GOP Minority Leader John Boehner Wants You to Work Until You're 70

[Jack Springer]

I think it's time for everyone to pay social security taxes. The most taboo subject regarding social security is the taxable limit.

Remove that limit and the problem is gone.

Or maybe slide the scale -- lower the benefits for those that don't need them.

I know millionaires that receive social security -- they don't need it.

Bet this sound wild coming from a conservative.

 

[bike10]

Am sure John Boehner will not have to work to age 70. He could retire from congress today and find job with BP.

 

[palemale]

Am sure John Boehner will not have to work to age 70. He could retire from congress today and find job with BP.

I think he'll become a pitch man for a company selling tanning beds. In 1976, when Ronnie Reagan ran against Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination, Ford once remarked of Reagan's hair that he was "prematurely orange." Boehner's skin is prematurely orange.

 

[USEDCAR]

And that will make it extra hard for people to find jobs

 

[JayHawk]

Nah...nobody wants to be the greeter at walmart but old people are good at it....

 

[Knucklehead]

House Minority Leader John Boehner wants to raise the retirement age for those under age 47 in order to pay for the wars. http://pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_688102.html What an asshole. God forbid we end the wars, end corporate welfare and tax the rich a little more.

These people just don't get it.Most of America isn't interested in continuing these wars.Not for another minute.I certainly am not interested in working an additional 5 years to pay for this bullshit. Bring our troops home.Now.

 

[Kulindahr]

I think it's time for everyone to pay social security taxes. The most taboo subject regarding social security is the taxable limit.

Remove that limit and the problem is gone.

Or maybe slide the scale -- lower the benefits for those that don't need them.

I know millionaires that receive social security -- they don't need it.

Bet this sound wild coming from a conservative.

If we're going to call it "security", it should be just that: a matter of financial security. Everyone should get a minimum of something like $1000/mo regardless of how much was paid in -- that would be security. And those getting substantial amounts elsewhere should be correspondingly reduced.

And no federal employee should get SS; their retirement provisions are already generous.

 

[Spiff]

Where are all those elderly people supposed to work? Companies already do everything they can to let employees go before they reach their 65 retirement age to get out of paying retirement money. Read the news, and you see that nobody is hiring these people. I swear it is despicable how our government (and society) has always treated older people like shit.

 

[justapixel]

I think it's time for everyone to pay social security taxes. The most taboo subject regarding social security is the taxable limit.

Remove that limit and the problem is gone.

Or maybe slide the scale -- lower the benefits for those that don't need them.

I know millionaires that receive social security -- they don't need it.

Bet this sound wild coming from a conservative.

So you want rich people to pay "more" into a retirement fund and then not collect any retirement funds.

In other words, you want a new tax on the rich.

 

[stillscion20]

I think they should continually raise the retirement age to correspond to the increasing average age of death. Maybe 70 is to high, but it's to the point where most people live to be a bit older than that.

 

[MercuryJones]

I think they should continually raise the retirement age to correspond to the increasing average age of death.

You might want to factor in the ability that goes with age. Regardless of how far lifespans are stretched out by medicine, the "workable" years are more or less unchanged.

And the longer people at the late stages stay in the work force, the less room to move up there is for younger people, which is also not great.

 

[JayHawk]

However there are plenty of older Americans who are just as able as some of their lazy younger counterparts... so they get hired whereas the young up and comers do not.

 

[MercuryJones]

However there are plenty of older Americans who are just as able as some of their lazy younger counterparts...

Sure. And no one is suggesting people able and willing shouldn't work if they want to.

The model developed some decades ago just doesn't address the changed reality that people can now live a lot longer than they can work, and we don't have the same family norms we once did.

 

[JayHawk]

No but that same 'model' assumes people die much ealrier than they do so promising benefits of which we could never deliver is dishonest at the least.

 

[MercuryJones]

^ Like I said, the old model doesn't match the current reality.

 

[Knucklehead]

I think they should continually raise the retirement age to correspond to the increasing average age of death. Maybe 70 is to high, but it's to the point where most people live to be a bit older than that.

Why? I started my first job when I was 13 and have been pretty much working ever since then .either full time or part time. Isn't 52 years of work enough?

 

[JayHawk]

Nope.....

 

[MidnightPrism]

Fine, raise it to 70.

That's well outside of the life expectancy in my family, so I guess I will never retire.

 

[Kulindahr]

JockBoy is right: seniors can get hired. One reason is that many of them have money for retirement that they're living on partially, and just want a bit more along with something to do. Walmart greeters (when I still see greeters) are invariably elderly -- I even met one in a powered wheelchair. At a K-Mart, a man with silvery hair down to his shoulders was pushing a long line of shopping carts back to the store using his Medicaid-paid electric scooter, while trading off-color jokes with the teenager rounding up the carts. And in positions requiring patience, I see people in their sixties and seventies all the time.

 

[Kulindahr]

Why? I started my first job when I was 13 and have been pretty much working ever since then .either full time or part time. Isn't 52 years of work enough?

That depends on what a society can afford. Asking if it's "enough" throws it into the realm of morals -- and a society can only have the morals it can afford.