Want To NEVER Retire And Voluntarily LOWER Your Benefit? (Gotta Love That Bowles Catfood Commission (And THEY'RE BAAACK))!!!

Friday, September 14, 2012

Attack on Social Security: Raising Retirement Age to 69 Will Lower Monthly Benefit by 13%

Nothing could sound more reasonable than one of the “reforms,” meaning attacks, on Social Security: raise the retirement age from 67 (the level for those born after 1960) to 69.

People are living longer, right? That means they can work longer, right?

Well, aside from a few inconvenient facts (the life expectancy of low income black women is actually falling, and middle aged people who lose their jobs often find it difficult to get any kind of paid work), on the surface, this seems not too bad.

But this plan is actually a sneaky way to cut monthly benefits across the board, and for an age cohort where retirement is so far away that they won’t focus on details and subject this scheme to the criticism it deserves.

I’m taking the liberty of reproducing a discussion by Social Security Works (hat tip Columbia Journalism Review; click for larger image):

The CJR story by Trudy Lieberman does a fine job of discussing the pervasive media misreporting of this issue. For additional background, an analysis by Representative Jan Schakowsky gives a high level, very readable treatment of the deficiencies in the Bowles Simpson proposal.

Read more here.