Social Security, Life Expectancy, and Income Inequality
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/social-security-life-expectancy-and-income-inequality/
Prior to reading the article above (though the thoughts had been percolating for a while), I was a strong proponent of increasing the retirement age for social security. “Everyone knows” that life expectancy has been increasing in the US and now people are retired a lot longer than they used to be (when Social Security first got started the retirement age was only a year or two less than the average life expectancy, so we, as a society, have been enjoying extended retirements for quite a while). On the surface it would seem a trivial solution, just up the retirement age a few years. However, as the graph below shows (borrowed from Jared’s site), the life expectancy increase has clear demographic breakdowns and those people that need the support of Social Security the most (meaning those who earn the least, have the most physical jobs (meaning that working longer is physically debilitating) and likely the fewest assets to draw upon once retired) have been benefiting from the increased longevity the least. As such it would be incredibly regressive (which, sadly, is the way of the oligarchy now in control of our government) to increase the retirement age for these people. For people like me, who sit in a chair all day and get paid a crap load of money, increasing the retirement age would have very little negative impact (indeed, for me it would mean an increase in retirement assets). However, for the blue collar types who have often abused their bodies when they were younger, working longer is highly problematic.
St Johns is a Florida county with relatively high standards of living while Putnam is also a Florida county but with relatively low standards of living.
