Lower the retirement age.

[Eric J in MN]

Candidates make a lot of expensive promises: a middle-class tax-cut, building infrastructure, staying in Iraq for a hundred years.

After watching the most recent negative ad by Hillary Clinton against Obama, which says he'd consider raising the retirement age and she won't, my reaction was that I wish the debate were about lowering the retirement age instead.

Promises of a middle-class tax cut probably produces skepticism in most voters, who don't know if they would qualify or how much they would get.

But almost all of us who are under 65 would like to retire before we're 65.

[stray cat]

1. My pension won't be enough to live on even at 65

[Eric J in MN]

2. I mean give full Social Security benefits before 65. NT

NT

[DURHAM D]

4. How?

We can't afford it.

Just for the record - full retirement age for early and pre boomers is 66.

[Eric J in MN]

5. By removing the cap on income over $90,000. NT

NT

[DURHAM D]

8. What cap on income over 90K?

It is currently 97.5K and going up to 102K.

SS provides diminishing returns for higher earners anyway. In other words, it is much more of an income redistribution plan than most realize.

[Not Me]

6. We can afford anything.

I will never accept the government saying "We can't afford it" after this Iraq fiasco.
We can afford what we want to afford.

(all that said, I don't think it is prudent to spend the extra money, especially with longer life expectancies on earlier SS benefits.)

[DURHAM D]

9. Amen.

Besides SS isn't the problem - medicare is.

[n2doc]

3. my prediction is that they will allow folks to raid their retirement accts

Now that people are up to their eyes in debt, the next logical thing is to allow them to spend whatever they may have accumulated in 401k's and IRA's. Right now the only thing stopping them are the taxes and penalties involved in taking money out early. I bet that will change, as an "incentive" to get the "economy moving again".


We are all just a resource to be mined.

And yes, I'd love to be able to retire before 65, but I doubt I will have that much saved up, and given the crappy economy I really doubt what I have saved is going to increase in value all that much.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. Yep. It would be a great boon for the economy.

Jobs would open up for the unemployed and new retirees would be traveling more or starting their own businesses.

This would have to be accompanied by some kind of good national heath care system, though.