On Tuesday, House Minority Leader John Boehner advocated the idea of upping the retirement age to 70 for people due to retire in 20 years as a way to reduce the federal deficit. It's an idea that's floated pretty often because it's generally assumed people will live longer in the future and will thus have a longer time in retirement if we keep the age at 65. It's an idea that is, in theory, not stupid.
Boehner also said that increases should be tied to the problematic consumer price index, rather than inflation, and that payments should be limited to the lower-income people who need them most. And that's really where the trouble starts, and we can see that this entire set of ideas would result in weakening Social Security. One of the reasons it works, and is so popular, is that people view it as a contribution system in which everyone puts money in and everyone gets their fair share back. Of course, it's really a payroll tax, but the idea that it's not a handout helps sell it to a public that is always skeptical of government. Moreover, it ensures a basic safety net for everyone. Wealthier Americans who have managed to save privately from their retirement are more insulated from the kinds of dramatic life events that can wipe out their life savings, but are not completely immune to them. (Kevin Drum notes that a basket of small changes imperceptible to most, including raising the retirement age to 68 slowly, along with reducing the cap and increasing the rate, would fix it easily. That's if you buy that there's a huge problem looming).
Raising the retirement age all the way to 70 probably wouldn't be popular either, and that's because there are better solutions: namely, raising the cap after which Social Security contributions end so that wealthier people pay more into the system. As Dean Baker writes over at TPM, Americans, when asked, preferred progressive tax options, cutting defense funding, and voting for a single-payer health-care system to cutting into Social Security and Medicaid. They don't like these programs because they're selfish and want to keep what they have: They want to keep what they have because these government programs work really well, despite constant efforts to smear them as inefficient.
-- Monica Potts
