Dylan Matthews: “[Mitt Romney] suggests that the retirement age should be “slowly increased to account for increases in longevity”… Cutting a year of benefits for a poor retiree means much more than cutting a year for high earners. This will also hurt workers in physically intensive jobs more than those with less straining work. A mason who lifts heavy stones all day is likely to have to retire at 62, and take a lower Social Security payment as a result. By contrast, people with mentally engaging and physically non-taxing jobs, such as reporting or think tank work, are likely to want to work well beyond 65. Raising the retirement age won’t hurt the latter group as much as the former.”

— Raising the Social Security retirement age hits the poor the hardest (via sarahlee310)

Someone who’s never had to do a job that requires you to stand or involves manual labor — all day, every day — might decide that slowly raising the retirement age (to never, eventually) is a great idea. It’s called austerity, people. Those tax cuts for the Koch brothers don’t pay for themselves!

Related: 

Paul Krugman, Death by Ideology