Question we should ask those who advocate for raising the retirement age.

[Honeycombe8]

16. Sorry, Grasshopper. You are unwise....and incorrect.

"The Social Security program as Congress originally enacted it did not provide universal coverage for retirement benefits but provided benefits principally for industrial employees. The legislation initially excluded most workers, including farm laborers, the self-employed, educators, household servants, casual laborers, and the unemployed.

The government mailed the first Social Security check in 1940 to Ida May Fuller in Ludlow, Vermont, just as the Depression was ending. Ida May Fuller lived for thirty-five more years, until 1975, and by that date, Congress had expanded the Social Security system to cover nearly all workers. Coverage was also broadened to include dependents of workers and disabled employees. By the end of the twentieth century, almost 150 million Americans contributed to the system and more than forty million received benefits. The government paid about 7.5 million individuals survivor benefits, and six million received disability benefits."

http://www.enotes.com/social-security-act-1935-reference/social-security-act-1935

As you can see, between its inception and 1975, Social Security was expanded to include more than twice as many people as it originally was intended for. You can receive disability even though you have paid a pittance into Social Security. I don't want to take that away, but that wasn't the way Soc Sec was set up to work. So we now have a problem. In fact, every decade or two, we have the same problem.