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Comment by xienze | Hacker News Reader

> We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept.

The problem is that there are a lot of people who believe that SS isn't broken because you can simply increase retirement age, make people pay in more, and other assorted band-aids. SS will be "solvent" until it suddenly isn't, and people need to realize that.

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>SS will be "solvent" until it suddenly isn't, and people need to realize that.

And with a stroke of the pen, they'll make adjustments. SS isn't a real debt obligation; it's merely a "promise".

Retirement age must increase. People are living longer than when retirement pensions were first designed. It was easy to introduce, people weren't expected to live that long then and now they do.

And it could be changed so gradually that no one near retirement age or who has started planning significantly for it is affected. Even a glacial rate of change would help -- one month later every year for the next few generations. And delay the start by a few years.

Point is to make changes without giving any cohesive group a strong reason to organize opposition. Or to have a strong moral argument that it was promised them.

So (rich) people are living longer... does that mean they are as productive, longer? Just because they're alive longer doesn't mean they can work as well in their 70s as they used to. There's also the whole ageism thing to consider. How hard is it to get a job in your 60s. How about if you're 70? 75?

The people with the lowest life expectancy are those that need SS the most, yet you're suggesting they not be able to receive it until after they're likely to be dead.

If you're thinking of America, it has homework to do first with SS (health care for all). I can see your perspective coming from there, I don't think it would be a viable argument in Europe.

the cap MUST increase

Living longer != able to work longer. Making SS solvent isn't a hard problem, we know how to do it. It is simply politically hard.

This!!! I believe originally the retirement age was set way above the average life expectancy. Some information I had was that when it was first setup life expectancy was 55 yrs while you could collect SS at 60 years. If that is really the case then SS has been a ponzi scheme of sorts for a while but now that people are living longer the time to payback is coming. Second, I think sometime in the 70's or 80's accounting changes were made so that the budget deficits could be "hidden" with SS money (i.e. it was no longer an exclusive trust).

I believed so too, but reading on Wikipedia somewhat opened my mind to different arguments, since they underscore how the average life expectancy could be said to be approximately 70 years at the introduction of the 70 year retirement age in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Socialism_%28Germany%29#...

The retirement age increasing isn't strictly necessary just because people live longer. As long as a stable rate of interest exists, retirees can save up enough money and keep living off the interest payments. All that's required is that they're able to save up the same amount in the same time frame (provided the rate of interest doesn't change). Unfortunately, we haven't had a stable rate of interest for over a century.

I will actually HAPPILY increase my retirement age: when employers stop firing engineers over the age of 55 and replacing them with college grads. I'm happy to work until 72 or even 75. I have a pretty generous vacation allowance, so I'm not feeling the "rat race" in that way anymore. What I'm feeling is the creeping dread as I approach 50, that I'm going to be rightsized.

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