Tax on sodas and junk foods.

[gmwise]

I heard this elderly couple who lament about having to pay into the healthcare.
I asked them how long ago did you retire...20 plus years ago..Social Security retirement age should be raise, retirement benefits for over 20 years wasnt never envision by FDR.

[PennyQuilts]

Significantly pushing back the age of social security really makes it worthless for most people. I'm just saying.

[bluedogok]

I am 45 and I do not expect to have a retirement like my parents, I just don't think it will be possible due to many factors. I don't know that I would want to fully retire anyway, I would like to retire like my former boss. He does a few projects a year usually with someone else doing the CD/CA phase of projects like I did for him when he still had the firm in Austin (he has since sold out to a Phoenix based firm about a year after I left). He lives on a channel in Kemah and sails in the gulf the rest of the time. That would be my kind of retirement.

[USG '60]

When "retirement" was set at 65 the average life span was, I think, 62. If it had been moved up along with the increase of life expectency, retirement would be eighty something now. Before the great medical leaps of the last 50 years one was expected to work til he dropped dead. That was the way "God" made things work and there is nothing evil about it. Retirements natural beginning is when your kids say "hey, look, we'll take care of your support from now on, you just enjoy living." Anything else is a governmental construct and is "unnatural."

[gmwise]

I understand that a person who is a physical demanding job may need to retire sooner.
Compared to a office worker, but with advancements in life spans, treatments for those same physical demanding jobs, we should consider raising the retirement age.

Oh lets expand the school year ..just trying to be even handed lol

[PennyQuilts]

I liked the idea of year round school when I was teaching because it would give me vacation time in different seasons. However, a lot of teachers were against it because they had summer jobs that interfered with, or they were trying to go to school during the summer. I think if we extended the school year, we'd lose a lot of teachers. Many people are willling to work for peanuts because they are getting that big time off in the summer and the Christmas vacation. If they have to work nearly year round, anyway, they'll go someplace where they can make real money.

[bluedogok]

I understand that a person who is a physical demanding job may need to retire sooner.
Compared to a office worker, but with advancements in life spans, treatments for those same physical demanding jobs, we should consider raising the retirement age.

I think that has probably been one of the biggest changes in the retirement "perspective", as USG stated, when the age was set the life expectancy was much shorter and much of that may have also been due to more physically demanding work back then. I know that my father-in-law spent his life working in the oil fields of West Texas, even though he and my father are around the same age (71/72) my father seems to be in better health for the most part. My dad has had some back/knee issues but they are not as severe as some of the health problems that my father-in-law has endured.