It's because people are living longer and their government retirement plan savings aren't enough to support living that long. Increasing the retirement age means you spend another five years paying into your retirement fund and have five fewer years to spend it. If you have additional retirement savings of your own, you can still retire earlier.

I feel we've known this was coming years.. and it won't effect until 2040 -- this gives me confidence in the system.

It's not an unfunded mandate running on deficit spending.

So probably it won't be wiped away by a global monetary crisis that forces us to cut deficit spending and reduce pensions.

That depends on what driving it. If it’s because the budget was unsustainable and needs to be cut, that’s bad. If it’s because people are living longer, then it’s just an unfortunate consequence of good things. I suspect it’s the latter.

I don't know if I would so easily conflate necessity to political legislation. Both politics and politicians are very commonly out of touch with average citizens and what they need, and often ignore the policies that would benefit the state the most in favor of pursuing personal ideals and maintaining political positions and power. If a policy is good for a state 20 years down the line, but will cost them political positioning in the meanwhile or challenges their notions on what they are "suppose" to do either ideologically or socially, or results in their often substantial personal investments having lower returns, I wouldn't often bet on them choosing the state over themselves.