[natnat]

You're conflating upper class with middle class. People who are making $50k a year after retirement, or making more than $106k a year before retirement, are not middle class. They are upper-middle to upper class, and they have substantially more savings than the people who receive less Social Security benefits.

You can make anything sound politically bad by calling something an attack on the middle class. The thing is, you can define middle class however you want. Are people who make more than $106k a year middle class? They're in the top quintile of incomes. How about people who make more than $250k? They're in the top 2%.

Raising the retirement age will disproportionately hurt anyone who works physical jobs, who are already strained by the decline in construction and manufacturing. Privatizing the program will be a giant subsidy to Wall Street. Decreasing everyone's benefits will hurt the middle class and the lower class, and might take away a little disposable income from the upper class.

[yummyfajitas]

Raising the retirement age will disproportionately hurt anyone who works physical jobs, who are already strained by the decline in construction and manufacturing.

Keep the low retirement age only for the declining number of people who work physical jobs. Problem solved.