Commnetary: Raising Social Security Retirement Age, Different Effect on Knowledge Workers and Others

In his economics blog, Ezra Klein and his readers riff on a suggestion by Larry Mishel that raising the Social Security age "makes much more sense for affluent individuals who work in knowledge-oriented industries than for lower-income people whose jobs require more physical labor." This follows posts a year earlier about Klein's own oppostion to raising the retirement age" and a response to that suggesting raising the retirement age to 70.

Klein suggests pondering the suggestion and adds these talking points:

1. At what age do you want to retire?
   
2. An increase in the retirement age could lead to more people going on disability.
   
3. If we're going to increase the age at which these folks can get full Social Security benefits, we'd better figure out some solutions to make it easier for them to keep working.

Source: Ezra Klein, Washington Post "More on raising the retirement age" (July 7, 2010)

Additional Sources: MarketWatch "Fix Social Security by hiking retirement age" (July 2, 2010)