We must raise retirement age because we are living longer (Um... "we"?)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Since 1977, the life expectancy of male workers retiring at age 65 has risen 6 years in the top half of incomes, but only 1.3 years in the bottom half of incomes.

(This seems a profound argument for means-testing benefits, BTW)

Table 4:
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/workingpapers/wp108.html

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/income-and-life-expectancy/
.

[CountAllVotes]

1. tell my late brother that

Dead at the age of 43 years from metastasized cancer and I'll add that he worked a full-time job and then some and paid loads of $$$ into FICA, etc. from the age of 18 years. Now he is gone.

I know of so many others that have died young, including my best friend - dead at the age of 35 - cancer again.

Don't worry ... the way us boomers are going we'll all be dead and gone sooner rather than later IMO.

[LiberalArkie]

2. I am a boomer, and did not think I would live to 21 or 30 or 40 never 62

And now here I am thinking about SS.. Never in my wildest dreams would I be thinking about it, that is for "old people"..

After all, never trust anyone over 30

[CountAllVotes]

3. well I have come close to dying a few times

most recently one year ago this past Monday. I didn't die obviously but it was very close!

[warrior1]

4. and to my brother

turned 68 this year and died a month later due to poor nursing care after a knee surgery. He worked to 68 to collect as much as he could. No wife, nothing. The federal government keeps all of the ss he paid in to.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. What about all the people who worked and died early?

First I'm thinking of the 58,000 dead soldiers from the Vietnam War, who were part of my generation.
Then the other people in the military who have died since then.

Then those who died young from cancer, accidents, or other diseases.

My older sister died of primary brain cancer at the age of 42 years and two weeks. That was completely unexpected, one of those one-in-a-million things you think will never happen in your family. She worked hard and paid into SS and she's been gone for twenty years.

Thank you for bringing this up. So many thousands of people never live to collect disability or Social Security.

[doc03]

6. Means testing? Just how much should a person be able to

make before you think it is too much? Means testing would be the end of SS, I'll damned if I would pay into SS and then be told you saved too much money or have a pension so we will just take it from you and give it to someone else. That is just plain theft.