[hiAndrewQuinn]

Interesting claim - let's see if it passes the sniff test.

It's very unlikely that we are actually currently at an ideal retirement age on the margin where a move in either direction hurts. If raising the retirement age hurts young people, then lowering the retirement age probably helps young people.

Does that sound correct to you? Would lowering the retirement age now help young people?

[felipeerias]

If pensions depend exclusively on what each person has contributed during their working years, then lowering the retirement age might theoretically help young people by opening up more senior positions for them.

However, in many developed countries today’s pensions are mainly paid for by today’s workers, often through a combination of social contributions and taxes.

In Spain, for example, the social security has a large structural deficit that gets covered by large taxes on salaries, taking money from other social services, and sovereign debt.

In other words, young workers are forced to support retirees through means that make it much harder for them to build a future of their own.

This system is kept in place because pensioners are a huge 1-issue voting block that no political party wants to antagonise. I believe that this is somehow downstream of cultural changes that have made all of society more individualistic and self-centred, incapable to work together for a common future.

[davidgay]

> However, in many developed countries today’s pensions are mainly paid for by today’s workers, often through a combination of social contributions and taxes.

If one accepts this hypothesis, then raising the retirement age is good for all previously-working people, as they now have less people to support and more workers providing that support...

[hiAndrewQuinn]

Taken to its logical conclusion one could even argue that ending government backed retirement pensions entirely and letting people make their own decisions is the best idea.

Some people might plan to work until the day they drop, which is obviously a laudable goal. It's good to contribute to the economy.

Others may purchase an annuity for a target date years or decades in the future, which pay out in basically the same way as social security tends to.

Some (maybe most) would just save more for retirement, because they know if they don't no one will.

Realistically I suspect most people would hedge their bets dynamically go for a combination of these things. Which isn't all that different from the current system, where SS despite being over 20% of the federal budget is considered by most to be woefully inadequate even in the current day for a retirement plan.

[nemothekid]

>Does that sound correct to you?

Yes? I'm not sure if I'm missing something you think is obvious. Lowering the retirement age will open up high seniority jobs that younger people can now promote into. You can see this in congress - despite millenials being in the 40s now they are rarely seen in high level political positions due to boomers and older sticking to their jobs.

[brandonmenc]

> Newly elected Representatives in the 119th Congress had a median age of 47.8 years.

> Similar to the House, the incoming class of Senators in the 119th Congress was also younger, with a median age of 50.4 years.

> The average age of Representatives is 57.9 years.