Resolved: The US should raise the Social Security age of eligibility

I regret to inform the world that the effects of aging have not ceased to exist. The only thing that's changed much is that less young people are dying, so "life expectancy at birth" has increased, while "life expectancy for those who reach old age" is pretty much the same [4]. But when you're 70, your joints are stiff, your memory is not what it used to be, and the only job you have is your current one because nobody will take on a new staff member likely to die within ten years, you are in a pretty desperate situation. This is also bad for the workplace, not just because of lost productivity or because old people tend to be set in their ways, but because the jobs in question might be in hospitals or other industries where failure is just not an option. Incentive to retireThe retirement age should have nothing to do with how long we live, but how long we are able to work. Raising the retirement age creates perverse incentives for people unable to save because they don't earn so much income, to keep working much longer, as otherwise they can't survive. And if they lose their job, they are usually left out in the cold, not least because there's a bunch of far better-qualified young people vying for jobs in today's competitive job market. It is a well-documented empirical fact that the retirement age is strongly affected by the pension age [1] - largely because the pension makes people less reliant on their work for an income, and without an income incentive there is often not much incentive to work. This is despite the fact that governments don't actually have that much money to give, so the older generation who do keep working past the retirement age are usually empirically much better off [2]. This implies that most people retire when they judge that they are no longer able to work, and when not working is financially possible. For a company and their clients, this means less is achieved. Incentives are created to lay off the underperforming staff, financially ruining them and their prospects as poor performance can only mean bad references. That means higher unemployment as you're increasing the size of the labour pool without increasing jobs. The effects on the company and their clients of keeping on older staff might be bad, but the effects on the worker are usually worse. They know their work quality is poor and they have to live with it. They go to work every single day, fearing for their future. The stresses of their job are only multiplied with every day's mundanities. If they are fit enough to keep working they usually will, the financial incentives are right for that. But 65 is a pretty decent lower limit for when the effects of aging are enough to seriously stifle working ability in many sectors, and when simply switching professions becomes near-impossible. Retirement is compensationRetirement is a reward for a generation. A worker during the 60s will have helped create a portion of the wealth America enjoys today, but they didn't just do it for a couple of dimes in their pocket. They did it so that America might have more wealth in general, providing ongoing finance for things like retirement funds. America is the wealthiest country in the world, and these are the people who made it happen. Giving of pensions is basically the only way old people are shown any tangible respect in our society, being very likely to be poor and recieving little medical care [3]. Presently they might be of no value to society, but without the older generation there would be no society today. I think it's an important principle to care about the weakest members of our society. It would be less absurd to force a ten year old to work than an 85 year old, because the 85 year old will have earned their retirement, though both would be incompetent. Even if this were not the case, however, it's worth protecting the interests of the poor and helpless, because they can still be very valuable to many of us. This debate is about the older generation and how we can give them the best possible care, both as a reward and more importantly, because we need people to retire as soon as the effects of aging come in. ArbritraryAside from the above considerations about 65 being a decent lower limit for retirement, people demand to retire at age 65. If a private insurer offers a range of pension options, people will go with the one that allows them to retire at age 65, because that's when people generally expect to retire. Given that this isn't completely unreasonable, it seems a decent compromise. How to pay for itThe above arguments hold true regardless of the demographic makeup of society. Having said that, I agree a certain amount of pragmatism is quite warranted. The question is whether we should be finding ways to pay for the existing care, or just limiting care based on our ability to pay. I agree absolutely that my model isn't fair on current workers. It's equally unfair some generations had to live through a world war and others do not. Some have access to the internet and others did not. We now have global warming and other challengers nobody had thought of a hundred years ago. Each generation has unique challenges and oppertunities. We can either rise to that challenge, or choose to fail it. The biggest problem with failing our older generation is that we fail our future. It's true that rising to this challenge will require sacrifice. And it won't be easy - challenges rarely are. But just because something is a challenge doesn't mean America should avoid it, or shirk from that responsibility. America should rise to the challenge with courage and innovation. Con's alternative is not a solution. It's a way of avoiding one problem by creating dozens of others. Even if social security runs at a loss, it's not like that debt will be bad debt. It's actually creating something valuable in society that improves productivity overall. And demographics change. As the present smaller generation grows up, this won't be an issue, and it could be paid back by the future generation's savings. That's something almost anybody would bet on. It is possible to work your way out of it. If this debate were set in India - a country with far more old people, far less money, and a decent pension system - then perhaps this could be a central issue. But they're coping because they care about their families and futures. They recognise that old people are important to society in other ways. And America should too. Sources1 - . http://ideas.repec.org...2 - . http://www.bris.ac.uk...3 - . http://www.apa.org...4 - . http://www.infoplease.com...