I love it. Any "solution" that involves adjustment at the outcome is fine by me. Tinkering with retirement ages fifteen or twenty years out just moves the deck chairs on the sinking ship of privatization. Any proposed change to close the "gap", whether that is tax increase, benefit cut or change in retirement age simply puts the thumb on the scale of the case for Solvency. And none of those changes is irreversible

The last thing real privatizers want is paper solutions that move Intermediate Cost's dates back. Their entire case rests on urgency, Grassley's focus on measures to reach solvency twenty years out is their worst nightmare. Next to someone actually reading Table V.B1 and then picking up a newspaper.

Social Security with a retirement age of 68 is still Social Security. We can adjust the details when the real economic numbers roll in. For now priority one is killing privatization, everything else will sort itself out.
Bruce Webb | Homepage | 06.12.05 - 9:05 am | #

Bruce

Yes; but I do not want Social Security benefits cut in any way, and raising the retirement age is cutting Social Security. The last thing I want is another Democratic "compromise."
anne | 06.12.05 - 11:38 am | #

When is a crisis not a crisis? When Social Security had 22 years ago already planned for retirees living longer than they did then. Unless we are all planning to live till 105 in coming years, there is no age crisis for Social Security. There need be and must be no benefit cuts in Social Security. We were projected to live till 85 by the Social Security planners in 1983, and we are projected to live till 85 now.
anne | 06.12.05 - 2:49 pm | #

Democrats had better not compromise and allow cuts in Social Security, if they wish to remain a viable party.
anne | 06.12.05 - 2:50 pm | #

My only worry is not polls, for the most influential voters wish no benefit cut in Social Security or Medicare. My worry is Democrats!
anne | 06.12.05 - 2:54 pm | #

There's reason to wonder what types of deals are being proposed behind committee room doors and if Democrats can avoid reaching for the carrot that will surely be dangled in front of them.
Mark Thoma | Homepage | 06.12.05 - 5:25 pm | #

Keep in mind that raising the retirement age might not be that much of a hardship for people like me (and, I suspect, like most of the people reading this), people who work in offices, people for whom the physical effort of the job is relatively small.

But consider a 62-year-old construction worker in good health. The physical demands of the job remain, and are substantial enough to make those additional years during which one must work (or accept an even larger cut in current benefits for early retirement). This imposes a real burden on those with the physically most difficult job.
Donald A. Coffin | 06.12.05 - 9:32 pm | #