Krugman just shut down the "raise the retirement age argument" George Will said raise it

[customerserviceguy]

31. You might like an idea I've suggested here before

Clearly some jobs are tougher than others, and they take more out of you physically. Recognizing that, we could develop a sliding scale for retirement benefits based on worker's comp records. I'd favor full benefits at 65 (as you know, right now it's climbing to 67 in a short time) for those with the toughest jobs, and the folks who have the least demanding jobs (pencil pushers like me, for instance) get to do the full benefit at 70.

Yes, there might be some mischaracterizations made, but if we subdivide it down to at least full years, or preferably half years, you'd have a five or ten point scale to assign various occupations and the chances of an assignment of a job to a point on that scale wouldn't be terribly far off. For some odd reason, folks in the toughest jobs often make the lowest money, while those in the least demanding jobs often make the most money. It would be a sort of functional means testing, but would be based on the reality that not all jobs are created equal.