Bringing in facts. What ARE you thinking?
About 10 years left before SS payments WILL be cut 25% or so, but people want to avoid taking any decisions now. Retirement age was raised under Reagan and could be raised another year now. We could increase the level at which people stop paying SS taxes. We could, IMHO, start SERIOUSLY looking at how many people are getting SS “disability” payments who are healthy. I’ve got an ex-SIL who looks pretty fit for someone with permanent VA & SS disabilities!
And FWIW, my perspective is one who is supposed to start getting full SS in a year. If I’m honest, they ought to slip that another year. And raise the earliest age of getting SS to maybe 64-65.
I’m one of those guys who applied for and received a SS
disability retirement.
And if you saw me on the street, you’d say, wow that guy
looks pretty danged healthy.
I used to get challenged on it. I was in the “old folks”
end of the pool and the lifeguard told me that area was
only for seniors. I was just over 40 at the time.
I was there rehabbing because there was less weight on
my legs when in the water. Just a few days before, I had
been at a hospital whirl-pool, having to be lifted into
the pool by a hoist. It was the only way I could get in.
In two years, I lost the larger veins in my legs. Because
the valves in those veins didn’t work any longer, my blood
would go to my feet and stay there. Lower legs up...
My ankles would swell up at 400% or more. To make it so
I could work longer, I wore panty hose for compression for
about five years.
I continued to work and then I had a job that required a
lot of walking around a warehouse with concrete flooring
with no padding.
It was so painful, when I got laid off under a consolidation
I decided not to go back to work. Pins and needles didn’t
begin to describe it.
I couldn’t stand or sit for a long period of time without
swelling up all day, and then reducing that swelling at
night. The damage that did to my ankles caused quarter
sized sores to develop in the general area of my ankle
bone. Those took four months to heal.
I didn’t know how to handle them, and one time when I
tried to remedy the situation, I created a raw area on
the inside of my foot that was between the size of a
quarter and a half dollar. It looked like hamburger
and felt like someone was driving a steak knife
through my foot.
My wife got upset about the situation convinced I was
sloughing off, despite knowing of and seeing my condition.
Meanwhile anyone seeing me walk by thought that I looked
very very healthy. I wasn’t. All her (and some were mine)
sided with her, because she wanted sympathy.
I went on SS and she split.