Any comments about Mr Madoff?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by classicman

Your assumption that it will be based upon a longer life expectancy is not necessarily true. It may and probably will be raised just to keep it solvent.

It only has to be raised if life expectancy increases. Solvency is not a problem unless there are too many retired people for the working population to support. And, as TheMercenary pointed out, there are much easier (both politically and practically) ways of increasing funding than raising the retirement age. Of the three methods I mentioned (rates/retirement ages/upper tax limits), the retirement age is the one I would expect to, politically, need a life expectancy justification.

Raising the retirement age to 80 simply could not happen, politically, unless people were regularly living well past it. Raising the maximum yearly limit would, comparatively, be a cinch.