At this point in late 2006, I foresee the government raising the minimum age to 70 (currently it is 62) or even higher before citizens can receive any benefits.

They can't lower the amount of benefits - people who rely on them are already having trouble paying medical bills due to the high inflation in all medical areas.

They can't increase the taxes, that will just screw the economy and make small businesses angry.

They can't switch to privitization, because the government needs my social security money now (30 years before I'll ever see it) just to keep the government afloat. Maybe on a very small scale of young workers it can start, but there is no way congress will get that in there.

They can't simply do nothing, because the debt from all areas of government is piling up fast, social security cannot be allowed to become another expense of the government. If they do nothing, eventually they will be paying more money out to ritirees then they are receiving in from young workers like me.

So I think congress will eventually raise the minimum age to at least 70. This will force people to work longer just to get by. This will be their "solution". I think that by the time I am 70 they will have raised the age to 75 or so, just my luck.

The reason for this is understandable, since people live longer now than they used to. But it would have been nice if congress would have never touched this money in the first place, then we would have never had this problem. Somebody, somewhere came up with the bright idea of "borrowing" from the fund and paying it back as needed (I have heard it was LBJ, Kennedy, Eisenhower, and others, but it is difficult to determine). Soon that will no longer be possible though because there will be nothing to borrow from.

The irony is that the poor who social security helps most are the most likely to die before the age of retirement.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside