I agree with you completely that 401Ks are not a panacea. However, it seems to me that they are an effective replacement for pensions of old.

I don’t know how many of the working poor of previous generations had access to pensions, but those that did were funding the pensions out of their own pockets whether they knew it or not, since their employers’ contributions to pension funds could have otherwise been allocated to higher wages. The differences with 401Ks are that the employee chooses whether and how to participate and that they don’t tie an employee to a particular employer for life.

Social Security provides disability benefits to workers who are physically unable to work anymore, even if they haven’t yet hit the retirement age. In addition, if we can agree that the current retirement age was a “realistic and compassionate solution” when it was set 20 years ago, when people were living slightly shorter lives, I don’t understand why a slightly higher retirement age now would be any less realistic or compassionate.

If we disregard the availability of disability benefits and try to have retirement benefits take care of everyone who runs out of steam due to their hard profession, maybe the retirement age should be yet lower because of the people who’ve been working the really hard jobs. Maybe it should be in the mid-thirties, so that professional football players can be assured that they’ll be taken care of when they’ve been too knocked around to work anymore.

I’m not just being silly. This sort of policy can’t be dictated by anecdote. It’s an actuarial question, and the law should be sending it back to the actuaries regularly, to assure that we continue to provide security for people with the same level of need, if not necessarily at the same age.

I think it is important to realize that at least 28% of families in this country make at or below 200% of poverty level. That would be a family of four living on $41,000 or less per year. Almost 80% of these families would be best called the “working poor.” They work long hours at low paying jobs. These figures are from 2007 and the numbers are most probably worse today with the economic downturn. So, 401Ks are not an option when you are working as a janitor, emptying bedpans in a nursing home, standing on your feet all day cutting hair, or washing dishes in a restaurant. You can barely make ends meet. These people will be most likely living only on Social Security in old age. Unless the benefits are raised, there is going to be more and more poverty among the elderly in this country.

Not everyone has a college education or a white collar job. I’m afraid We tend to see the world through middle class eyes and in doing so the almost 30% of the population of this country is made invisible and have disappeared from the political discourse.

Working at a desk job until later in life certainly could be doable for those who are still healthy, but for those who are ill, or those who work on their feet all day—as a warehouse worker, or nursing home worker, or a clerk at Walmart or at the 7/11—asking them to work until 70 or later is not a realistic or compassionate solution.

2) To raise money for doubling Social Security benefits (or just to stabilize the system to begin with), what about pegging the retirement age to current life expectancy? People live and are able to work significantly longer than they could when the retirement age was last set, and the life expectancy will probably continue to go up in the future. Forcing the system to pay for longer and longer retirements is unsustainable and helps more and more people who don’t need it.

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”