retirement reality as graciously as your father. The era of decades of senior ease is OVER, especially for men.
Working to provide for family is a man’s badge of honor. The carpenters of Jesus’ day worked with stone and brick as well. Your Dad is a hero!
I liked Michelle’s article, but she’s too conservative… the 21st-Century’s retirement age needs to be 71.5 (65 plus 10%).
There is no way on God’s green earth that is true. Are you kidding?
RSS,
Watch John Stossel’s special on freeloaders.