1. Raise the full retirement age to 68 in 2025. Add another year to that in 6 months increments every 6 years or so until this gets to age 73 (e.g. 68.5 in 2031, 69.0 in 2037, etc. to 73 by 2085).
2. Keep the minimum eligibility age where it is, albeit with correspondingly lower benefits as the full retirement age increases.
3. In exchange for these increases, permanently remove the federal tax on benefits. That seems fair anyway, since the government frittered away any chance of getting real returns on the monies collected from us over the years.
I’d love to also phase out the FICA taxes over time, replacing them with a mandatory personal savings plan that workers can’t touch until at least age 65... but the existing retirees have to be funded, and that comes from the current FICA taxes (since the govt screwed that up, too), so somebody with better spreadsheet skills will have to do that math.
Raising the retirement age is political loser. Are you crazy? Only 20% of workers work past the age of 65. Age descriminnation is real What are these people suppossed to do for work?