This 13% permanent reduction in benefits by raising Full Retirement Age several months for each birth year from age 65 to 67was passed under Reagan. It was bad policy then and coupled with allowing companies to offload the management of pensions with the advent of the disastrous 401k scam will combine to have very few Americans being able to stop working in their later or even very late years.

The same corporate greed that cut pensions is the same force that has kept wages stagnant or declining in purchasing power for decades, which only exacerbates the dependency on social security. The complexity and specialized knowledge required to independently manage and plan for one’s own retirement is beyond almost all americans–regardless of their income as, like the Tax Code, is arcane, opaque and takes enormous effort and time to learn and understand.

Worst of all, and somewhat aligned with your post title, with the raising of the SS retirement age (which will also be proposed and MASSIVELY hammered in the US media to support fucking over the public further when Trifecta Trump and congress ram it through) and the disappearance of pensions, even those who do have the means, it becomes less clear when it’s appropriate to retire. Golden years, time with grandchildren, focusing on ones health…it all will be assaulted again. I fully expect the retirement age will be raised or even eliminated and, unlike the french, our pathetic, gullible public will eat it up and then wonder why life is so hard.

I recommend Work, Retire, Repeat that came out this year for a thorough review with solutions and the many more attractive options our country has to choose from…if we can wrest control back from the ultra-wealthy who just want slave labor until you die and care nothing for your life, family, friends, or our society and country.

Officially 67yo to get full SSI benefits from the US govt now. It’s like they purposefully mismanaged the 12% of everything I produced for my entire career.