That was also always the plan. When Social Security was initially established with a retirement age of 65, the life expectancy of an American was 63.

It was never meant to be a national retirement plan. It was a social safety net meant to keep people who couldn’t work due to injury or age from dying homeless on the streets where people could see them.

Then we started living longer and pensions started going away and it became the primary retirement plan for millions of people who started living 20 years longer than the system had planned for.

And the educated, healthy people who live forever and collect the most in payments due to their higher wages tend to be people who didn’t start contributing until their mid-20s after finishing college. So for the majority of their lives they don’t contribute, but they take the most out of the system.

It’s fundamentally broken as designed.