When SS was instituted in the 1930s, the retirement age was set at 65. At the time, few people lived that long. From the National Center for Health Statistics, the average life expectancy in 2002 for both sexes and all races was 77.3 years. For white women, it was 80.3 years, 75.1 for white men, 75.6 for African-American women, and 68.8 for African-American men.

The retirement age for full benefits was raised from 65 to a laddered 67 as part of the reforms in the 1980s. Based on average mortality rates, raising that another 5 years over a period of several years (as life expectancy keeps rising) wouldn't remove all that many people from the SS roles except for African-American men. As it is, they're getting screwed by today's standard.

Even today, people can retire with reduced benefits at age 62. You can make a good argument about raising that age over time. However, life expectancy keeps increasing over time, offsetting the benefits of simply raising the retirement age.

In the end, it comes down to demographics. The leading edge of the Baby Boom can start retiring at age 62 in just 3 more years. Several million people will reach retirement age each year afterwards (4.3 million were born in 1957 alone, including me). After the Baby Boom, there was a period of about 20 years when the birth rate was much lower. Discounting immigration, all of the workers who will be paying into SS in the next 20 years are already born. We know how many people will be reaching retirement age each year, we know how many workers are in the system, and the trends aren't good. If the average SS payment each month is about $1000 and currently there are 3 people paying for every person receiving benefits, then each worker has to pay an average of $333 a month in SS taxes. Over the next 20 years or so, that will drop to 2 workers per retiree. While the amount paid in SS taxes falls short of what is paid out in benefits, the shortfall will have to be made up with higher other taxes. This will really put the squeeze on the workers, not even counting the even bigger problem of Medicare and Medicaid shortfalls.

I don't know what the current number is, but I remember that one of Clinton's budget submissions from the mid 1990s (I think it was 1995) predicted that children born that year would face a total tax burden of well over 80% to pay for everything. With tax rates that high, you'd be facing a generational revolt. Why bother to work at all when you get to keep less than 20 cents of each dollar you earn?

Taking action sooner is better than waiting for it to be a crisis. As an analogy, imagine we're on the bridge of a heavily laden supertanker. The radar picks up a obstacle directly in our path 60 miles away. A simple 1 degree course change at that distance would take us a mile clear of the obstacle, but we keep sailing on. After all, there is no imminent crisis. Over the coming hours, we keep getting closer and closer to the obstacle - 50 miles, 40, 30, 20, 10, 5. It isn't moving. We've waited until we're a mile from the obstacle and suddenly it's a crisis. We throw the rudder over hard, reverse one engine and full power on the other, and hope. We've gotten so close that your momentum may carry you right into the obstacle, a pretty stupid move IMO.

If we'd taken action when we first detected the threat, the required correction would've been much less. Instead, we're hearing some say that we don't need to take any corrective action on SS because it isn't yet a crisis. However, even Bill Clinton recognized the problem years ago and recommended corrections including private accounts. Nothing was done. We've gotten closer to the obstacle in the meantime, and the difficulty of avoiding the problem becomes harder with each passing year.