“Retirement” on The Daily Caller

PARIS (AP) — Nicolas Sarkozy may want to keep the pen as a souvenir. (more)

PARIS — After nearly three weeks of debate and a series of national strikes, the French Senate voted Friday evening to pass President Nicolas Sarkozy’s bill to raise the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60 and the age for a full pension to 67 from 65. (more)

PARIS (AP) — Workers opposed to a higher retirement age blocked roads to airports around France on Wednesday, leaving passengers in Paris dragging suitcases on foot along an emergency breakdown lane. (more)

Speaking at Duke University last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expressed his concern that maintaining an all-volunteer force costs too much and that too few Americans bear the burdens of war. But is he sending Americans a mixed message that, coming as it does in the midst of the growing U.S. fiscal crisis and two prolonged and controversial wars, risks encouraging solutions to one problem that will make the other problem worse? (more)

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz recently blasted proposals to allow individuals to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes, gravely warning of the “risky gamble” of investing. (more)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Gone are the days of golf and gardening into the golden years. Many older workers are working well into retirement and it’s not just because they have to, it’s because they want to. (more)

Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) — French unions are striking nationwide as lawmakers begin debating President Nicolas Sarkozy’s bill to raise the retirement age. (more)

Hey, retirees: Looking for a way to bring in more money? Give back all the Social Security checks you have received so far. (more)

Americans love the short, quick solution. (more)

The Social Security Trustees recently released their annual report on the state of the Social Security program, and it’s not pretty.  For the next 75 years, the liability now stands at nearly $8 trillion.  Projected into the infinite horizon, this debt stands at $18.6 trillion.  The unfunded liability is the difference between the benefits that have been promised to current and future retirees and what will be collected in dedicated taxes. This means that the government would have to have such an amount in the bank today, earning interest, in order to pay Social Security benefits into perpetuity. (more)

The panel is looking for a mix of ideas that could win support from both parties, including concessions from liberals who traditionally oppose benefit cuts and from Republicans who generally oppose higher taxes, according to one member of the commission and several people familiar with its deliberations. (more)

Paul Krugman’s astonishingly incorrect column about Social Security’s finances is based on the premise that anticipated deficits in the Social Security program may never materialize.  A couple of years ago, he could have made that claim with a very slight chance of being correct.  This year, facts have already overtaken his weak argument: the CBO reported earlier this year that Social Security is already spending more in benefits than it collects in taxes, which the program’s own trustees confirmed last week. (more)

Perhaps one of the greatest financial missteps people make is believing that retirement is an event or a “zone” one enters later in life. So says Gregory Salsbury, author of Retirementology: Rethinking the American Dream in a New Economy. Salsbury sees it more as a process: “All of your financial behavior—earning, saving, borrowing, investing—impacts your retirement. It begins as soon as you’re able to put money away, not sometime in the future,” he says. “People often think they don’t have to worry about retirement because they’re not yet in the zone—they still have 20, 30, 40 years to worry about it.” (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired last week as the top U.S. general in the stalemated Afghanistan war, told the Army on Monday that he will retire. (more)

PARIS — Trains stood still and children played instead of studied as workers around France went on strike Thursday to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to raise the retirement age to 62. (more)

On May 26, 2010, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) wrote an op-ed in Politico defending Social Security’s solvency, and refuting many concerns cited by critics. Intrigued, I contacted the Congressman’s press secretary by phone the following day to interview the Congressman about his assertions, and to contrast them with what I have heard and read from critics of Social Security. His press secretary and I exchanged several phone calls, and I sent two follow-up e-mails regarding an interview. After receiving no response, I moved forward. (more)

France’s government announced on Wednesday it would raise the retirement age and increase taxes for top earners in a long-awaited reform aimed at balancing the heavily indebted pensions system by 2018. (more)

Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s failure to win his state’s Democratic nomination was a crushing defeat for organized labor, which went all-out in supporting Halter in order to punish incumbent Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln for her failure to support the unions’ top legislative priority, the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, which was unpopular in her fairly conservative state. (more)

BOSTON (AP) — Justice David Souter ever so politely interrupts an attorney making a complicated legal argument. (more)

All of the retirement studies and calculators on the Internet today (with one exception) get the numbers wildly wrong. (more)