Middle-Age Retirement Adds to Recession Woes
This is Gene Steuerle:
2009 was the first year in almost six decades with negative labor force growth… If people simply retire at the same ages over the next 20 years as they do today, then the employment drop is equivalent to an increase in the unemployment rate of close to one-third of 1 percent every year. Two decades or so from now, the increase in nonemployment would have about the same effect as a 7 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. And this increase would be permanent, not just a temporary, recession-led blip.
There are 78 million baby boomers. We need them to keep working past their normal retirement year, if they are willing. We cannot afford to let all those skills and talents go to waste while they spend their twilight years on the golf course.
In its current form, the Social Security and Medicare system are hopelessly unsustainable given the pay-as-you-go mechanism and the distribution of workers by generation. I’m the tail end of the Baby Boom generation. I cannot imagine sitting at home piddling around the yard all day 20 years from now. However, when I make the decision to delay retirement, I hope it’s because I want to work longer rather than have to work longer.
Hasn’t the NCPA published a study on this — along with recommendations on how to prolong working and delay retirement?
The current rules encourage early retirement. Here’s something I learned from the NCPA: You can claim early retirement and cash all the checks. Then, when you get to be age 70 you can recalculate and decide if early retirement was a good decision. If you decide it was not, you can pay back all of your benefits and claim late retirement instead –receiving larger monthly checks going forward.
Here is a cite to one NCPA study: http://www.ncpathinktank.org/pub/bg162/
There are also many others.