The author of “To shore it up, raise the retirement age”, USA Today is clearly out of touch to want the federal government to raise the age for retirees to receive full socially security benefits. The author seems to be one of the fortunate Americans who has a pension and money saved for retirement. Many Americans do not have pensions and will have to rely on social security benefits when they reach retirement.
Some may agree that this is a good idea however, they are eligible to receive retirement benefits at the age of 50 after 20 years of service or any age with 25 years of service. Raising the retirement age to receive full benefits would also help solve the shortfall and make the fund solvent. If the average life span is 78 years old that’s only 8 years of the government benefits.
Raising the retirement age to 70 would help solve the shortfall but punishes hard working Americans who have made contributions throughout their lives. The author claims that the reason for the short fall is that people are living longer. That maybe one of the reason the fund is in trouble, but benefits are put in a general fund and not in a dedicated fund. Congress has been able to spend and divert all the money and now there is not enough money for benefits. Congress should not be able to break promises because they have mismanaged and misspent. Other government programs run in the red and social security will probably be one of them. The government will just have to keep funding until either a new retirement plan is developed that does not include raising the retirement age or cutting benefits for social security.
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