very cent that they have been promised, including an accurate annual cost of living increase. As a first step to saving Social Security for future generations, Congress should pass a law giving every already retired American a contract that provides a legal guarantee of his or her Social Security retirement benefits. Finally, current workers should have the choice of either joining a Social Security system that includes personal retirement accounts or remaining in the existing system and taking whatever benefit is available at the time that they retire.Some of our elected officials propose raising the eligibility age to get full Social Security benefits as a way of keeping money in the system. The retirement age is already slated to rise from 65 to 67 in the coming years, but they want to force us to work even longer. The rationale for this change is that, since life expectancy has increased, so should the length of the work life. As was noted earlier, since Social Security was enacted in 1935, life expectancy at age 65 has increased by 3 years for men and 6 years for women. Moreover, these life expectancies are projected to rise by a further 3 years for both men and women by 2070. Proponents of a more rapid rise and indexation of the normal retirement age argue that a portion of these increases in longevity should be matched by additional years in the workforce. Increasing the retirement age would ease Shah 3the pressure on Social Security financing by offsetting some of the increase in the elderly dependency ratio caused by the aging of the population.Opponents of raising the retirement age offer two main arguments. First, greater longevity has not so far been accompanied by an increase in years worked; indeed, people are retiring earlier and earlier. Therefore, we should wait to see how people accept the currently scheduled increase to age 67. Second, opponents are concerned that accelerating the change in the retirement a...
