The Social Security retirement age: Who’s really living longer?

[TreasonousBastard]

8. You're talking averages with these charts, which will be...

difficult, if not impossible, to translate into viable policy.

There are also private pension plans that will be affected, and companies will see retirement ages upped and will be tempted to fire older, less efficient, employees rather than offer early retirement.

"Blue collar" might mean low pay in most areas, but I know an electrician who retired a couple of years ago on over 50 grand a year with piles of money in the bank. Dockworkers I knew at Port Newark were making up to 250 grand to build up a pile to retire early. Much better deals than secretaries and marketing types tend to get.

You just can't pigeonhole people according to job type, especially when so many are making career changes. Income? Maybe, but you could find out that secretaries are living longer than their stressed out bosses. And what about non-working spouses? There are still quite a few out there and how would they fit into the calculations?

You can't make the system perfect so don't screw it up trying.