# Raising the Retirement Age.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-the-retirement-age/585994>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 19, 2011, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-the-retirement-age/585994 "2011-06-19T00:37:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-the-retirement-age/585994/41 "2011-06-22T21:18:28Z")

</div>

> [@Wesley\_Clark](#):
>
> We have though.

Yeah, I know and we should do it again.

> [@](#):
>
> SS isn’t that hard to fix. Minor changes should keep it solvent until the 22nd century. Medicare and medical care in general are where the real bankruptcy problems lie over the next 100 years. The shortfall in federal health programs is something like 6x bigger than the SS shortfall.

The problem with health care is not something we can solve with increased taxes, the slope of the cost curve is parabolic relative to the slope of GDP.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-the-retirement-age/585994/42 "2011-06-22T21:21:36Z")

</div>

> [@Voyager](#):
>
> As Wesley noted, it gets taxed when income is above a certain level, which effectively reduces it.

Thats hardly what people mean by means testing.

> [@](#):
>
> But my point was that there is no reason not to make any increase in the cap progressive, just as it already is. The claim that an increase in the cap would be revenue neutral for people below the cap are incorrect, and even if they were correct today (which they aren’t) they wouldn’t have to be.

I don’t know what you mean by this. Are we still talking about the $115K cap or soem other cap? Or are you proposing another tier to the formula where you get no benefit from additional taxes paid? Or are you proposing more tiers that would progressively result in smaller and smaller benefits as you reach higher and higher average lifetime incomes?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2011, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-the-retirement-age/585994/43 "2011-06-24T00:31:38Z")

</div>

> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> Thats hardly what people mean by means testing.
> 
> I don’t know what you mean by this. Are we still talking about the $115K cap or soem other cap? Or are you proposing another tier to the formula where you get no benefit from additional taxes paid? Or are you proposing more tiers that would progressively result in smaller and smaller benefits as you reach higher and higher average lifetime incomes?

It would be fairly simple to structure the system so that a person who pays $500 more into it from the cap being raised would get only $250 back, on average, with the remaining money going to those below the cap (in terms of better funding the system, not in giving them more benefits.) And a sliding scale would be good also. There should still be a cap, but much higher than the one now in place.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-the-retirement-age/585994.md?page=2)